CARTOGRAPHY AND VISUAL THOUGHT

REFLECTIONS ON GRAPHIC SCHEMATISATION

JEAN-MARC BESSE

First published as: Cartographie et pense visuelle. Rflexions sur la schmatisation

graphique , in I. Laboulais (dir.), Les usages des cartes (XVII e -XIX e sicle). Pour une
approche

pragmatique

des

productions

cartographiques, Presses universitaires de

Strasbourg, 2008, pp. 19-32

In the past decades, historians of cartography have grown increasingly sceptical of their object.
The conflation of philosophical deconstruction, sociology of science and post-colonial studies
has made the map dubious at best; it has in any case lost its erstwhile self-evidence and
transparency, and historians of cartography have by now grown accustomed to working on an
opaque object. This situation is perhaps not entirely negative for cartography and its history, as
this opacity could be the opportunity to reinstate cartographic objects, methods and practices in
their true complexity; it may well allow us to restore them as genuine problems for the historian.

Cartography and Deconstruction

Our current historiographical situation might be labelled as critical and deconstructionist1. It
could be summarised by three (by now commonplace) statements: i) the map is inherently
inaccurate; ii) the map is an instrument of power; iii) the map is a rhetorical device.
Seen in this light, cartography is less a cognitive production, i.e. a site of construction of
knowledge (with its implicit superiority or authority based on the possession of truth), than a
strategic instrument of communication in a situation of conflict of representations and interests.
The map is viewed as a political discourse among others, produced in a given context, and aimed
at generating a specific impact on society and culture.

On Exactitude
Did anyone ever believe a map could be accurate, literally? No doubt such exactitude could be
held as a regulatory ideal; but factually, the discrepancy between the map and the territory has
always been acknowledged. Attempts have been made at reducing the hiatus, or at least fulfilling
the conditions of conformity between map and territory. Occasionally, enthusiastic poets and
pedagogues imagined maps faithfully espousing the territory they purported to represent; but we
know what happened to the Borgesian ideal of a 1 to 1 map: it got erased with time, as did the
territory it referred to2.
The real issue lies elsewhere: it lies in a more recent assertion, according to which the map is in
essence inaccurate. Now this is more serious: the very nature of the map would preclude accuracy,
as a de jure, rather than de facto, impossibility. What reasons have led to such a statement?
Nelson Goodman neither a geographer nor a historian of cartography, but a philosopher
who has reflected on images and philosophy of science may be of help. A map, he says, is
schematic, selective, conventional, condensed and uniform3. The two first characteristics
indicate that a map cannot but be an abbreviation of reality: the selection of information and the
schematisation of representations are inherent to its materialisation. But does it mean that
accuracy is therefore irretrievably lost? No, says Goodman. The question is not whether the map
is true or false: rather, it is whether it is functional and accurate or not, according to ones
planned use of it. In other words, is this map likely to be useful for the purpose I have in mind?
All maps give an interpretation of territorial reality founded on specific intentions. A given
version cannot be said to be better in general; it may be superior only in the context of a given
intention. Several good maps may coexist, without us having to choose the most accurate in
absolute terms.
We need to modify our notion of exactitude, and focus on the epistemology that underlies our
conception of the map. Traditionally, it is an epistemology of representation, of reproduction: the
map is viewed as a mirror of territorial reality; needless to say, in this epistemological framework,
all maps are inaccurate, as it is indeed impossible to cartographically reproduce the territory. At
the other end of the spectrum, exactitude may recover a legitimacy if, as Goodman suggests, we
adopt the standpoint of a pragmatic and constructivist theory of the map. The map is a
constructive system of a particular type, aimed at providing a set of information on the territory
in a schematic form, according to specific questions and intentions. The map will be
pragmatically accurate if it allows for a specific type of enquiry, i.e. if it makes senses in the

intellectual context that gave rise to it. In other words, the map is inserted in a series of
operations centred on the territory, i.e. in a project; this territorial project whatever it may be
lends it its operationality. Goodmans intuitions remind us of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattaris
distinction in A Thousand Plateaus: the map is not a mere copy of reality; What distinguishes the
map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the
real (). The map has to do with performance4.
We now have our epistemological programme: what makes cartography a cognitive
performance? How does it articulate knowledge and experimentation?

