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 as cultural products inherently imbued with power.

Eschewing the criterion of accuracy, Wood reads maps as narrative texts and members of a broad family of representations alongside landscape portraits and detective stories. After early research studying experimental maps, mental maps, and map literacy acquisition, Wood turned to semiotics to cast maps as sign systems coproduced with specific sociohistorical contexts. Maps are inherently subjective propositions that work [Page 3122]within a discursive system of coded representations to link an imagined territory with associated phenomena. A false distinction between maps and other forms of representation limits the creative, emotional potential of maps gained through a narrative understanding.

Wood relentlessly attacks cartographers for their legitimization of scientific maps. The professionalization of mapping masks political interests under pretenses of unbiased, distanced neutrality. Through claims to objectivity, maps portend to represent a world of facts as they really are rather than as purposively selective fictions that create the world as much as they closely resemble it. The presupposition of accuracy obscures the politics embedded within maps and empowers them as weapons of domination, reproducing society and legitimizing the status quo.

While modern cartography has served the interests of the State and the dominant elite, countermapping practices also employ the power of maps for resistance. Wood calls for the death of cartography and the return of mapping to the status of a universal birthright of humanity. His recent collaborative work with John Krygier assists nonprofessionals with map design through visually rich narratives, graphical guides, and a Web site dedicated to do-it-yourself (DIY) cartography.