Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographic Reason

Gunnar Olsson

University of Chicago Press, Mar 15, 2010 - Science - 584 pages

People rely on reason to think about and navigate the abstract world of human relations in much the same way they rely on maps to study and traverse the physical world. Starting from that simple observation, renowned geographer Gunnar Olsson offers in Abysmal an astonishingly erudite critique of the way human thought and action have become deeply immersed in the rhetoric of cartography and how this cartographic reasoning allows the powerful to map out other people’s lives.

A spectacular reading of Western philosophy, religion, and mythology that draws on early maps and atlases, Plato, Kant, and Wittgenstein, Thomas Pynchon, Gilgamesh, and Marcel Duchamp, Abysmal is itself a minimalist guide to the terrain of Western culture. Olsson roams widely but always returns to the problems inherent in reason, to question the outdated assumptions and fixed ideas that thinking cartographically entails. A work of ambition, scope, and sharp wit, Abysmal will appeal to an eclectic audience—to geographers and cartographers, but also to anyone interested in the history of ideas, culture, and art.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Brior - LibraryThing

A remarkable book adressing nothing less than what it is to be human and how we try to find our way in a chaotic environment through language and maps. Not always an easy read, but always interesting ...

User Review -

Essential reading for a Fomenkoist. (Zinoviev could not dream quite this far ahead. This is a great stride forward.)

Contents

• MAPPINGS: 15
• INSTRUMENTS: 77
• IMAGINATIONS: 113
• COLLATION: 237
• ATLAS: 249
• REQUIEM: 365
• MEMORIALS: 439

About the author

Gunnar Olsson is professor emeritus of geography at Uppsala University, Sweden. He is the author of ten books in Swedish and English.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographic Reason
• Author: Gunnar Olsson
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2010
• ISBN: 0226629325, 9780226629322
• Length: 584 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / General; Philosophy / History & Surveys / General; Science / Earth Sciences / Geography; Science / General