Cartographies of Time

Let me just start by saying I found the chapters from this book, written by Daniel Rosenherg and Anthony Grafton, to be fascinating. So much of the work I have been focused on the past year or so has been in the nature of spatializing histories of marginalized communities. Most known histories, while limited in terms of representation, often exist only in textbooks as dates or locations. The theoretical and academic exploration of the visual representation over time posed by the two chapters we read expose the harsh realities of linear timelines, lost narratives, and technical limitations. The fixation of Western historians, as argued by Hayden White, to think of chronology as a merely ‘rudimentary form of histography’ is important to note as cultural importance is lost. My work in archives has revealed the dire need for the critical role of chronology to be explored in Western histories, particularly when applied to larger social movements in the US in an effort to explain how marginalized communities have existed and fought over time. Further reiterrated by the Eusebian Model before the 18th century which, for the first time, allowed scholars to ‘facilitate the organization oand coordination of chronological data from a wide variety of sources. It provided a single structure capable of absorbing nearly any kind of data and negotiating the difficulties inevitable when different civilizations’ histoires, with their different assumptions about time, were fused’ [pg 16].

This point is crucial as it calls for a need to create a universal method for combining diverse histories that otherwise exist as prescribed by the systems or instituitions that are telling their histories. In other words, when marginalized communities do not have access to their histories or their histories have not been formalized, they often remain unknown or hold lower value in terms of legibility. By applying a universal method/matrix for spatializing historic events, people, and places over time, we may finally begin to understand how certain groups have occupied space over time and explain their movements in cities due to urban renewal or gentrification. It is my belief that by overlaying histories and cartography with public realm plans, we may begin to show how our communities have existed over time and shift the narrative from relying on marginalized communities to exploit their narrative to prove they have always been here. Because in doing so, the maps would speak for themselves.