The Issue of Power

The map is an object and an act of power in two ways. First, it conveys an economic, political,
ideological, or even scientific intention, which will be decisive in the selection of information and,
later, in cartographic presentation. But like any other image, the map has the power to influence
the decisions of society and culture, insofar as it shapes the world vision on which these decisions
rest. Cartography can mould culture, whose choices and values it expresses. From a
methodological standpoint, the dialectic between cartography, society and culture has led to
cartographys insertion in social and cultural history: it is now obvious that maps operate both as
reflection and matrix of some key moments of history of science, art history or history of
religions, for instance.
The map as an object of knowledge/power (savoir-pouvoir) a term Brian Harley borrowed
from Michel Foucault was originally somewhat of a caricature: it was considered as a tool of
domination, exclusively used by power holders against chained or oppressed populations the
colonised people, women, etc. This conception has thankfully become more dialectical, as
historians have realised that cartography could also be a tool of resistance, a tool of appropriation
and contestation by the dominated: the map is now viewed as a locus of conflicts between rival
representations, rival knowledge and values, and between different languages. It is an unstable
object, the relativity of which depends not as much on the state of science as on a balance of
power, in a context where power is negotiated and bartered, albeit in an implicit and unconscious
manner.
The map is thus not merely the passive reflection of an external situation, but it can also shape
reality. It possesses a power of its own, born of its status as an image. What exactly is this image
with the ability to mould reality, albeit indirectly? How does it proceed?

The Maps Rhetoric

It has been said that cartographic power rests on the rhetorical device at work in cartographic
discourse. Actually, when the map stopped being viewed as a (more or less) exact representation
of external reality, but rather as an expression of the culture in which it is produced and which it
can in turn influence, as well as a tool of communication, the issue of its persuasive powers
naturally came on the table. Harleys influence was no doubt decisive, but neither should we
forget Remi Carons reflections in the 1980s. The map could be conceived as a discourse
composed of signs of a particular nature; it could hence be analysed with the methodological
resources of linguistics, textual analysis, and iconology.
Now if the map is to be read as a visual message with an intentionality, embodied in a specific
graphic support, we have to be particularly attentive to all the signs contributing to its meaning
and efficiency. Everything in the map may be interrogated and analysed not just the elements
that openly deal with the territory. All these signs converge to elaborate the maps meaning; as
such they deserve to be interpreted. The colours, the symbols, the lines, the names, the systems
of projection, but also the frame, the scale, the format, the decorative elements They all have
to be considered in isolation, and in combination. Not enough is said about this, although it is
clear that history of cartography would gain from a general history of visual signs and culture, to
which it has so clearly collaborated.
The salient point, however trivial it might appear, is that the map is a visual message about a
territory, a message embedded in spatial graphics of a very peculiar type. In other words, while
we may analyse the strategies of communication and rhetoric in the history of cartography, we
should not lose sight of the fact that such rhetoric is embodied in a graphic space which holds
the power to bring about a world of its own namely the territory it refers to. Cartographic
rhetoric is not entirely free or arbitrary in that sense: it aims at the graphic construction of a
territorial reference universe that underpinned the maps intentionality in the first place. In
colloquial terms, we would say that what matters is to convey something to someone, but by
placing the image of a territory in front of him/her. The question hence becomes: how can we
epistemologically account for the practice which consists in drawing a territory in order to say
something to someone and make her act in a certain way? More precisely, what is the

