Mapping Intervals: Towards an Emancipated Cartography by Nora Akawi | The Funambulist
►http://thefunambulist.net/2012/09/05/guest-writer-essays-33-mapping-intervals-towards-an-emancipated-cart
Today’s guest writer comes from my dear friend Nora Akawi, who was kind enough to make it happen in a very busy schedule between her practice and teaching in Jerusalem, and her new responsibilities as the curator of the Amman Lab, the branch of New York Columbia University’s Studio-X in Jordan. In the following text, Mapping Intervals: Towards an Emancipated Cartography, she introduces the archive, and more precisely, the map as instruments of power through the subjective narrative they convey. Colonial mapping, collective forgetfulness, cultural genocide and domain name system are as many problematic aspects of the dissensus created by the attempted collective materialization of memory. In this regard, Nora quotes Jacques Derrida who affirms that “there is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory.” From there, she examines what could possibly be an “emancipated cartography”, which would not refuse this control without which there is no political power, but rather would attempt to articulate the multiplicity of cultural narratives as the very essence of its materialization.
