Wood, Denis (1945–)

Denis Wood is an artist, writer, cartographer, psychogeographer, and independent scholar. A former professor of design at North Carolina State University, Wood writes extensively on the nature of maps, mapping, and mapmaking processes. He has helped establish the subdisciplinary field of critical cartography, refining and extending J. B. (Brian) Harley's questioning of the objective neutrality of maps. Wood explores the social and political implications of mapmaking through playfully antagonistic prose, polemically undermining the authority of Western scientific cartography. He develops a theoretically rigorous critique of the power of maps, drawing on poststructural thinkers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the literary theorist and semiotician Roland Barthes, and the developmental theorist Jean Piaget. Wood is responsible for broadening the definition of maps ...