ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the potential of topographic maps as a boundary translational matrix, through which the Inuit lifeworld nuna and outside worlds are divergently regenerated but attuned to each other and loosely assembled as a world multiple. First, the author analyzes his interviews on Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ: Inuit knowledge) with elders and skillful hunters to identify IQ’s salient characteristics and, using Michel de Certeau’s distinction between “strategies” and “tactics,” shows how IQ is guided by a tactical ideology. Then, he discusses the relationship of IQ to the Inuit subsistence system to show that a tactical ideology results as a logical necessity from the subsistence system and functions as a guiding principle for generating and regenerating IQ and nuna. Finally, the author examines Inuit map-use in the context of IQ-nuna-generating practices, and considers it in relation to map-use in outside worlds to elucidate how the topographic map functions as a boundary translational matrix. Based on this examination, he demonstrates the importance of quotidian politics through translation with the map as a primordial politics for diverging worlds from an entanglement of different types of practice, in which scales such as local/global, micro/macro, provincial/universal, or indigenous/modern are not yet differentiated.