epistemological and historiographical status of this graphic practice that constructs reference
territories? What are its conditions of exercise?
Our preliminary remarks may be summarised as follows: i) a map is an interpretation and a
project vis--vis the territory: it is a possible version of the territory; ii) a map is both the
expression and the prerequisite of a social and cultural power; this power will need the map to
establish its authority; iii) a map deploys its strategy by implementing a graphic universe which
frames its discourse; this graphic space shapes the reference territory about which the discourse is
constructed.
As may be seen, these three general statements, which by and large reflect the current state of
cartographic history, converge towards a pragmatic conception of cartography. Seen in this light,
the map is classified alongside social and cultural practices or political action (loosely
understood), rather than within science stricto sensu. The objectives of territorial knowledge as they
surface in mapping must be considered within broader strategies and social values.
How are we then to understand the strictly cognitive moment of cartography? What
epistemological framework would allow us to account for it?
After the critical moment of deconstruction, which allowed us to uncover many implicit
notions of cartography until recently veiled by the positivistic and naturalistic ideologies
dominant in historiography, is it not time to envisage a transcendental moment of reconstruction
of the logic of mapping? How, within the multiple social meanings and intentions at work in a
map, is territorial knowledge nonetheless being elaborated? In other words, how do we shift from
deconstruction to reconstruction?

Cartography and the Problem of Construction of Knowledge

Our aim is not to offer a historical analysis of the construction of territorial knowledge in early
cartography; nor do we wish to propose a theory of cartography. The point is to focus on the
epistemological conditions (i.e. the concepts and methods) of such a historical analysis. We shall
limit our contribution to two statements that may support this reconstructive epistemological
programme: i) the map is a diagram, a schema of the territory and ii) the map is a model of the
territory.

We first need to dwell on two important concepts: process and inscription. These two
concepts and their dialectic offer precious help in the analysis of mappings cognitive movement.

Cartography as Figurative Process

The use of the concept of process in the history of cartography is now well established. Art
historians shifted their focus from the painting to what they called the pictorial act; similarly,
historians of cartography have shifted from the object map to the act of mapping. The full
historical weight of this displacement may not have been measured yet; neither have the
methodological consequences on the very definition of the historians investigative field. Let us
here mention four of these consequences.
First, envisaging mapping as an activity (rather than as an object) means a contextualisation of
this activity, i.e. an analysis of the multiple links between the author of a map (or the authors, or
the authorial instance, which as we know may be complex), the map itself, and the territory
referred to. Then it implies considering the internal temporality of the map meaning hereby not
the historical era in which it was made (even though this too is important), but the time it took to
actually produce it. It also means carefully distinguishing and analysing the various operations of
the maps construction, i.e. decomposing the analytic of mapping (cf. the above-mentioned
rhetoric of the map). Then (and perhaps above all) it demands a greater flexibility of the very
concept of map, insofar as the activity of representing the territory may find very diverse graphic
expressions which all concur to the cartographic act itself (sketch, drawing, note-taking,
schematisation, etc.). Such a widening of the investigative field means we should use the term
cartographic figuration rather than map in the sense of a finite, complete object.
Here, the concept of mapping process meets that of inscription a term that has enjoyed
exceptional fortune in contemporary epistemology since anthropology of science first started
using it. It has put to the fore the decisive role of graphic practices (writing and iconography) in
the production of scientific facts: graphic representation establishes the reality of the fact by
stabilising it under the gaze. In other words, the scientific fact is an inscription, and its cultural
reality as fact does not predate its graphic or visual inscription.
Cartography, as a visual technology, as a technique of graphic synthesis allowing for the
presentation of (visible or invisible) reality and the reproduction of images, is an operation of
inscription. Cartographys central role in anthropologys elaboration of the concept of inscription
has often been overlooked, even though the act of mapping re-enacts the very same operations

