Maps/language

Abstract

Sign systems infected with language, and constructed out of elements dependent on language, maps nonetheless are neither a language (or a form of language) nor structured like a language in any way. Physically embodying human locative knowledge, maps are exploited by "language" to advance arguments about the world, generally in the service of the status quo, that is, of our current system of nation-states. Here "language" is to be taken as referring to the cognitive substrate from which concepts arise, concepts which, when wed to a mark, constitute the postings out of which maps are built. These postings conspire to construct the propositions that maps shape into the arguments they make about the world.