County of Flanders is an abolished County now known today as Belgium
1512-1594
Education: University of Leuven
Very very European
Never left Europe
The Mercator Projection is the most widely used map in the world despite its flaws and disproportionate representation of the countries. Particularly western countries known to wield large political influence are up to 17 times their true size. The position of Mercator highly influences his view of the world as a European cartographer and those aligned with his position used Mercator's execution of positionality, most likely not purposefully, for political affluence, intimidation, and world domination. Russia specifically, despite being a country appears to be larger than the continent Africa. Based on the historical context of Russia's political presence its map size reflects the influence it would have had on a Flemish student in the 1500s.
Ethics of Expanding Size
It became the usual projection for professional and educational world maps. Maps craft world views and is one of the oldest forms of text technologies that still frequent current day. Maps construct meaning and based on the application of the Mercator Projection it implies facts.
Fact #1: Europe is a dominating force with its countries being larger than continents
Fact #2: Size = Power
Fact #3: Fact #1 & #2 still hold relevance today!
Largest Relevant Flaws
#1: Predominantly white occupying countries were displayed as larger, potentially not done so with bad intentions and simply blinded by his own positionality.
#2: Russia the country is larger than Africa the Continent (Consistent with racial discrimination particularly in the areas of advancement, power, and knowledge.
Drawing the Connections!
Transcript:
After learning about the Mercator map,
it’s now time to draw its connection to positionality and race. I’ve previously
posited that the largest effects are the repercussions of the map and its role
in colonization, conquering, and superiority of the European regime. Each case
study is situated around race in several ways, the Mercator map happens to be
one of the many causes for racial tensions that would occur some years after
its inception. Mercator’s position as a white educated European man in the cusp
of the supposedly most prosperous and advancing nation, birthed the Mercator
Map and as a result a cause for identification. Identification, as Diane describes
it, is “an already preexisting, internal disposition, like an automatic
unconscious unity with others, prior to the divisions of signification” The relationships between positionality
and identification are the most prominent within the History Case Study. The
identification with power and therefore assumed equation of size and power, contributed
to the European superiority complex that gave rise to the arrangement of race.
Bigger and better on top, and the smaller and vulnerable near the bottom. This does
not go to say that Mercator is responsible for the long bloody history of
colonization, but more so to acknowledge Mercator’s subjectivity as an isolated
white man who was drastically off with his calculations and those mistakes being
taken as fact His projection was used as a force to drive western domination,
as exemplified by its current use in education.
How do we combat this issue if bias
and sense of self are impossible to eliminate? We’ll get into that in the next
video! For the Mercator Projection, I would start off with an accurate map!
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