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Text and terrain: mapping sexuality and law

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Abstract

This article is concerned with the intersections of law, texts and sexuality. Drawing on recent work in theoretical cartography, this article seeks to argue that a cartographical reading of law can be usefully brought to bear on the legal analysis of sexuality. This article considers how looking to contemporary theoretical and critical cartography can help to reveal law as a process of mapping; how sexuality is mapped both within and without the law through cultural texts, and how law’s encounters with the terrains mapped out by those texts might be enriched and diversified. This article seeks to consider how legal mappings of the terrains of sexuality might be sufficiently contextualised and located within a wider socio-political context, and how a specifically cartographical interpretation might reveal the potential for the law to accommodate the complexity of gendered and sexualised identities that do not easily conform to singular positionings. In order to navigate the texts and terrains of law and sexuality, we must first learn to become cartographers, and through this process, perhaps open up radical and alternative mappings.

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Notes

  1. Cowan, J., A Mapmaker’s Dream: The Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice (London: Sceptre, 1996), 6.

  2. De Sousa Santos, B., “Law: A Map of Misreading. Toward a Postmodern Conception of Law”, Journal of Law and Society 14/3 (1987), 279–302, 302 n. 71, following A. G. Hodgkiss.

  3. Cosgrove, D., ed., Mappings (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 1; Monmonier, M., How to Lie with Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 1–5.

  4. I use the term ‘chart’ here in the everyday sense. Cf. Bagrow, who explains that ‘the English word “chart” or “card” ... has been retained exclusively for maps of the sea, while the word “map” is used for terrestrial maps, and also in a wider sense to embrace all types of cartographic delineation’. (Bagrow, L., History of Cartography (London: C. A. Watts & Co., 1964), 22.

  5. Legrange quoted in Bagrow, supra n. 4, at 22.

  6. In the context of cartography, recent key works on this theme include Jacob, C., “Toward a Cultural History of Cartography”, Imago Mundi 48 (1996), 191–198; Monmonier, supra n. 3; Cosgrove, supra n. 3; Cosgrove, D., Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Harley, J.B., The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

  7. Andrews in Harley, supra n. 6, at 6–7.

  8. Supra n. 6. In relation to maps as religious texts, Jacob describes Tibetan religious maps, which require the viewer to follow a spiritual path thRough layered universes; ‘Maps imply intellectual and visual motions. The map user is travelling not only through the areas and the places depicted but also through related levels of signs, reality and abstraction, through logical steps, through cultural fields’. (Supra n. 6, 195). See further Jacob, C., “Mapping in the Mind: The Earth from Ancient Alexandria”, in Cosgrove supra n. 3, at 24–49; Harley, supra n. 6.

  9. Jacob, supra n. 6, at 195.

  10. Cf. Twining, W., “Mapping Law”, Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 50/1 (1999), 12–49, at 17, n. 21 et seq., where Twining suggests that the idea of mapping as the mental conception of arrangement is somewhat of a clichéd metaphor in legal discourse. In the context of this article, I deploy the concept of mapping to move beyond this usage, and understand it to operate in a sense that is closer to its cartographical meaning, namely as a process of description. The nascent law and geography movement (see further, for example, Blomley, N.D., Delaney, D. and Ford, R.T., eds., The Legal Geographies Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Blomley, N.D., Law, Space and the Geographies of Power (London: Guildford Press, 1994); Holder, J. and Harrison, C., eds., Law and Geography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) has not yet fully explored cartography as a legal methodology. I discuss further legal considerations of mapping infra n. 49.

  11. It is important to acknowledge the substantial heritage of feminist work interrogating the law-space nexus, see, for example Duncan, N., ed., Bodyspace: Destabilising Geographies of Gender and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1996); Cooper, D., Governing out of Order: Space, Law and the Politics of Belonging (New York: Rivers Oram Press, 1998); Bell, D. and Valentine, G., eds., Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 1995); Massey, D., Space, Place and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Rendell, J., Penner, B. and Borden, I., eds., Gender Space Architecture (New York: E & FN Spon, 1999); Phillips, R., Watt, D. and Shuttleton, D., eds., De-Centring Sexualities: Politics and Representations Beyond the Metropolis (London: Routledge, 1999), which has yet to be substantially considered through a cartographic lens. Regretfully, it is outside of the scope of this article to do so. I thank the anonymous reviewer/s for comments on this point.

  12. Grabham, E., “Taxonomies of Inequality: Lawyers, Maps and the Challenge of Hybridity”, Social and Legal Studies 15/1 (2006), 5–23, at 15.

