ABSTRACT
In his essay “On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1,” Umberto Eco engages in a deliberately farcical attempt to draw a 1:1 scale map of a theoretical empire:
In any case, once the map has been drawn and spread out, either the subjects remain on the territory beneath it, or they climb on top of it. But if the subjects were to prepare the map while it is above their heads, not only would they be unable to move, because every movement would alter the positions of the subjects that the map describes (unless we have recourse, once again, to an impoverished map), but further, in moving, they would cause tangles in the very fine membrane above them, resulting in serious discomfort and once more making the map unfaithful; it would assume a different topological configuration, producing disaster areas not corresponding to the planimetry of the territory. 1
