ABSTRACT
Drawing from both literary studies and object-oriented philosophy, this chapter focuses upon non-human narration as a strategy that allows the researcher to occupy the position of a cartographic entity through both empathy and defamiliarisation. Indeed, the figure of the speaking map has been already employed by critical cartographers. Far from the negative mood generally adopted in the critical fetishisation of the map (the map persuades, asserts, commands), here I choose a biographical register and provide a piece of an object’s autobiography in which a map tells its own story in first person. In this cartographic tale, Fonteuropa, a mosaic map appearing in a monument to Europe and Peace in the city centre of Padova, speaks in modest, prevalently melancholic tones and witnesses to human passions towards Europe as they change over time. Based on archival research and in-depth interviews with the artist and the creator of the monument, this fictional account is also a story about everyday positive Europeanisation and a tentative way of exploring the ‘gentle politics’ of maps.