  13. Grabham, supra n. 12, at 7.

  14. Grabham, supra n. 12, at 16.

  15. Grabham, supra n. 12, at 13. Grabham herself proposes an innovative reading of the law informed by theories of hybridity as a measure to guard against reification, temporal fixity and foreclosure. As I will go on to argue, a critical reading of cartography itself may also prove a valuable strategy.

  16. Grabham, supra n. 12, at 17, 20.

  17. Cf. Twining, supra n. 10.

  18. In defining which cultural texts are in question, I have in mind both academic and literary accounts of gender and sexuality that speak to the fullest spectrum of identity. However, having said this, I have chosen to borrow the approach of Elizabeth Grosz, who states in Time, Space and Perversion that ‘By “texts” I mean the products of any kind of discursive practice, whether poetic, literary, philosophical, scientific, visual, tactile or performative...I am purposefully being vague.’ (Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of the Body (London, Routledge: 1995), 11.) This delineation cannot, due to the nature of my enquiry, be more prescriptive or specific. Indeed, I would go further and suggest that it should not be specific, as my argument is that law’s maps can and should be valuably augmented by a range of textual sources that would benefit from an open ended interpretation.

  19. Although my principal reference is to sexuality, I understand that this is not always an easily divisible category from gender, and some slippage will necessarily occur throughout this article.

  20. I wish to thank Emily Grabham for valuable discussion on this point.

  21. This project has echoes in the law and literature movement, for example, Posner, R.A., Law and Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); Ward, I., Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), but as we shall see, theoretical cartography has several unique and valuable characteristics that make it a versatile and sensitive interpretative framework to use when considering legal responses to cultural texts on sexuality.

  22. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on this point.

  23. Cowan, supra n. 1, 6–7.

  24. See further Earnshaw, C.J., Sho: Japanese Calligraphy (Tuttle: Tokyo, 1989).

  25. In some of the cartographic texts that I have used, whilst acknowledging the strength of the metaphor, maps are restricted to their strict geographic sense, i.e., a graphic representation of space and spatial relations. For Harley (supra n. 6), maps can clearly be seen as texts, yet for Bagrow (supra n. 4) and Cosgrove, a map cannot be anything but graphic representations of space. ‘Thus’, as Cosgrove explains, ‘while a circuit diagram, a tattooed torso or the topos of the heavenly Jerusalem could all fall within [the map’s] remit, the textual narrative of a journey or a purely abstract, non-referential image of line and colour could not.’ (Cosgrove supra n. 3, at 16). Moran, L. and McGhee, D., (“Perverting London: The Cartographic Practices of Law”, Law and Critique IX/2 (1998), 207–224), whose work I discuss below, draw on an actual map in the cartographic sense, whereas De Sousa Santos uses maps metaphorically, but notes that the rhetorical power of the metaphor may one day crystallise into something more solid (De Sousa Santos, supra n. 2, at 286).

  26. Harley, supra, n. 6, at 158–159.

  27. Cowan, supra n. 1.

  28. Cowan’s novel is fictional but based on a real Venetian monk and cartographer named Fra Mauro, who produced a detailed and significant mappamundi, (reproduced as an inset on the paperback edition’s cover) now housed in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice. However, whereas Cowan has him living in the sixteenth century, Bagrow firmly locates the real Fra Mauro in the fifteenth, giving his date of death as 1460. See further Bagrow, supra n. 4, at 72–73, 260; Scafi, A., “Mapping Eden: Cartographies of the Earthly Paradise”, in Cosgrove, supra n. 3, 50–70.

  29. Cowan, supra n. 1, at 13.

  30. Cowan, supra n. 1, at 20–21.

  31. Cowan, supra n. 1, at 11.

  32. Cowan, supra n. 1, at 102–103.

  33. Winterson, J., Sexing the Cherry (New York: Vintage International, 1989/1991), 88.

  34. Ibid.

  35. I borrow the idea of discourses as mappings from Cosgrove supra n. 3, at 15.

  36. A contemporary example can be seen in Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v Canada [2000] 2 S.C.R. 1120, where the Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium have found themselves in an ongoing battle with Canadian Customs over the importation of gay and lesbian materials. It is notable that heterosexual materials do not appear to be so rigorously policed by Canadian Customs.

