DOI: 10.5176/2251-3566_L315.99
Authors: Frans Weiser
Abstract:
The transformation of mapping from its association with the sciences into an interdisciplinary activity is a consequence of the “cultural turn” within cartography and humanistic studies during the 1980s. Within transnational literary studies, mapping has become a concept of central importance for the reassessment of national paradigms within regional or global frameworks, but literary critics have also been influenced by Fredric Jameson’s notion of cognitive mapping. This paper examines the role that the language of cartography plays in American Studies by exploring two novels that have been central to the expansion of American Studies with respect to a transnational framework: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991) and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange (1997). Blending cognitive and physical maps, the authors interrogate the construction of national literatures by interpolating the problem of “mapping” into their very narratives in order to thematize the issues of social and physical borders. I argue that by critiquing the ways in which maps are utilized as forms of control over marginalized groups, by governments and critics alike, the novels serve as instructive metaphors for the changes taking place in American Studies.
Keywords: American Studies, cartography, Leslie Marmon Silko, Karen Tei Yamashita, transnational, cognitive mapping
Updating...