And, yes, all maps are technically data visualizations, representations of magnitude that we otherwise couldn’t comprehend.

In addition to the many excellent volumes on the history of cartography that have already been produced, as well as the meta intervention in  Borges’ conceptual inversion and in Baudrillard’s seminal elaboration on that inversion, it might also be worthwhile to work conceptualizations of maps and mapping vis-à-vis contemporary media and also software studies’ emphases on computer modeling and representation as its own kind of performance, á la Chun, Kittler, and Pias.

Indeed, in other settings I have talked about how critical it is that a variety of disciplinary knowledges be brought to bear on the representational habits of digital humanists, particularly as it is easy for “digital humanists” to lose sight of the kinds of discursive baggage our visualizations can introduce into arguments that are otherwise invested in other matters. So much of digital humanities is pitched toward the historical: representation of other kinds of archives, redefinition of what constitutes the archive itself.

But, for now, rather than go that way, let’s instead go back this way ⇢ [back to main]