  37. This argument has previously been articulated by Carl Stychin (Law’s Desire: Sexuality and the Limits of Justice (London: Routledge, 1995), who has suggested that the denial of access to discourses on sexuality can effectively amount to a denial of the right to express and explore an identity. Of course, he does not suggest, and neither do I intend to, that this regulation is entirely without resistance. Arguably, maps to lands that are lost, like Atlantis, often have a far greater allure and infamy than those that are known.

  38. Monmonier, supra n. 3.

  39. Monmonier, supra n. 3, at 2.

  40. Supra n. 23.

  41. Grabham, supra n. 12, at 7 et seq.

  42. Grabham’s comments are made in the context of discrimination law, but I believe that they can have wider application. See Grabham, supra n. 12.

  43. Grabham, supra n. 12, at 20.

  44. Cf. Twining, supra n. 10, at 18.

  45. Cosgrove, supra n. 3, at 18.

  46. Supra n. 6, at 69.

  47. Scafi, A., in Cosgrove, supra n. 28, at 63; cf. Monmonier, supra n. 3, at 54.

  48. Monmonier, supra n. 3, at 1.

  49. See, for example, Grabham, supra n. 12; De Sousa Santos, supra n. 2; Twining, supra n. 10; Moran and McGhee, supra n. 25; Philippopoulos–Mihalopoulos, A., “Mapping Utopias: A Voyage to Placelessness”, Law and Critique, 12 (2001), 135–157; Patterson, J. and Teubner, G., “Changing Maps: Empirical Legal Autopoiesis”, Social and Legal Studies, 7/4 (1998), 451–486; McDermont, M., “Managing the Tensions in ‘Voluntary’ Housing: A Study of the Role of the National Housing Federation in the Governance of Social Housing in England since 1935”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Bristol: University of West England, 2005); Martin P. and Verbeek, M., Cartography for Environmental Law: Finding New Paths to Effective Resource Use Regulation (Project No. TPF1) (Profit Foundation Pty. Australia, 2000/2004); Bottomley, A., “Theory is a Process not an End A Feminist Approach to the Practice of Theory in Richardson, J. and Sandland, R., eds., Feminist Perspectives on Law and Theory, (London: Cavendish, 2000), 25–51; Segal, L., “New Battlegrounds: Genetic Maps and Sexual Politics”, in Brooks-Gordon, B., et al., eds., Sexuality Repositioned: Diversity and the Law (Hart: Oxford, 2004), 65–83; Pottage, A., “The Measure of Land”, Modern Law Review 57/3 (1994), 361–384.

  50. Moran and McGhee, supra n. 25.

  51. Moran and McGhee, supra n. 25, at 208.

  52. Moran and McGhee, supra n. 25, at 209–210.

  53. Moran and McGhee, supra n. 25, at 223.

  54. Moran and McGhee, supra n. 25, at 216–217.

  55. Jacob, supra n. 6, at 193.

  56. As Philippopoulos–Mihalopoulos, quoting F. Moretti, states, “because a map is precisely that, a connection made visible” (Philippopoulos–Mihalopoulos, supra n. 49, at 138 n. 7).

  57. Moran and McGhee, supra n. 25, at 213.

  58. A similar argument is used by Stychin (supra n. 37, at 156), who suggests in a queer reading of law that the law itself can be seen to produce the category paradoxically, dissidence emerging at the very moments where the law tries most forcefully to suppress it.

  59. De Sousa Santos, supra n. 2.

  60. De Sousa Santos, supra n. 2, at 286.

  61. De Sousa Santos, supra n. 2 at 283.

  62. Philippopoulos–Mihalopoulos, supra n. 49, 135–157 at 137 (footnote omitted) emphasis in the original. The sad (fictional) fate of such a map endeavouring to follow a 1:1 scale is considered in a short story by Borges. The map becomes so cumbersome that it is eventually abandoned to the elements, where its tattered fragments serve as occasional shelter for animals and tramps: ‘En los Desiertos del Oeste perduran despedazas Ruinas del Mapa por Animales y por Mendingos; en todo el País no hay otra reliquia de las Disciplinas Geográficas.’ Borges, J.L., “Del rigor en la ciencia”, in Historia universal de la infamia (Alizanza Editorial Madrid/Buenos Aires, 1991), 136 at 136. I thank Agata Fijalkowski for discussing this with me, and the anonymous reviewer/s for bringing Borges to my attention.

  63. Markham, B., as quoted in Harley, supra n. 6, at 150.

  64. Cf. Andrews in Harley, supra n. 6, at 5–7.

  65. Bagrow, supra n. 4 at 89.

  66. Supra n. 28.

  67. Bagrow, supra n. 4 at 73 (my emphasis).

  68. Supra n. 6. Particularly instructive on this point is Harley, J., “Deconstructing the Map”, Cartographica 26/2, 1–20.

