Acting in An Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy

Abstract

Tourist maps cannot be understood as signs or symbolic representations of an already constituted destination space. They are spatial devices playing an active role in the constitution of such space. To grasp this generative capacity, the author proposes conceiving tourist maps as diagrams, in the sense first introduced by Foucault and further developed by Deleuze and Guattari. Looking at very diverse tourist maps of Berlin and relying on selected spatial theory, this article examines four diagrammatic operations through which tourist maps constitute destination space: extending matter, edging experience, placing objects, and folding displacement. The article concludes by assessing the virtual ontological status of the space thus constituted.