Guidebook: Google Maps
ThesisRendezvous Eighteenth has forty-nine placemarks on Google Maps. Most of these placemarks are from locations the protagonist Ricky Jenks traveled to within the four days that the novel is set. Thirty-one of these locations are in the Eighteenth Arrondissement. Lamar's mapping of Ricky Jenks's movement in the novel makes it appropriate for literary mapping. Unlike my analysis of "Baldwin's Paris," which is framed by and based on the clusters that were made visible through placemarking on Google Earth, in this chapter I am analyzing three major descriptions of neighborhoods depicted in the novel and juxtapose the images from Google Map's Street View with Lamar's descriptions.
To frame my analysis of Google Maps's Street View and Rendezvous Eighteenth, I address my approach to comparing these two works.
POVGoogle's purpose is to map the street-business, roads, routes,
in the final example, things are silenced in the map. Two things: because the map privileges the street, it silences the people. (check the dates it travels there). Ultimately, what Jake Lamar depicted cannot be "scened/seen on a map
The placemarks on this page are to give the reader a visual, comprehensive, and interactive engagement of the places/areas that Lamar maps in the novel. However, the streets views of Montmartre, la Goutte d'Or and Barbes that I juxtaposed with Rendezvous Eighteenth
Here, I will discuss the limitations and the benefits to my juxtaposition of Google Earth with Jake Lamar's descriptions of the Montmartre, La Goutte d'Or and Barbes. First, I will challenge the notion that I am examining reality in my juxtaposition of Rendezvous Eighteenth and Google Earth. Lamar's Rendezvous Eighteenth is a work of fiction and to large extent so are maps. As Mark Monmonier notes in How to Lie With Maps, "In showing how to lie with maps, I want to make readers aware that maps, like speeches and paintings, are authored collections of information and also are subject to distortions" (2). In addressing cartographers as authors and comparing maps to speeches and paintings, Monmonier makes the strong case that maps are fiction. Furthermore, in Mapping the Digital Empire: Google Earth and the Process of Postmodern Cartography, Jason Farman states, By accepting the map as reality, the reviewer enters into partnership with the map's author over the hegemonic assumptions such a visual representation makes. Acceptance of the map without question to the authorial nature of its design shifts ownership of the gaze onto the map user (8). Here, Farman claims that without distance from or critique of the map, the user becomes the co-author of its gaze. Both pieces affirm maps as authored works that re-present reality or information. In my comparative analysis of Google Maps Street View images and Lamar's depictions in Rendezvous Eighteenth, I am comparing two authored works depicting areas in the Eighteenth arrondissement. THE MAP IS FAMILIAR IF IT IS ACCEPTED.
This is of key importance to the democratization of maps and mapmaking since, as Monmonier's (1996) How to Lie With Maps title suggests, a map (as a singular representation traditionally presented a limited point of view dedicated to its particular purpose. He writes,
A good map tells a multitude of little white lies; it suppresses truth to help the user see what needs to be seen. Reality is three-dimensional, rich in detail, and far too factual to allow a complete yet uncluttered two-dimensional graphic scale model. Indeed, a man that did not generalize would be useless. But the value of a map depends on how well its generalized geometry and generalized content reflect a chosen aspect of reality (1996:25). (5) <--Mapping the Digital Empire: Google Earth and the Process of Postmodern Cartography
There are three aspects of Google Maps, particularly my use of Google Street View, that is essential to my juxtaposition of the Eighteenth as depicted in Rendezvous Eighteenth and Google Street View. Point of View with a purpose--what needs to be scene/seen? what does Google Street View privilege? The technology privileges that street (abandoned streets in later editions, at least in the eighteenth). Is it a white lie when it returns and no one is there on the streets?
is opens up my analysis of Google Maps to critique that affirms I am not comparing Lamar's fictional text to a Google Map reality. maps comparing maps to works of art, and speeches and paintings and
<--Mapping the Digital Empire: Google Earth and the Process of Postmodern Cartography
THIS PROBABLY SHOULD COME FIRST.
Partnership with the map. My admission that what I say there, I selected and am in compliance. Acceptance of the map without question speaks to the idea of the familiar. That the make is seeing as you see, and one interprets the gaze of the map as your gaze.
To develop this idea further, I turn to Google Earth/Maps in order to juxtapose the familiar and distinct that Lamar's narrator depicts at the turn-of-the-century with what Google Trakker "sees" in May 2008. I
I intend to show that though I placemark Rendezvous Eighteenth to visually aid my analysis, emphasizing where (if at all) Lamar placemarks or names guides the reader in the novel. I also use Google Street View to see if Google's Trekker "sees" in the same light as Lamar depicts. I reveal that Google E
SECOND
THIRD
Subaltern interests are often consciously ignored--the concerns of women, children, disabled, non-car drivers, and so on. Many other aspects of reality, including temporal change and much of the social richness of places, which are hard to capture and code with conventional digital maps are consequently 'silenced'. Therefore, the politics within digital maps is important because it effects the larger ontology of geographical knowledge built upon them" (Martin 14). <--Mapping and Geovisualization
B
Subaltern interests are often consciously ignored – the concerns of women, children, disabled, non-car drivers, and so on. Many other aspects of reality, including temporal change and much of the social richness of places, which are hard to capture and code with conventional digital maps are consequently ‘silenced’. Therefore, the politics within digital maps is important because it effects the larger ontology of geographical knowledge built upon them.
By accepting the map as reality, the viewer enters into partnership with the map’s author over the hegemonic assumptions such a visual representation makes. Acceptance of the map without question to the authorial nature of its design shifts ownership of the gaze onto the map user.
This page has paths:
- Rendezvous Eighteenth Gallery View Tyechia Thompson
- Rendezvous Eighteenth Summary and Criticism Tyechia Thompson