Terrae Incognitae: Mapping the Unkwnown

Carla Lois, Ph.D. (2008), is Professor at the University of Buenos Aires and Researcher at the CONICET. She coordinates the working group GHECIT (Grupo de Historia y Epistemologìa de las Cartografías y as Imágenes Técnicas). She has published several articles and books, including Sketch Maps. Drawing the Geographical Imagination (Brill, 2023).

Acknowledgements

List of Illustration



Introduction: Geographies of the Unknown

 1 Evasive Geographies: No Man’s Land

 2 Exploring the Nuances of the Unknown: the Limits of Dichotomies and the Diversity of Inaccessible Worlds

 3 Is It Possible to Map the Unknown?

 4 In Light of the Unknown: the Aesthetics of Absence

 5 Structuring the Unknown



part 1

The Plausible

Introduction to Part 1



1 Plausible Geographies: the Expectation of New Worlds

 1 White on White: Making Room on World Maps for Posing New Questions

 2 A World of Islands and Continents

 3 Discovering a World: the Quarta Pars or the Unexpected Continent

 4 Dreaming of a World: the Quinta Pars or the Expected Continent



2 Topographies of Hypothesis, Ways of Writing Questions

 1 Ellipsis: Interrupted Geographies Awaiting More Information

 2 The Shapes of the Unknown: Geometry

 3 Aditamento : the Unknown as Epilogue



3 Mirrors and Mirages

 1 The Mirror as Device: from Mimesis to Distortion

 2 The Southern Ocean as a mirror

 3 On the Other Side of the Mirror: Plus ultra equinoctialem and the Cosmographical Imagination in Symmetric Key

 4 Seas and Skies: a Play of Mirrors

 5 Mirror-Toponyms

 6 From Mirror to Mirage: From Plausible Illusion to Reinvented Fiction



part 2

The Poorly Explored: Nineteenth Century Patagonia

Introduction to Part 2



4 Emptying: Blank as an Omen of Exploration

 1 Terra incognita or nondum plenum cognita: From the Unknown to the Little-Known, the Genesis of a Transformation

 2 Preparing Space: from White to Blank

 3 Deletion: Blank as a Deliberate Act

 4 Blank as Moment Zero



5 Conquering the Realms of the Foreign

 1 Patagonia’s Foreignness

 2 A Desert “That is Good for Nothing”

 3 Toward the Positivity of the Desert: the Unutterable Becomes the Unuttered



6 Ultimatum to the Unknown: the Banishment of the Blank

 1 Tamed Deserts: the Cartographic Rhetoric that Turned Patagonia into Provinces

 2 Putting the Blank on the Other Side: Transforming the Blank into the Foreign



part 3

The Non-Visible: the Landscape of the Abyss at the Bottom of the Oceans

Introduction to Part 3



7 Shelters from the Fearful Unknown: Islands amid the Darkness

 1 The Insular Drive: a Hinge between the Inside and the Outside

 2 Leaving the Islands to Venture into the Endless Blue

 3 Blank Oceans, Full Oceans


8 The Naked Ocean: the Spectacle of the Non-Visible

 1 The Image as a Device for Viewing the Unseen: the Power of Abstraction

 2 Seeing the World in Miniature

 3 Mapping the Non-Visible: Creating the Impossible Landscape

 4 The Nude Ocean or the Curtains of the World Theater


9 Beyond the Shadows: Going Down to the Bottom (to Reach the Illusion of Seeing)

 1 The Darkness of the Colourless and the Deep: from Gloom to Truth

 2 Bringing the Bottom to the Surface: Bathymetric Marks

 3 Measuring to See: the Geometric Gaze



Conclusion: the Unknown, Inaccessible Geographies

 1 Blank and White Geographies

 2 Terrae incognitae: the Positivity of a Negativity

 3 Beyond the Cases: the Languages and Categories of the Unknown, the Flexibility of the Unchanging



Bibliography

Index