| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Maps are much more than geographic tools. They are powerful visual icons of statehood and identity. Created by agents tainted by their own historical subjectivity, maps are saturated with multiple levels of meaning, while their perceived status as accurate scientific tools lends them an authority which the map-reader is not meant to question. This paper examines maps from a Gadamerian hermeneutic perspective to investigate the layers of meaning embedded into these unquestioned, hypnotic emblems, and proposes that the maps produced and displayed by the European Union on its websites and in its continental currency are texts imbued with powerful imperial imaginations which reify a sense of collective identity and apparent superiority. This imagination is entwined with the territory of Europe and ultimately defines what it is to be European through the exclusion of 'the Other' - those Europeans deemed unworthy of inclusion in the European imperium. Ultimately, the paper argues that maps of the Union reflect a subconscious - yet gradually emerging - imagination of Empire.
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