ABSTRACT
How can we interrogate maps as things? This chapter provides an initial overview of different existing approaches to the objecthood of maps. Indeed, the attention to maps as objects and cartographic materiality is long-lasting and much variegated within map studies, including both predigital maps and digital mappings. As a premise of the experimentation with a more specific exchange between cartography and object-oriented ontology (OOO), this chapter suggests the adoption of an inclusive framework for practising an object-oriented thinking of maps. As has been noted, the established field of object studies seems somehow to have been revamped by the philosophical interest deriving from OOO. Despite their theoretical distances, these lines of inquiry share the common argument that the lives of things should assume centrestage. Once applied to cartography, this way of putting the long-standing interest in objects/materiality in relation to more recent philosophical tendencies serves to reframe and link together a substantial body of earlier illuminating works in the light of the ‘thingness of maps’.
