Maps, Ontological Worlds and a Hybrid Modernity: Reading the Chinese Gazetteer Tukao of Tibet 1886

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores difference within geographical writings in the transition to modernity in nineteenth century China. In some maps, the experiential realities of travelers were valued and expressed. More significantly, landscape maps sometimes pointed to a reality of absence rather than of presence. This contrasted with the arising modern commitment to triangulation, which deleted the phenomenological in favour of an omniscient ‘view from nowhere’. It is conventional to treat this transition as an expression of progress in which non-Western scholars started to undo a scientific deficit regarding precision and measurement with the use of new tools, or for postcolonial scholars to propose heroic resistance from native map makers. Against these interpretations, the minutiae in the 1886 Chinese gazetteer Tukao of Tibet do not simply show a progressive or coerced transition, but rather the expression of an inconsistent difference. Tukao reflects different survey methods, producing fundamentally incompatible ontological worlds. The paper shows that the Tukao does not legislate between different practices, and argues that the alterity in Tukao offers lessons for postcolonial theory and practice, avoiding both hegemony of modern science and relativism.