Abstract
In the late 1980s, some scholars began to question the disciplinary foundations upon which cartographic knowledge had been constructed throughout the 20th century. Research by John B. Harley, Denis Wood, Denis Cos- grove, John Pickles, Jeremy Crampton, and John Krygier laid the groundwork for critical cartography – a historical and theoretical approach to cartography that challenges the scienti!c model. This model, which emerged after World War II, initiated a process of rationalizing the knowledge and techniques used in map-making.
The collapse of the ivory tower in which cartography had been con!ned for centuries not only led to the dissemination of techniques and knowledge to a broader audience but also encouraged engagement with other disciplines, practices, and bodies of knowledge (Crampton & Krygier, 2006). This interdisciplinary exchange enabled the identi!cation of new research and design trajectories that had previously been ignored or dismissed by ocial cartography. In other words, the recon!guration of the map as an object within speci!c political and epistemological relations paved the way for a theoretical and practical critique. This critique examines the roles and potential of maps in processes of domination and exploitation, as well as in the struggles of minorities (linguistic, cultural, ethnic, etc.) and in social, economic, and environmental claims.
It is surprising that the case of critical cartography has been largely overlooked in the !eld of visual design, particularly within the historiography of information design. Despite signi!cant points of intersection between these disciplines, no in-depth study has yet been undertaken to connect them (Hall, 2019).
This paper aims to identify some of the discontinuities between the historical analysis of critical cartography and the narrative of the map as an object within the historiography of information design. This comparison will shift the focus from the artifact (the map) to its conditions of possibility, seeking to explore and articulate its social, cultural, and political dimensions. Such an approach promotes a historical-critical analysis that sheds light on how a speci!c type of visual knowledge of space has developed through numerous modi!cations, revisions, omissions, contradic- tions, and con#icts – a development that is far from linear or progressive.