La textura del lugar: Los atlas imposibles, insondables e inagotables de Rebecca Solnit1
Por:
Artigas Albarelli I.M.
Publicada:
1 ene 2020
Resumen:
Between 2010 to 2016, Rebecca Solnit published atlases of three different cities: San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York. In addition to being interesting examples of the wealth of relationships between cartography, literary studies, and other disciplines, these books raise an apparent paradox stemming from the decision to elaborate maps based on the assumption that it is an impossible, infinite, unfathomable, and inexhaustible task. This article shows that these atlases are iconotexts that respond to this contradiction by considering that a location is a fabric that depends on the words, images, affection, memories, and perceptions associated with it. In other words, a place is a product of both human relationships and symbolic representations. This article also highlights some of the strategies used in these atlases to explain this texture. For instance, the use of rhetoric figures akin to emblematic and metaphoric ones, linked to their intermediate character, and the presence of elements of different materiality, including literary, cartographic, photographic and pictorial ones; the bifurcation of the perspectives of various authors; or the advantage of using anachronic, complex, and hypothetical narratives to draft public stories. Solnit's atlases appropriate cartography, in rescuing it from hurricane Katrina. Special attention is devoted to the materiality of atlases as books. Solnit prefers printed maps over the virtual materiality of digital maps. The atlas of New York is approached from its fragmental character and the importance of language conservation therein. This article highlights the way fiction is able to display reality in clever and understandable ways by means of a map depicting New York as one of the Caribbean isles. The comparisons included in the article show how Solnit's atlases do not attempt to account for all locations and their truth; instead, it addresses a multiplicity of perspectives, times, topics and materials that shape their texture and complexity. © 2020 Instituto de Geografia. All rights reserved.
Filiaciones:
Artigas Albarelli I.M.:
Colegio de Letras Modernas, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Morelos 158, Barrio del Niño Jesús, Tlalpan, Ciudad de México, 14080, Mexico
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