engleski

Radical Spatiality in our Times - A dream of the perfect map

The cartographer’s dream is that of a perfect map, the map that would perfectly represent a territory, a dream of Divine knowledge: a map that has haunted the ideology of representation throughout history: a map so detailed that it coincides with real space. In a short parable ‘Museum, on Exactitude in Science’, Borges describes the mysterious gild of cartographers who chart such a map. In this paper I analyze Borges’ story ‘The Aleph’ which tells us about such an ideal map, in particular a globe that would probably overwhelm the Guild of Cartographers, since the Aleph compresses time and space within its confines. This little nutshell of microcosms and universe overshadows even the perfect map that coincides point for point with territory, because it contains all movements, speeds, and there is no difference between inside and outside. It is like a zone, “one of the points in space that contains all points” (Borges 1998: 280). I argue that although compressed into an impossibly small space, the zone, the Aleph is at the same time chaotic, kaleidoscopic and fragmented, mocking the cartographer’s yearning for a total presentation of reality.

map, Borges, cartography, Aleph.

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