The Evergrowing Map A Fluid Account on Cartography

Abstract

Geography and cartography lay in the intersection between two knowledges, namely physics and geometry. In his book La naissance de la physique dans le texte de Lucrèce, Michel Serres shows how geometry – and the consequent static model of reality, on which cartography is traditionally based on – originated from the mechanics of fluid, as fluid was, in the atomistic philosophy, the process of agglomeration and dissolution of things made by atoms. In the last two decades, thinkers like Michel Serres, Tim Ingold, Luce Irigaray and others, have raised awareness on the possibility of conceiving reality on a fluidity based model, in order to better explain the complex, moiré, variety of our experience of the world. In front of the problems raised by the rapid changes happening in the physical and biological realm, the model of the world as a static plane on which object are situated and experienced is no longer sustainable, because it is unable to describe and orient human being between the emerging characters of life on earth. A new sensibility to acquire orientation in the multi-faced and multi-layered world goes hand in hand with the one of a new geographical and cartographical description of physical reality. Through the concept of evergrowing map this article aims to outline a cartographical strategy of orientation through a fluid conception of the world, based on multilayered representations of the territory rooted in multiple relations weaved by human inhabiting the world.