In-class writings

[Please note, I am posting here the last third of some free writing we did in class, relatively unrevised but somewhat abridged!]

I do love writing, and in fact I love language. I love words. I love the grammatical structures that hold words and ideas together and make them communicable. I love grammatical puns and missteps. I love beautiful prose. I’m less excited by what is more mundane. … And I want to be a beautiful writer. And a meaningful writer.

I think about the conversation today in class, and about art and perspective and the limits of language. I a realize why so often I feel utterly stymied by all of this. Because at the end of the day my writing, beautiful or mundane, never quite says exactly what I want it to say? Because there is less of me? more of me? than what is on the page? Because as soon as I say it it is somehow not quite right? Not quite what I wanted to say? Or maybe it was when I wrote it, but language and ideas and what I want to say are all too fluid.

Crampton revisits the “map is everything means map means nothing” issue that emerges with oh so many things. Maps are representations. Maps are producers and conveyors of knowledge. Maps are xenophobic. Maps are simply how we get around.

I very much like that Crampton raises the issue of the positivism of GIS. This issue is one for which I have not articulated a good response: If we are literally dealing with pictures, with satellite images, how do we adequately critique? We can critique decisions about the collection of the images, but we can’t refute the images themselves.

I argue that maps are not true or false, and yet a Google map is “right” –and therefore “true”?–except for errors that can then be fixed. Interesting idea here too: What is the relationship of truth to error? Do what extent does intentionality and/or agenda (again, relationship is interesting!) matter?