SUBVERTING CARTOGRAPHY - THE SITUATIONISTS AND MAPS OF THE CITY

It is increasingly recognised that cartography is a contested practice , embedded within particular sets of power relations, and that maps ar e bound up with the production and reproduction of social life. The au thor begins by emphasising the importance of these issues for consider ing how the city has been mapped and represented through cartographic schemes, and draws on debates around the power and politics of mapping , and contentions that maps are 'preeminently a language of power, not of protest'. However, it is argued that maps and mapping have not bee n entirely the preserve of the powerful, and the main part of the pape r is devoted to examining some specific challenges to 'official' carto graphies of the city. The author focuses on the radical art and politi cal group, the Situationist International, and its avant-garde predece ssors of the Lettrist International, who sought to appropriate urban m aps and cartographic discourses and to develop a new form of 'psychoge ographical mapping' during the 1950s and 1960s. The paper provides an account of their subversions, and an assessment of how their concerns might inform contemporary discussions on cartography and the mapping o f urban space.