Cartography

Perspectivalism is only one projective strategy for visual coordina­tion; there are many more. For instance, art historian Svetlana Alpers writes: ‘‘the Ptolemaic grid, indeed cartographic grids in general, must be distinguished from, not confused with, the perspectival grid. The projection is, one might say, viewed from nowhere. Nor is it to be looked through. It assumes a flat working surface’’ (Alpers 1989, 138).

Thus cartography is another strategy—or better, a series of strate – gies—for coordinating disparate specificities.7 We have already come across one of these in exhibit 2.6. Exhibit 2.11 is somewhat similar. Both are maps drawn, like all maps, to a particular projective con-

vention that (at any rate here) ‘‘flattens’’ a world which (as with per – spectivalism) is taken to occupy a three-dimensional volume. Spe­cifically, it unwraps what is taken to be the surface of a spheroid (in the case of exhibit 2.11, a part of that surface) and to flatten it onto a two-dimensional surface. In doing this, it locates, juxtaposes, and interrelates geographical features to generate what, as Alpers notes, is a view from nowhere—nowhere, that is, in the kind of Euclidean perspectival space generated in exhibit 2.1. This is because the eye (and the projection as a whole) is located outside Euclidean space, even though it is generated by transforming that space.

The view from nowhere is thus made in a way that sees things that could never be seen within perspectivalism. Or, to put it a little differ­ently, it makes a centered viewpoint, a centered subject, using a flat­tened working surface that coordinates objects taken to be out there. It is like the table except that the relations performed by the two work­ing surfaces, the contents and the map, are different.8 In the former case we were dealing with objects that were being related together into a hierarchy, whereas here we are dealing with the performance of spatial relations.

But we’re interested in the aircraft. So where is the TSR2 in these projections? The answer is that it is located on the working surface of the map—but also that it is invisible. Quite simply, if it were de­picted in terms of the scaling conventions used in these projections, it would be submicroscopic in size. So the aircraft is there: it is as­sumed that it is indeed located on the surface of the map, which is also the surface of the globe. But because we cannot see it, we need to mobilize further conventions or strategies if the maps are to do useful coordinating work.

Let’s say first that the two maps are multiply connected. As I have indicated above, they represent the operation of similar cartographic conventions. Second, they appear in the brochure, so for physical rea­sons they both presumptively have to do with the TSR2. Third, that presumption is strengthened by the fact that they are bound together on facing pages. But we need more than this. In particular, we need to make the TSR2 visible. So how does this work? The answer is that the two maps mobilize different conventions.

24 Objects Exhibit 2.6 works because there is an understanding that mobile

objects traversing geographical space may leave huge cartographic traces in their wake, traces that here take the form of thick lines and arrows. These traces disrupt the scaling conventions, being in those terms several hundred kilometers wide. However, this disparity is no problem for the informed reader. This combination of conventions, which applies just as well to the movement of buses in a public trans­port system, makes it possible for the viewer from nowhere to ‘‘see’’ movement on a cartographic surface. Specifically, what the viewer sees or learns here is that the TSR2 is a global traveler. Or, to put it differently, that the same object may move around and be found in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Exhibit 2.11 undoes the invisibility of the aircraft in another way. Again the surface of the map is covered with lines that must, in terms of cartographic understanding, be fifty kilometers wide. However, this time convention tells us that these have nothing to do with imagi­nary traces left behind by flying aircraft. Instead they represent the boundaries of areas—areas, as is obvious, that may be overflown by the TSR2 in its sorties if it is based at one or other of the locations named on the map.

In all this we are unearthing a series of cartographic and carto­graphically relevant strategies for depicting the geographically rele­vant attributes of objects. But we are also learning something more about the ways in which these intersect and coordinate with one another to produce a singular object with particular properties. Thus, though the naive reader was denied this knowledge, I started this essay by noting that the brochure was aimed, perhaps in particu­lar, at the senior members of the Royal Australian Air Force. Now it becomes clear that in their juxtaposition and their mobilization of several different cartographically relevant conventions, these maps bring together two features of the TSR2 of great potential importance to Australian strategists: first, its ferry range, and second, its opera­tional range. The aircraft that can fly round the world is coordinated with the aircraft that can undertake very long-range missions into communist China. The triangulation between the conventions of car­tographic projection, the traces left by moving objects, and the depic­tions of areas interact to ensure that we are here dealing with one and the same machine.