The political and ontological dimensions of cartography and the figuration of a possible world

Abstract

Review of the book Critical Cartographies: Technopolitical and Geopoetic Essays, authored by David Sperling. The result of his habilitation thesis, defended in 2023 at the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, where he teaches, the book starts from the hypothesis of the existence of an expanded field of cartography in order to propose to the reader a reflection on cartographic practices and the diapositives they engender. By highlighting the technopolitical and geopoetic dimensions of cartographic practices and their links with ongoing power-knowledge, the book calls into question the hegemony of dominant regimes of visibility and calls attention to a heterogeneous set of critical and dissident practices as imaginative figurations of new territorialities.