Abstract

ARTIGAS ALBARELLI, Irene María. The Texture of Location: Rebecca Solnit’s Impossible, Unfathomable and Inexhaustible Atlases. Invest. Geog [online]. 2020, n.102, e59913.  Epub Mar 09, 2021. ISSN 2448-7279.  https://doi.org/10.14350/rig.59913.

Between 2010 to 2016, Rebecca Solnit published atlases of three different cities: San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York. In addition to being interesting examples of the wealth of relationships between cartography, literary studies, and other disciplines, these books raise an apparent paradox stemming from the decision to elaborate maps based on the assumption that it is an impossible, infinite, unfathomable, and inexhaustible task. This article shows that these atlases are iconotexts that respond to this contradiction by considering that a location is a fabric that depends on the words, images, affection, memories, and perceptions associated with it. In other words, a place is a product of both human relationships and symbolic representations. This article also highlights some of the strategies used in these atlases to explain this texture. For instance, the use of rhetoric figures akin to emblematic and metaphoric ones, linked to their intermediate character, and the presence of elements of different materiality, including literary, cartographic, photographic and pictorial ones; the bifurcation of the perspectives of various authors; or the advantage of using anachronic, complex, and hypothetical narratives to draft public stories. Solnit’s atlases appropriate cartography, in aesthetical and political senses, and prove that it may be a creative, constructive, and restorative practice.

The article first describes concepts that are key to understanding these atlases, including space, location, texture, iconotextuality, and intermediality. Then, it analyzes each atlas in general terms, based on a selection of maps and emphasizing their common features. On the atlas of San Francisco, the essay underlines the advantages of it being a collection of maps created collaboratively by people from different study fields, including cartography, literature, photography, botany, and history. The concept of “anachronic public story” is introduced to account for the temporal leaps between different sections and the ability to preserve some life stories from oblivion through the so-called “restorative epistemology”. The atlas of New Orleans emphasizes the fluidity of this city, along with the key role of cultural memory in rescuing it from hurricane Katrina. Special attention is devoted to the materiality of atlases as books. Solnit prefers printed maps over the virtual materiality of digital maps. The atlas of New York is approached from its fragmental character and the importance of language conservation therein. This article highlights the way fiction is able to display reality in clever and understandable ways by means of a map depicting New York as one of the Caribbean isles. The comparisons included in the article show how Solnit’s atlases do not attempt to account for all locations and their truth; instead, it addresses a multiplicity of perspectives, times, topics and materials that shape their texture and complexity.

Keywords : atlas; texture of locations; iconotext; intermediality; Rebecca Solnit.