Session 1: Maps as Cognitive Schemes


Module 0: Ending the World is the introduction module to the DL Workspaces. It aims to foster an understanding of how colonialism and its logic coloniality persists today despite the decolonization of former colonies and the ongoing resistances of non white people around the globe.

In these sessions we look at how the world was made and why it needs to end through map making, cartography, early and more contemporary legal documents and an examination of the meaning of the category of human with the work of Sylvia Wynter.

The first session Maps as Cognitive Schemes focuses on getting to know each other and foster an understanding of how the world was made through recognizing the importance of certain maps in its creation and how these maps are representations of a particular world view.

For this session we ask you to prepare by doing the following:

Required

1) Listen to Vitamin D podcast: The End to a Means (20 mins)

2) Read Sylvia Wynter’s “The Pope must have been drunk, The King of Castille a Madman: Culture as Actuality and the Caribbean Rethinking of Modernity” Part 1Part 2Part 3In A. Ruprecht and C. Taiana (eds.) ‘The Reordering of Culture: Latin America, The Caribbean and Canada, In the Hood’ Carleton University Press (19 pages) or listen to the audio recording.

3) Listen to Vitamin D podcast A Genealogy of the Emergence of Decoloniality with Dr. Roberto D. Hernandez (1hr 15 mins)

4) Read Exhibit 1 Maps as Theories

 

Additional

5) Read Mark Monmonier’s “How To Lie With Maps” Chapter 1 (4 pages) or listen to the audio recording.

6) Read Jorge Luis Borges’ “On Exactitude in Science” (1 paragraph)