ABSTRACT
The idea that maps have power is a tenet of critical cartography, to the point of sounding cliché. This chapter revisits this truism, drawing on the scholarship on feminist technoscience, in particular the work of Donna Haraway. The first section focuses on Haraway’s critique of the god-trick, that is the disembodied gaze supposedly afforded by positivist science. The second part of this chapter turns to Haraway’s analysis of gene mapping, and the associated notion of map fetishism. In Haraway’s interpretation, map fetishism has politico-economic, psychoanalytic and cognitive dimensions; each of these dimensions illuminates a different aspect of contemporary digital mappings and the way they can be said to have power. My overall argument is that the notion of map fetishism is useful, because it pushes against technological determinism while recognising the (very real) power that maps continue to have.