of conversion, writing and dis-enunciation which characterise the production of any scientific
object. More importantly, it exhibits (on all scales) what Ptolemy stated in the opening pages of
his Geography about the world map: the map shows what men cannot see anywhere else but on a
map. The territory as an object of knowledge, as a cognitive fact (particularly in early cartography
which is here our focus of interest), does not predate the map that makes it synthetically visible.
This is not valid only after the advent of the printing press, which should not be overrated: the
process of graphic synthesis is equally true for the manuscript map.
The issue is then to analyse the dialectic between the overall mapping process and its
inscription as a stabilised image. We will focus on two aspects.
First, there is the synthetic, or rather figurative, power of the map: the map allows us to
visualise an object which can be accessed only through it, and not elsewhere. This means a
genuine emergence of the object, evidently related to the referential power of the image itself; the
map opens up a reference territory presented to the observers gaze as a totality, an entity sui
generis, which he/she could otherwise, in perceptual experience, only have accessed in sequential
or fragmentary segments. This explains our choice of the term figuration rather than
representation: in sciences of conception (such as architecture), figuration is the drawing of an
object that does not predate its image, whereas representation usually refers to the mere
reproduction of a pre-existing reality. The map, by visually attributing a shape to the territory,
endows it with a cognitive existence of its own right.
At the same time (and this is the second aspect), cartographic figuration is the end product of
a series of discursive and graphic operations: the territorial object follows a specific cognitive
itinerary, the stages of which are the cartographic operations aiming at representing it. The object
will hence bear the mark of these successive operations that it synthetically expresses; but it also
remains provisional, open to rectification (which is, according to Christian Jacob, the
fundamental gesture of cartography), i.e. likely to be questioned and reformulated. What else
could the act of mapping be but a sequence of operations? And what could the map be but a
copy in a series? As a product of knowledge, the map is only a moment in the history of the
territorys figuration, one version of it like an instantaneous slide in the temporal movement of
a cognitive project aimed at the territory. The historian of cartography will thus greatly benefit
from correlating, whenever possible, the map he/she studies to other maps and graphic
representations of the territory.

Now, what epistemological and historiographical consequences can we draw from this
dialectic between the visual instance of a form and the process of its elaboration? More precisely,
what epistemological framework could logically and conceptually support this cartographic
dialectic? What is mapping in the context of a broader enquiry on cognitive activity itself?

Cartography and Schematisation

Our first statement was that the map is a diagram or a schema of the territory. Let us listen to
Strabo discussing the geographers intellectual activity, and more precisely, its relationship to field
work:
However, the greater part of our material both they and I receive by hearsay and then
form our ideas of shape and size and also other characteristics, qualitative and quantitative,
precisely as the mind forms its ideas from sense impressions for our senses report the
shape, colour, and size of an apple, and also its smell, feel, and flavour; and from all this the
mind forms the concept of apple. So, too, even in the case of large figures, while the senses
perceive only the parts, the mind forms a concept of the whole from what the senses have
perceived. And men who are eager to learn proceed in just that way: they trust as organs of
sense those who have seen or wandered over any region, no matter what, some in this and
some in that part of the earth, and they form in one diagram their mental image of the
whole inhabited world5.
Let us dwell on Strabos analogy, which will incidentally be picked up by Nicolas of Cusa: the
informers, the travellers, who report on the sites studied by the geographer, are to him what the
organs of the senses are to intelligence. Human knowledge, says Strabo, is an activity of
intellectual synthesis: it gathers the fragmentary aspects of things conveyed by the senses, in order
to form a unified concept. This classic conception of the relationship between fieldwork and
study-room will resurface time and again in the history of geography. But Strabo goes beyond
this analogy between the geographers activity and the intellectual movement of abstraction.
Indeed, reading the text carefully, we see that while knowledge in general proceeds from senses
to concept, in the specific case of geography the movement of synthesis is more complex: it goes
from sense perceptions (called travellers and field observers) to the concept but also beyond, to
the constitution of a schema, a diagram (not exactly the same thing). And this schema, or this
diagram, is the map.

