Cortés finds Tenochtitlán on the map

Conceiving of space as in the voyages of discovery, as something to be crossed and maybe conquered, has particular ramifications. Implicitly, it equates space with the land and sea, with the earth which stretches out around us. It makes space seem like a surface; continuous and given. It differentiates: Hernán, active, a maker of history, journeys across this surface and finds Techtitlán upon it. (…) So easily this way of imagining space can lead us to conveive of other places, peoples, cultures simply as phenomena ‘on’ this surface. It is not an innocent manoeuvre, for by this means they are deprived of histories. Immobilized, they await Cortés’ (…) arrival.  They lie there, on space, in place, without their own trajectories.

Doreen Massey, for space

Image:
Mexico, Regia et Celebris Hispaniae Novae Civitas … [on sheet with] Cusco, Regni Peru in Novo Orbe Caput – Braun & Hogenberg, 1582.

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