Emotional Cartographies as an Allegory: Rethinking Mapping Process and Semantics

Abstract

Further to the transition to more humanized geospatial technologies (Pickles, 1995), such as mapping feelings (Pocock, D. 1984) and emotional responses to space (Gartner, 2012), landscape inquiry has gone beyond >visible> landscape, introducing new conceptual models. The landscape is a way of seeing, discursive, enacted, embodied, characterized by deliberate narratives (Spirn, 2013). Emotions have been acknowledged as intersubjective - social and cultural. >Turned> by the spatiality and temporality of emotions - 'Emotional Geographies' (Davidson J, 2007), 'Emotional Mapping' goes beyond georeferencing emotional states in a certain geographic area. >Emotional Maps> are not only about emotions, but also about experiences, perceptions, memories and identities. Emotional Cartography is a way of imagination and production of territory by multiple individuals; hence collective views on territory - miradas territoriales (D. Wood 1992, 2010). This reflexive and participatory methodology links science, technology and art, theory and practice, and, as Nold argues, enables >Reflection-In-Action>. By quitting the topos, such cartography can achieve political and social goals. (Casti, 2013). In such scholarship environment, the paper rethinks the emerging field of >Emotional Cartography> in the era of >Turns> - Spatial, Affective, Participatory, Critical and Digital >Turns>. Have those >Turns> provided new research models? How >emotions> can be used to articulate and make places? What is the potential of >Emotional> data in decision making? The paper addresses these questions as it traces mapping approaches within the >Corpus of >Emotional (Heritage) Cartographie>, focusing on mapping processes and actors, techniques and tools, representation and interpretation of emotionalscapes. Furthermore, the semantics of the terms and conceptions, used by the projects, is explored through >The Glossary of Emotional cartographies>. Triggered by >invisible> or >silent> affective heritage, the paper, by testing this technique, argues for a mixed-methods approach, relying on sensory and participatory ethnographic techniques, such as walking methodologies, bringing together Non-Quantitative and >conventional> GIS. Such approach acknowledges local voices, the integration of subjective (>emotional>) spatial narratives, towards the negotiation of place. Ultimately, it draws on the potential of >Emotional Mapping> techniques as a tool for critical (spatial) thinking in (Critical) Heritage Studies, as a part of a deeper understanding of mapping as a practice, research method and a metaphor.