The terms used by Strabo (suntitheasin, hopsin) are clear: the task of the geographer is to
recompose, from the information gathered, a totality that may be visualised. Geographys specific
intellectual synthesis is geared towards the composition of an image, a unifying schema that will
be called a map: the movement of geographic intelligence goes from the senses to the
imagination, via the intellect. The intellect plays a key role: it gathers the data of the senses and
synthetises it, and, from this synthesis, composes an image or a unified representation of what the
senses present only fragmentarily. Truth be told, Strabos text does not specify whether this
representation is purely mental or if it is visually embedded in a support, thus lending it an
iconographic appearance: the word used by Strabo, diagramma, carries a semantic ambiguity. What
matters is that the geographer constructs a diagramma rather than an eikn in the simple sense of
the term. The diagramma, i.e. the map, is an eikn of a particular type. The notion of diagramma
reminds us of the act of writing (gramma, in relation to graphein), as well as of logical articulation
(dia-, which means both to distinguish and to link, to relate what is distinct). An anatomic
drawing is a diagram of the human body; similarly, the geographic representation, the map, is not
simply a portrait, but it expresses an intellectual synthesis embodied in the graphic composition
of an image.
The notion of diagram presents us with an intellectual entity that is both an idea and an image,
a mental process and a graphic act; but it is also a process of construction and the figure which
results from it. This fits exactly the definition of the schema and the operation of schematism in
Kants theoretical philosophy. As in Kants schematism, we are, in the case of the map, dealing
with the relation between a concept and a vision via a synthetic act of intelligence. The map is a
schema, i.e. a method of unifying in a single image the concept of a territory and a plethora of
empirical information gathered through fieldwork.
Fundamentally, we face a true epistemological problem: what role does the image play in the
construction of objects of knowledge, and more precisely of geographical objects? The work on
the logic of scientific research and on intellectual creativity in science is relevant: it has shown the
importance of the operations of modelling and hypothetical reasoning in the progression of
science, and has re-introduced the notions of problems and problematisation in the analysis of
knowledge. Our stance is that cartography, redefined in terms of the above-mentioned dialectic,
is a perfect illustration of the inquisitive structure of knowledge.

Cartography and Modelling

We now broach the second statement: the map is a model of the territory. Let us reflect on
the meaning of the word model. Three dimensions of the activity of modelling may be
emphasised: i) its hypothetical dimension; ii) its constructive dimension; iii) its problematic or
modal dimension.
On the hypothetical dimension of the model, let us start by shedding the (false) idea that the
model is only the visual illustration of a theory, or the formal framework of a calculus operation.
This conception, straight out of logical positivism, leaves the model out of the movement of
cognitive constitution. We want to place the model within the constructive relationship of
cognitive operations and objects, i.e. in the dynamics of a human project of elucidation. The
model possesses a schematising function: it is a structural hypothesis that defines and organises a
field of intellectual problems, prioritises the questions and sets out the roadmap of scientific
research. The models rational value lies in this prospective dimension: it allows for the
articulation of as yet formless domains, progressively structured by determined figures. The
hypothesis has an inner motion, so to speak: it undergoes the stages of formulation, of
exploration, of development. All this makes the model, or rather the activity of modelling, a
genuine matrix of discovery. The model, as a hypothetical activity, is the work-space of
knowledge.
This paves the way for the constructive dimension of the model. It is sometimes said of
science that it constructs its objects by implementing its concepts. Such a conception of scientific
activity makes it, in Gaston Bachelards famous term, a phenomenotechnique; it grants the
model and modelling a key role in the cognitive process. The model designates a world by
drawing it and suggesting its image. Formulated in epistemological terms, the model becomes the
construction operator of the reference; it gives us a picture of the reference world and of the
dataset, progressively structured in the form of a stable configuration as reference world.
Now this is a hypothetical world (and here is the third dimension): the reference world
constructed in and by the model is a version of the world, a possible world. Other worlds other
formal and operational configurations are possible. The model is a point of view, a formal
organisation that confers coherence and meaning to the multiplicity of data. Truth be told, a logic
of meaning, an abductive logic, is required to understand the models cognitive vocation. The
semantic level of emergence and development of reference worlds goes beyond the formal and
empirical levels. It also means we need to envisage the series of images as a cognitive itinerary
where the objects are constructed and offered to the intellect: the concept of process, yet again.

