glossary of terms in map history

R

relief (printing)

[form]
The printing of images from raised surfaces, atop which the ink rests. Historically, relief printing has been accomplished through wood blocks, typographic surfaces, stereotypes, cerographic surfaces, and other processes, as well as through letter-press. If the matrix is “type-high”—i.e, the same height as individual pieces of type—then it can be set within the type form, so that text and image are printed simultaneously.

representation (1), v

[process]
The act of representing; a gerund, never a noun. The product of representation is more properly a text.

To represent is “to stand in for in an intentional/assertive manner.” Intention is implicit in political usage, in which elected officials (“representatives”) assert the right to act in a parliament in place of their constituency, it being impossible in a democracy for all citizens to participate in a parliament directly and personally.

The intentionality of representation is all-too-often forgotten, so that scholars tend to see ¶representation(2) as an abstract act removed from the processes by which representatives end up in parliaments, or by which people working within a spatial discourse make maps. Intentionality is important to consider because it directs attention to the manner in which participants in a spatial discourse assert, for whatever social and cultural reasons, that an image or written narrative represents a place, region, planet, concept, etc.

The proper term for the product of representation(1) is a text.

¶ representation (2), n

[idealization]
An inappropriate term for a product of the act of representing. It is in this respect that many definitions of ¶map(••) use the formula, “a map is a representation of ….” Within modern culture, the act of representation seems to be unintentional—to have no social or cultural foundations—and indeed to be a technical process in which humans are just one (flawed) component. The default is thus to understand representation as mimetic representation (or mimesis).

In terms of the ideal of cartography, mimesis is a function of both the ontological and pictorial preconceptions, in that ¶maps(••) are deemed to be complete collections of data that “look like” the world.