IMAGES OF POWER: DERRIDA/FOUCAULT/HARLEY

Abstract

In his last essays J.B. Harley called for "an alternative epistemology, rooted in social theory rather than in scientific positivism" and looked for this theory in the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Far from applying the French writers' radical rethinking of the relationship of sign and referent to cartography, Harley accepted without question the orthodox definition of maps as images of the world. He was content to add a sociopolitical dimension to the "reality" which maps are usually said to represent.