“Maps vs. Mapping”

Guest speaker Dr. Ricardo Padrón presented a lecture entitled "Maps vs. Mapping: Rationalizations of Space in Early Modernity" to several SLLC students and faculty.
 

SLLC’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese hosted guest speaker Dr. Ricardo Padrón on Wednesday, October 19 to present a lecture on "Maps vs. Mapping: Rationalizations of Space in Early Modernity" to the students of Dr. Regina Harrison’s graduate seminar course SPAN798T: Felipe Guaman Poma in Cultural Context. Padrón, an associate professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia, received his Ph.D. in Romance Languages from Harvard University. The lecture largely focused on the chapter “Tracking Space” of his recently published book, The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature and Empire in Early Modern Spain.

 

In his lecture, Padrón examined the use of cartography and map-making in imperial Spain, primarily as a means to create an abstract space for the insertion and creation of empire during Spain’s period of imperial conquests and colonization. According to Padrón, maps “create a clear distinction between the container and the contained. Maps [provide] an abstract space that supports the imaginings of imperial order.” Throughout his lecture, Padrón investigated the significance of imperial cartography as a tool that robs indigenous peoples of the right to identify their space and define their land in vernacular and culturally understood terms.

 

This imperial claiming of space and re-definition of land forced indigenous peoples to see their land “in an alien way, stripping them of indigenous authority and spatial imagination [as maps] changed into European spatiality,” says Padrón. While imperial cartography continues to influence present perceptions of empire and power, Padrón also stressed the advancements of modern map-making in addressing serious international concerns such as poverty, famine, and other global socio-economic issues. Padrón looks hopefully towards the future and the present “explosion in inclusive directions in new cartography . . . that use cartography to map poverty and social inequality.”