Rescuing the map from the nation

Abstract

Tania Rossetto and Laura Lo Presti seek to rescue the national map from nationalism. Or at least from that nationalism characterized by reactionary, tradition-bound, and exclusionary practices and imaginaries. The authors provide readers with an insightful and challenging article on reimagining what national maps are, how they function, and what they could be if recast through the perspective of those often excluded and/or marginalized from the nation. Their article is both a critique of the manner in which national maps have typically been understood in the literature and an invitation to rethink national maps through everyday cartographic practices and vernacular mappings. But what is the national map in the first place? What counts as vernacular? And why is mapping privileged as the site for cultivating progressive imaginaries?