| Abstrakt: |
This paper argues that the sociology of nationalism has paid insufficient attention to the role that map imagery plays in the formation of national subjectivity. Map imagery, I suggest, is a crucial visual and discursive technology by which nationalist affect is elicited and directed toward territory. The large expanses of territory typically contained within most national boundaries are spatial--that is, abstract and experientially remote--in nature. Map images, through symbolic reduction, not only make this "territorial sublime" intelligible to the subject, but represent it in such a way that it can become a crucial object of affect and identification. Put simply, map imagery aids in making space into place, i.e. imbues it with meaning, makes it experientially available, prepares it to be narrativized in countless discourses and histories of national belonging. The symbolic reduction effected by the map image has the further effect of rendering all the constitutive and heterogeneous places contained within the nation conveniently homogenous; thus rendered, this image of the "geo-body" can be strategically deployed as a unitary "us" against countless "thems." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
