Maps as Rhetorical Tools of Colonial Power and Alternative Cartographies: The Americas’ Cartographic Invention

Abstract

This essay focuses on two historical maps as rhetorical artifacts: The Piri Reis Map of 1513 produced by the Turkish admiral Piri Reis in 1513, the Reis map, and the Map of the Island of Cuba and Surrounding Territories produced by the Cuban geographer, historian, and educator José María de la Torre y de la Torre in 1841, the de la Torre map. The Reis map demonstrates the colonial logic of Americas’ cartographic invention while the de la Torre Map is an alternative cartographic artifact disrupting the Reis map’s celebratory discourse and the settler-colonial legacy of the world heritage memory.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I would like to thank RR reviewers Madison Jones and Jaime Armin Mejía for their thoughtful feedback. This essay was initially part of an edited collection, Literacies of/from the Pluriversal: Tools for Perseverance and Livable Futures, edited by Ellen Cushman, Damián Baca, and Rome García, forthcoming University of Pittsburgh. I also would like to thank Cushman, Baca, and García and the blind reviewers of the University of Pittsburgh Press for their feedback on the earlier versions of this essay.

2 “Velázquez sailed to the New World in 1493 on the second voyage of Christopher Columbus. Columbus’ eldest son, Diego Columbus, later entrusted Velázquez with the conquest of Cuba under the title of adelantado (governor) and, with Hernán Cortés, Velázquez departed for Cuba in 1511. In the next four years he founded the settlements of Baracoa, Bayamo, Santiago de Cuba, and Havana (La Habana). After his conquests were completed about 1514, he encouraged colonization and became governor of Cuba” (Britannica).

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Notes on contributors

Eda Özyeşilpınar

Eda Özyeşilpınar is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the Department of English at Illinois State University where she researches and teaches border rhetorics, digital cultural rhetorics, and rhetorical theory and histories of rhetorics (rhetorics of and from non-Western and underrepresented groups). Her award-winning research appeared in Reflections, Review of Communication, The Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics, Methods and Methodologies for Research in Digital Writing and Rhetoric, Kairos, Rhetorics Change/Rhetoric's Change, and Immediacy. Contact: [email protected]