Contingency and Landscape: Basic Considerations on Graphic and Cartographic Representations in Recourse to the Concept of Inverse Landscapes as a Contribution to Deviant Cartographies with Examples on Louisiana

Abstract

AbstractThis paper deals with the possibilities of graphic and cartographic representation of landscapes that are always contingently constituted. The contingency of the representation of landscape is based on the contingency of understandings of landscape, the contingency of methods of (scientific) acquisition of knowledge about landscape, as well as the contingency of forms of representation, with which the present essay deals in a prominent way. If contingency is to be treated graphically and cartographically, this means to question widespread conventions, both regarding the choice of topics, the methodology of obtaining and ordering data, but also with regard to representation. This is—following the neopragmatic basic considerations—to be oriented strongly at the statement goal. Following these basic considerations, we have designed the cartographic representations in a strongly focused manner, graphic representations in parts in a manner borrowed from the comic style of the Ligne Claire. This type of representation is intended to create a meta-deviance that makes it easier for readers to develop contingent interpretations of the world. With our approach we follow neopragmatic basic considerations, which follows a postcritical cartographic perspective, not to seek the separative and discursively exclude the other, but to make other perspectives functionally available through integration, complementarity, and further development.