10

Let us now go back to cartography and the statement that the map is a model. How does it
impact our understanding of mapping? What is a map if we consider the cartographic act as a
cognitive operation of modelling which links a knowing subject to a territory? The map is like the
locus, the laboratory, the very peculiar space-time within which the territory is constructed as a
cognitive object. It is the site of figuration of the territory as reference world. The map, as a
cognitive model and as a work-space, is less an object than a moment in a cognitive dynamic, a
dynamic of figuration and re-figuration of the territory.
This leads us to the two following characteristics. The map is a point of view: it proposes an
image of the territory that is not its mere reproduction, but a diagram or a schema. But it is also a
version of the territory, an interpretation or a possible description of it, as it is formally coherent,
yet always revisable, always rectifiable. Other syntheses, i.e. other maps, other readings, are
possible. It is indispensable to embed the epistemology of the act of mapping in a logic of
possible worlds, a hermeneutic and modal logic, rather than remain in the deductive and
empirical/analytical logics inherited from positivist and Popperian epistemologies.
It is no longer possible to study maps independently of their various contexts of production,
destination and use. The idea of a social and cultural history of cartography has now become selfevident, and it gives historical analysis a sustainable framework and work agenda. Conversely, we
have also tried to show that it is superfluous to separate cartography from its referential
intentionality, i.e. its constructive scope and its capacity to generate a world. The dynamic of
mapping should be reinserted in the cognitive confrontations of societies and their territories
(mediated as they might be by culture); the map is the work-space where the territory is built as a
cognitive object and a reference world. This however requires an epistemology which would stop
obsessing about empirical accuracy, and which would instead acknowledge the positive and
constructive moment of hypotheses and models in the elaboration of knowledge. The map is
precisely one such moment.

11

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NOTES
1

Following J. B. Harleys seminal work, the deconstructionist perspective in cartographic history has become a

category in and for itself. See J. B. Harley (2001). The New Nature of Maps. Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore
and London: The John Hopkins University Press; C. Jacob (2006). The Sovereign Map. Transl. T. Conley and E. Dahl.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press; M. Monmonier (1991). How to Lie with Maps. Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press; D. Wood (1992). The Power of Maps. New York: Guildford Press; G. Olsson
(2007). Abysmal. A Critique of Cartographic Reason. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
2

J. L. Borges (1999). On Exactitude in Science, Collected Fictions, transl. A. Hurley. New York: Penguin Books. See

also his Partial Magic in the don Quixote, same volume. It should however be noted that Borges tale is embedded
in a solid tradition of logical and philosophical reflection on the notion of self-referential system, to which the writer
refers; he mentions Lewis Carroll (Sylvie and Bruno, 1893), Josiah Royce (The World and the Individual, Gifford
Lectures, 1898-1900), Charles Sanders Peirce (Harvard Lectures, 1903) and Bertrand Russell (Introduction to Mathematical
Philosophy, 1921). The idea of the perfect map is used, notably by Russell, as a typical example of a logical paradox
which may be solved if the terms are precisely defined, in particular that of representation. See also Umberto Eco,
On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1. How to Travel With a Salmon and Other
Essays (1992), transl. William Weaver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. One may consider, however, that the
perpetual hiatus between the map and the territory is precisely the space left for cartographic imagination to wander,
as 17th c. Jesuit mathematicians and pedagogues (Leurechon, Franois) had already noticed. Cf. J.-M. Besse (2003).
Face au Monde. Atlas, Jardins, Goramas. Paris: Descle de Brouwer.
3

Nelson Goodman (1972). Problems and Projects (p.15). Indianapolis: Boobs-Merrill.

Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari (1987, 11th ed. 2005). A Thousand Plateaus, transl. Brian Massumi (p. 12). Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.

5

Strabo (1917), Geographica, transl. Horace Leonard Jones (II, 5, 11), Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library.

Text published in French as Cartographie et pense visuelle. Rflexions sur la

schmatisation graphique , dans I. Laboulais (dir.), Les usages des cartes (XVII e -XIX e
sicle).

Pour

une

approche

pragmatique

des

productions

cartographiques, Presses

universitaires de Strasbourg, 2008, pp. 19-32.

13