  69. Cosgrove, supra n. 3 at 13.

  70. Jacob, supra n. 6 at 191.

  71. Ibid.

  72. Indeed, as Dilke and Brancati suggest, the theory of cartography should properly find its centre in the map-maker. Dilke, M.S. and Brancati, A., “The New World in the Pesaro Map”, Imago Mundi 31 (1978) 78–79 at 78.

  73. Philippopoulos–Mihalopoulos, supra n. 49 at 138.

  74. Peréz-Reverte, A., The Nautical Chart (London: Picador, 2000) at 264, quoting Diego García de Palacios, Instrucción nautical para navegar. In the same novel (op. cit. at 56) regarding maps locating the self, he quotes Justin Scott’s The Shipkiller, ‘You can do everything right, strictly according to procedure, on the ocean, and it’ll still kill you, but at least you’ll know where you were when you died.’

  75. De Sousa Santos, supra n. 2 at 282.

  76. See e.g. Frug, M.J., ed., Postmodern Legal Feminism (Routledge: London; 1992); Bottomley, A., ed., Feminist Perspectives on the Foundational Subjects of Law (Cavendish: London; 1996); Bridgeman, J. and Millns, S., eds., Feminist Perspectives on Law: Law's engagement with the Female Body (Sweet and Maxwell: London, 1998).

  77. Harley, supra n. 68.

  78. See supra n. 36.

  79. hooks, b., Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work (London: The Women’s Press, 1999), at 30–31.

  80. Pimentel, M., Arte de Navegar, as quoted in Pérez-Reverte, supra n. 74, at 389.

  81. Sobel, D., Longitude (London: Penguin Books, 1995), at 1–2.

  82. Sobel, supra n. 81, at 2.

  83. Sobel, supra n. 81, at 4–5.

  84. Cf. Peréz-Reverte, supra n. 74 at 204.

  85. A point also noted by Philippopoulos–Mihalopoulos, supra n. 49.

  86. Philippopoulos–Mihalopoulos, supra n. 49, at 140, although I am intrigued by the idea that this fixed point might only be temporarily fixed, not permanently.

  87. Cosgrove, supra n. 6 at 182–183.

  88. Sobel, supra n. 81, at 167–168. Sobel notes (op. cit. 168) that this decision failed to find favour with the French, who continued to favour the Paris meridian until 1911.

  89. Sobel, supra n. 81, at 3.

  90. Cosgrove, supra n. 6, 183 et seq.

  91. Supra n. 74.

  92. The placement of the tropics also might not be so innocent, and I thank Les Moran for highlighting this possibility to me.

  93. Cosgrove, supra n. 6 at 183. See further Elden, S., “Missing the Point: Globalisation, Deterritorialisation and the Space of the World”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 30 (2005), 8–19.

  94. Calvino, I., Invisible Cities (Vintage: London, 1972/1997), 164.

  95. On the distinction see Grabham, supra n. 12 at 6 et seq.

  96. Calvino, supra n. 94, ibid.

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    Bela Chatterjee

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Correspondence to Bela Chatterjee.

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An earlier version of this article was given as one of the keynote speeches at the opening colloquium of the AHRB Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality (LGS), University of Kent, Canterbury in 2004. Entitled ‘Text and Terrain: Legal Studies in Gender and Sexuality’, the colloquium addressed the following questions (amongst others): How might socio-legal research on gender and sexuality benefit from incorporating textual analysis? What, if anything, is lost in analysing legal and cultural texts without consideration of their empirical effects or the social relations of power within which they have been produced? What is the relationship between legal representations of gender and sexuality, and the effects on gendered and sexualised lives of legal decisions?

Research for this article was facilitated by a period of study leave from Lancaster University Law School during 2004, and a visiting research fellowship at the AHRB LGS Centre, University of Kent, Canterbury, 2006. I am grateful to both institutions, and the anonymous reviewers at Law and Critique. I wish to thank the audience at the Text and Terrain colloquium 2004 for their helpful feedback, and the following people for their comments: Madeleine Jowett, Sarah Beresford, Hazel Biggs, David Seymour, Mike Doupé, Barbara Mauthe, Emily Grabham, Agata Fijalkowski, Fiona Cownie, Suzanne Wallace. Any errors are, of course, my own.

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Chatterjee, B. Text and terrain: mapping sexuality and law. Law Critique 17, 297–323 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-006-9004-0

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