Decolonial Deep Mapping

Deep maps capture complex relationships to place and help trace the relationship between the abstract spaces of traditional maps and the cultural and literary history of the places that they represent. Using early modern Ireland as a template, this Element explores how deep-mapping techniques and a decolonial data ethic can be used to assemble a more culturally and linguistically representative archive and create more inclusive literary histories. It shows how deep mapping can disrupt colonial teleology and counter the monophone (and, specifically, anglophone) colonial record by bringing the long-neglected voices of the colonised back into the conversation. In doing so, it recovers a pre-conquest cultural vibrancy which colonisation, the language shift from Irish to English, and scholarly inattention successively occluded. More broadly, it offers a model for engaging with decolonial literary deep maps by developing reading strategies for 'juxtapuntal' reading that has the potential to decolonise the canon.

List of contents

1. Countering colonial cartography and coloniality; 2. Developing a decolonial literary deep map; 3. Decolonial reading strategies: archives, contiguity, and the juxtapuntal; 4. Juxtapuntal readings: mapping counter-discourses; 5. Coda; Bibliography.

Product details

• Authors: Evan Bourke, Philip Mac a' Ghoill, Patricia (Maynooth University) Bourke Palmer, Palmer Patricia
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.08.2025
• EAN: 9781009491839
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0949183-9
• No. of pages: 88
• Series: Elements in Digital Literary Studies
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, Cartography, map-making & projections, World atlases / world maps, Literary studies: post-colonial literature, Ethical & social aspects of IT, Cartography, map-making and projections, Historical maps and atlases, Historical maps & atlases, National liberation & independence, post-colonialism, Literary studies: postcolonial literature, Decolonisation and postcolonial studies, World / regional atlases or maps