Introduction

Throughout the course, we have cited critical cartography as an approach that asks deeper questions about the power relations that are inseparable from the production and dissemination of maps. We have also discussed the use of spatial archives, including maps and other spatial collections found within them, as extensions of colonization. In the Geospatial Art-Creation module, we highlighted the practice of beading as a form of “remapping” and “speaking back to” colonial cartographies of Lake Nipissing.

In this module, we consider the rise of counter-mapping, and other alternative cartographies, to illuminate the rise in grassroots, community-based, and anti-colonial action that opposes and subverts colonial cartography. In doing so, we recognize Rosi Braidotti’s (2019) writing on cartography not only as an applied spatial practice, but as “a theoretically-based and politically-informed account of the present that aims at tracking the production of knowledge and subjectivity… and to expose power both as entrapment (potestas) and as empowerment (potentia).” 

What does it mean to use mapping and digital images as a way to challenge the dominant power structures built into colonial maps and collections? To what extent is this possible to do without reproducing some of the very injustices that we are seeking to expose or change? We consider these questions, and raise new ones, in the sections that follow.