Maps as Texts: From Representation to Enunciation
The consideration of maps as texts and/or statements was recurrent in our theoretical exploration. Many authors, as highlighted in both the introduction and the conclusion of Rethinking Maps1 as well as in the book The New Nature of Maps foreground map's semiotic power. In doing so, it seems to us that their aim is to resist to the functional capacity of representation. According to Foucault, the statement or enunciative event is an operator of a non-reductive correlation between heterogeneous series of discursive and non-discursive formations. We think that considering our maps as statements favours our resistance to representation: it offers (1) a critical form of engagement with the information that pre-exists to our mapping activity without without having the pretension of representing it as (2) it is understood as a non-reductive correlation.
In addition, the text/discourse which calls upon the construction of a narrative appears to us as an interesting way of engaging with the map. On the one hand, it presents itself as a powerful way to transmute the appreciation of a map as a finished and fixed form to a more interactive instance in continuous transformation – a dynamic narrative. In fact, it goes towards the understanding of maps in terms of construction of meaning: inscriptions rather than representations.