Sea-Monsters
If there are frontiers between the civilised and the barbaric, between the meaningful and the unmeaning, they are not lines on a map nor are they regions of the earth. They are boundaries of the mind alone.
Ursula K. Le Guin • The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination
But while an unmarked terrain might cultivate disorientation and unease, “emptiness” can also be marshaled as a political tool, as with the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. If it’s empty, why not take it?
Mattern • How to Map Nothing
MONSTERS GIVE US COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS WE CAN: THEY ARE OUR PRIMAL FEARS GIVEN FORM, TERRIBLE PREDATORS WHO CAN BE VANQUISHED IF ONLY WE RISE TO THE CHALLENGE. GODS GIVE US SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS WE CAN' T: THEY EXIST TO EXPLAIN FLOODS AND EARTHQUAKES AND ALL THAT WHICH LIES BEYOND OUR CONTROL. IT DID NOT SURPRISE ME IN THE LEAST TO
... See morePeter Watts • Echopraxia (Firefall Book 2)
According to the teratologist (that is, the theorist of monstrosity) Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, we can understand a culture by what it calls monstrous; the monster stands for everything a society attempts to cast out.26 Monsters dwell at borders; you might even say the border creates the monster.
Lauren Elkin • Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art
One to One: On maps, cartography and our relationship with geographical enquiry over time stretching from ancient Babylon to GIS software. With increasingly sophisticated tools to build maps, "we have the means to comprehend the future.
"We are each at the centre of our own map... We are all innate mapmakers... maps [are the] mediators between an... See more
"We are each at the centre of our own map... We are all innate mapmakers... maps [are the] mediators between an... See more
Weidenfeld & Nicolson • You Are Here: A Brief Guide to the World
I believe we also make maps because we are desperately, primally afraid of being lost. The tighter we cling to them the more we confuse them for something real. And when we do that, they stop showing us where to go and start leading us in ever-decreasing circles. If we can hold them lightly, however, they can open our perspective and contextualise... See more
Alexander Beiner • Lost Ways of Knowing
The main teaching in cultures where spirits visit frequently and the world itself is a bridge—such as those of Haiti, West Africa, Melanesia, and the circumpolar peoples we group together as Eskimos—focuses upon knowing the distinct nature and name of the different visitors, their rank, their powers, their spheres of action. These cultures have
... See moreJames Hillman • The Soul's Code
Cartographers have been grappling with their own epistemological barrens. Medieval and Renaissance mapmakers famously demarcated the edges of the discovered world with mythical sea creatures that embodied the limits of exploration and knowledge. As historian Chet Van Duzer argues, those monsters represented a variety of epistemological... See more
Mattern • How to Map Nothing
In the deep, humanity can’t even pretend to be in charge. Of course we’re not in charge of space, either, but exploring upward gives us the illusion of expansion, as though we’re conquering territory, extending our ever-acquisitive reach. In this mindset, to go inward, into the abyss, is to be stuck with what we already have.