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People rely on reason to think about and navigate the abstract world of human relations in much the same way they rely on maps to study and traverse the physical world. Starting from that simple observation, renowned geographer Gunnar Olsson offers in Abysmal an astonishingly erudite critique of the way human thought and action have become deeply immersed in the rhetoric of cartography and how this cartographic reasoning allows the powerful to map out other people’s lives.A spectacular reading of Western philosophy, religion, and mythology that draws on early maps and atlases, Plato, Kant, and Wittgenstein, Thomas Pynchon, Gilgamesh, and Marcel Duchamp, Abysmal is itself a minimalist guide to the terrain of Western culture. Olsson roams widely but always returns to the problems inherent in reason, to question the outdated assumptions and fixed ideas that thinking cartographically entails. A work of ambition, scope, and sharp wit, Abysmal will appeal to an eclectic audience—to geographers and cartographers, but also to anyone interested in the history of ideas, culture, and art. (20061024)
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ABYSMAL
Kent Karlsson, Absolut kunskap/Frihetens väsen. 1992. Sculpture, mixed media, h. 127 cm. Bob Kelly Collection, Los Angeles. © Kent Karlsson/BUS 2005.
ABYSMAL A C R I T I Q U E O F C A RTO G R A P H I C R EA S O N
Gunnar Olsson
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago & London
gu n na r ol sson is professor emeritus of economic geography at Uppsala University. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2007 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2007 Printed in the United States of America 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
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The publication of this book was supported by a grant from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Stockholm. isbn-13 (cloth): 978-0-226-62930-8 isbn-10 (cloth): 0-226-62930-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olsson, Gunnar, 1935– Abysmal : a critique of cartographic reason / Gunnar Olsson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-226-62930-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy, Modern—20th century. 2. Philosophy, Modern—21st century. 3. Cartography. 4. Rhetoric. 5. Reason. I. Title. b804.o47 2007 190—dc22 2006016776 o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992. This book is printed on acid-free paper.
CON T EN T S
CONFESSION
Desires non-suppressed
C O L L AT I O N
ix
Mission impossible
P R E LU D E
AT L A S
Border-man 3
Uruk 251 Peniel 275 Thebes 311 Nicaea 331
MAPPINGS
When above 17 And below 25 In-between 43 Mappae mundi medievalis
239
REQUIEM
57
Philadelphia 367 Uppsala 411
I N S T RU M E N T S
Saussurean bar 79 A = B 87 Quod erat 99 I M A G I N AT I O N S
Plato 115 Abr(ah)am 163 Moses 181 Kant 213
MEMORIALS
Notes 441 Bibliography 505 Proper names 537 (In)definite descriptions 547 Acknowledgments 555
CONFESSION
DE SI R E S NON- SU PPR E S SE D Stand in awe and sin not. Psalm 4:4
Living forwards and understanding backwards—a crucial condition of what it means to be human. Therefore it was with mixed feelings that on the first day of the ninth month of the third millennium (AD) I found myself promoted to the rank of emeritus, a lifelong sabbatical inching towards the ultimate. And as so many others in a similar situation, I too felt the urge of staging some kind of retrospective, in my case an exhibition of scattered works from the previous decade. Not merely a retrospective