Must Australia Always Be Imaginary?: Cartography as Creation in Peter Carey’s “Do You Love Me?”

Abstract

Everything that is not loved will disappear from face of earth.-peter Carey, You Love Me?This is key thematic line oF Peter carey's 1975 short story you love Me? story is made up of numbered short sections, each with its italicized heading as if it were a type of report-a favorite sci-fi story form-and this report is narrated by a young man. heading is The Role of Cartographers, followed by this line: a few words about role of Cartographers in our present society are warranted (17). ongoing creation by Cartographers-the word is always capitalized-is essential; thus a key word in that line is present.The young male narrator then immediately moves on to describe annual Census. Census, which takes place during Festival of Corn, is meticulous: all possessions are piled outside of every house and counted. this makes people feel secure. need for security, to know what it is they possess, is also why Cartographers are so important, and young man is proud his father is one of them. But land is stubbornly enigmatic and parts of it, nether regions, are fading and disappearing image on an improperly fixed photograph (19). this upsets people.City buildings, buildings owned by multinational corporations iCi and Royal dutch shell, then begin to vanish, too, and finally so do people. As they disappear, people become murderously angry when they realize they're vanishing because other people do not love them enough. it becomes clear anyone and anything not sufficiently known and loved will evaporate like morning mist in glare of rising sun. final moment of story takes place in young man's lounge room after his father has vanished. His mother turns to him and says, with fear, you love me? (31)At this point, a few words about role of Cartographers in our present society are warranted. role of Cartographers is perhaps particularly resonant for non-indigenous Australians. idea of Australia began as science fiction, as a projection of european imagination based on scientific principles as they were believed at time, which was that there had to be a vast southern land to balance land masses of northern hemisphere.When ptolemy published his Geographia (ca. 150Ad), he proposed hypothetical continent of Terra Australis nondum cognita, south Land not yet known. terra Australis then remained a site of speculation and fantasy imagined by scientists, explorers, cartographers, and writers over centuries, as in 1572 map above (Fig. 1) in which imagined continent takes up nearly a third of globe. Here is an instance where map, or actually many maps, do literally precede territory. More importantly, these maps drive search for territory itself; they help bring that territory into being.these maps are part of process of creating Terra Australis Incognita in evocative phrase used by cosmographer Johannes schoner on a 1533 globe: Terra Australis recenter inventa sed nondum plene cognita (Southern land found recently but not fully known)-the process of bringing this imagined science fictional continent, this land whose existence is, for europeans, born of fantasy and speculation, into focus.Aside from well-known references to antipodes in works by writers such as Marlowe and dante, david Fausett has described an entire seventeenth century cycle of novels of imaginary voyages which enclose detailed accounts of utopias/ dystopias found in unknown southern continent. As Fausett says, the south-land was more than a real frontier; it was last major notional exterior, or generator of collective difference (175). He notes power of unknown south land as a literary device was not lessened by its partial discovery; indeed effectiveness of its use in political allegories seemed to be enhanced (177). …