ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book proposes a cartographical necessity of exile, a constitutive relationship between exile and mapping. It explains the dual reading strategy, situating close readings of what makes up space and what space makes up within larger social and historical contexts. The book examines how displacement functions in various cartographic interventions. It also discusses the modern and post-modern art and literature that try to make sense of living in and representing a series of simultaneously fractured and networked social, political, and economic systems. The book traces the maps used by antebellum fugitive slaves to facilitate their escape from bondage, a dangerous and isolating move toward freedom that Tom Nurmi recognizes as a "double exile". It reveals the changing nature of lyric exile within the increasingly flexible cartographies of the Cold War era.
