Rather than outward intentions of persuasion or inward questions of self and cosmos, recent scholarship has investigated more epistemic qualities related to Jesuit mapping, the conditions under which Jesuit cartography developed. 2 These two poles-missionary persuasion derived from confident universalism versus a new global subjectivity emerging from disruption-have largely shaped the broader historiographic debate about the significance of Jesuit mapping projects. Thoroughly “modern,” such maps represented a kind of network phenomenon of displaying earthly connections, one perhaps connected with the effort to develop new forms of subjectivity in the context of the Counter-Reformation. Only in 1991 did the historian of cartography John Brian Harley (1932–91) first try to sum up the Jesuit cartographic project as an extension of Renaissance “arts of persuasion,” noting that “it is clear that the Jesuits more than other religious orders of early modern Europe valued maps and geography for the control of missionary space.” Harley also expressed skepticism about the cross-cultural nature of such projects, borrowing a phrase from the sinologist Jacques Gernet (1921–2018) to call this an “enterprise of seduction.” 1 More recently, the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk (1947–) has suggested that the terrestrial cartography and even the celestial maps of the missionaries more directly attempted to come to terms with the collapse of the Aristotelian cosmology of spheres and envision a new terrestrial globe. Some have questioned whether such an enterprise could ever encompass the global variety of early modern and modern productions by members of the order. Jesuit cartography, a vast and lively area of historical scholarship, does not as yet have a proper history.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |