Geographical Imagination and Memory: Maps, Places, Itineraries

Abstract This chapter considers the dynamic nature of the relationship between place, memory and identity, with reference to a map of Terténia drawn by A.M. This is pursued in three ways. First, via a discussion which argues that topography and biography, memories and maps are closely connected. Second, through an analysis of the map with reference to the formal categories defined by Gunnar Olsson and Kevin Lynch. It follows that the map is characterized by a “comprehensible appearance” and points to intrinsic meanings. Comprehensible appearance implies an implicit connection between place of origin and identity; intrinsic meanings refer to the function of the map, whose overall meaning is geographically imagined as post- journey. The map will thus related to the category of hodologic space, as defined by Pietro Janni and inspired by the work of memory of the specific category of geographers whose work was aimed at providing full sense and coherence to the places they explored. Third, in a survey of the toponimy in the map, between memory and experience. What appears on this map of routes is the very personal signs of the explorer that inscribes itself in place of the existing toponymy of Terténia, and presupposes some form of appropriation of the place itself. The chapter passes over the established ideas of place and identity to arrive at the idea that place and identity are from time to time processes constructed and imagined in a complex and dynamic game of topicality, position and forgetting.