Cartography (maps and mapping)
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08. Cartography :
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—Both literally and metaphorically, maps and mapping are dominant practices of colonial and post-colonial cutures.
The very practice of Colonialization itself is most often a result of a voyage of "discovery," a bringing into being of "undiscovered" lands.
The process of discovery is reinforced by the construction of maps, whose existence is a means of textualizing the spatial reality of the "other," naming, or in almost all cases renaming spaces in a symbolic and literal act of mastery and control.
In all cases the lands so colonized are literally reinscribed, written over, as the names and languages of the indigenous people of the so called "discovered" land are replaced by new names, or are corrupted into new and Europeanized forms by the cartographer and explorer.
