ABSTRACT
In this chapter I point out in what precise sense the present book deals with the relationship between maps and object-oriented ontology (OOO). Some object-oriented philosophers work with the cartographic lexicon at a metaphorical level. In most cases, cartography is addressed by OOO thinkers as a mode of approaching or knowing the real, thus implying the epistemological rather than ontological dimension of cartography, whereas for OOO thinkers the question of the object is not an epistemological question, not a question of how we know the object, but a question of what objects are; Cartography seems to be nothing so much as ‘a question of the object’. Far from being an epistemological or critical interrogation of maps and reality – that is, how maps map onto reality and how we know reality – this book poses the question of the object as a question of the life of cartographic objects, including maps within the universe of things to which OOO directs our attention. I am not questioning the objectivity/non-objectivity of maps; rather, I am embracing the objecthood of maps and suggesting the need for aesthetic counter methods to allude to the being of maps.
