The Mantle of the Earth: Genealogies of a Geographical Metaphor

Abstract

As historians of science and of knowledge, the words we use are inextricably connected to the worlds we research, and vice versa. Veronica Della Dora ’ s The Mantle of the Earth provides a revealing and detailed study of the ‘ textile ’ metaphors that have been used by geographers, geologists, mapmakers and other thinkers and crafters throughout many centuries. The book is structured chronologically and falls into four different sec-tions, each with a specific thematic accent. Each part of the book subsequently contains two or three chapters each. The third part, entitled ‘ The surfaces of modernity ’ , provides an excellent read on the history of geography and cartography. In the first chapter of this part, the emergence of geography as an academic discipline is discussed, paying specific attention to the changing role of the geographer: the geographer slowly became ‘ an objective describer of the surface of the earth and its regions ’ (p. 163). This shift happened roughly during the early years of the twentieth century. The ‘ birth ’ of the academic discipline we know today is discussed before, but by positioning this development in a longer tradition and by focusing on the ways geographers describe their activities, Della Dora offers a very innovative perspective on the existing historiographical narratives. She brings together knowledges, practices and verbal and visual representations of how people from the past have approached the world around them. For instance, in describing the changing nature of geography in the early twentieth century, she says, The old mantle of the earth thus becomes a tablecloth under the scrutiny of the geographer ’ s omniscient gaze. Humboldt ’ s contemplation of landscape as a theatre made of visibilities and invisibilities, the Romantic pantheistic interfusion with its ele-ments, the mystical curtains of haze and light have now all been replaced by the sys-tematic study of the morphology of the tablecloth, of its ripples, folds, and tattered edges, of the features lying