Stories and Maps: Postmodernism and Professional Communication

Denis Wood (1992) begins The Power of Maps, his discussion of cartography and postmodernism, by pointing out that maps translate history into spatial representations that deny their own temporality in important ways:

Power is the ability to do work. Which is what maps do: they work.…

What do maps do when they work? They make present—they represent—the accumulated thought and labor of the past … about the milieu we simultaneously live in and collaborate on bringing [into] being. In so doing they enable the past to become part of our living … now … here. (This is how maps facilitate the reproduction of the culture that brings them into being.) The map's effectiveness is a consequence of the selectivity with which it brings this past to bear on the present. This selectivity, this focus, this particular attention, this … interest … is what frees the map to be a representation of the past. (p. 1)