La cartographie : appropriation voyagiste de l’espace

L‟idée de faire ressortir, à partir de la figure de la carte, la problématique de la « géographie imaginaire » qui relève de l‟ordre du voyage semble fortement pertinente,

117 Là encore, il s‟inspire de l‟idée de Foucault qui éclaire, par exemple, le rôle du tableau dans les disciplines : « Le tableau, au XVIIe siècle, c‟est à la fois une technique de pouvoir et une procédure de savoir » (1975 : 150).

si l‟on considère les remarques suivantes concernant la fonction de la carte et ses machineries de représentation dans le cadre du voyage.

a) Bien que l‟épaisseur d‟une carte paraisse pratiquement nulle, elle ne l‟est pas dans notre accès au monde. Le parcours du touriste (du voyageur si l‟on veut) sur la carte comportant des liens indéniables avec les rouages compliqués du voyage – prévoir, savoir, voir, percevoir, vivre, habiter (au sens heideggerien du terme), « ramener le monde », etc. – se superpose au parcours réel du touriste dans l‟espace de l‟Autre. En un mot, marqueur culturel, la carte constitue une clé emblématique du projet du voyage. À ce titre, J. Hutnyk fait remarquer que

Tourist maps constitute the city as a place to be explored, as a site for the geographical unfolding of experiences, as topos of visiting. […] The unfolding of experience via the tourist map […] continues to posit [the place] as an accumulation of images experienced – walkthrough images – a tableau laid out across time in a packeted geography (1996: 120).

La carte préexiste à « l‟usage du monde » (l‟expression employée par N. Bouvier [1992/1963] au sujet du voyage), nous pouvons ainsi le constater. C‟est ce que G. King affirme dans la remarque suivante en accordant à la carte le statut déterminant de marqueur culturel: « Maps enable us to gain a sense of our place in the world, to orient

ourselves. In this way they are like all socio-cultural frameworks […] “through which the world is made intelligible” [Jackson, 1989 : 2]” (1996 : 40). Dans ce sens, la carte se

veut, en effet, quête herméneutique dans une combinatoire des « sights » et des sites¹¹⁸. b) Or, puisque la question de l‟authenticité nous concerne, une précision s‟impose au sujet de la fonction de la carte en tant que marqueur¹¹⁹. Pour qu‟il y ait authenticité, ne faudrait-il pas échapper au code du marqueur, puisque l‟authenticité suppose la dénégation du code établi? En fait, aucune quête de l‟authenticité ne peut échapper à l‟emprise de la carte. Car si l‟on admet que l‟authentique est avant tout un usage perçu comme un signe de cet usage (Culler, 1988)¹²⁰, il est permis de penser qu‟il est

118 Ce constat renvoie à la dynamique entre « marker involvement » et « sight involvement », notion de sémiotique du tourisme proposée par MacCannell (1976) vue dans le cadre du deuxième chapitre (cf. note 13, ch. II, p. 9). Pour plus d‟informations à ce sujet voir aussi Percy (1975) et Culler (1988).

119 Dans les termes de J. Culler (1988 : 159) : « A marker is any kind of information or representation that

constitutes a sight as a sight : by giving information about it, representing it, making it recognizable »

Cela réfère donc au bagage culturel des touristes.

120 Selon Culler, l‟objet de l‟activité touristique ne saurait être les expériences directes de l‟être ou du monde naturel. La quête touristique d‟une expérience authentique d‟un lieu est plutôt une quête d‟une

impossible au touriste d‟échapper à la sémiosis et à la relation complexe « between

authenticity in touristic experience and mediating sign structures or symbolic complexes » (Culler, 1988 : 163). Aussi un véritable refus du code du marqueur est-il

impossible, même si la quête de l‟authenticité semble se démarquer par la dénégation du code établi.

Ce paradoxe apparent de l‟authenticité se résume bien dans la phrase suivante de J. Culler : « The authentic sight requires markers, but our notion of the authentic is the

unmarked » (ibid. : 164). Ainsi par exemple, le rejet de la carte du tourisme dit « de

masse » suppose en effet qu‟une autre carte nouvelle (dite alternative), qui identifie et différentie le « sight » comme authentique, soit fonctionnelle. En effet, la dénégation de la carte qu‟impose la quête de l‟authenticité impose en même temps la nécessité de faire valoir une autre carte qui puisse marquer la quête comme telle. De cette constatation, il appert que « The authenticity the tourist seeks is at one level an escape from the code,

but this escape itself is coded in turn, for the authentic must be marked to be constituted as authentic » (Culler, 1988: 165 ; c‟est nous qui soulignons)¹²¹.

expérience des signes d‟authenticité de ce lieu. Ainsi, Culler (1988: 159) affirme que« The authentic is a

usage perceived as a sign of that usage, and tourism is in large measure a quest for such signs ».

121 C. Minca illustre, à partir de l‟exemple suivant, l‟impossibilité d‟échapper au code cartographique, au bagage culturel : « We can, for argument‟s sake, imagine our traveler in Cairo (a destination which was to inspire so many of the Orientalist dreams of the modern European spirit), searching, in a more or less conscious fashion, for some Ariadne‟s thread capable of giving sense to the complexity of the Oriental spaces before his eyes.

Several options lie before our traveler. He can certainly tackle the city armed with the readily-available tourist cartography; that is, by adopting a strictly “closed”reading of the Egyptian capital, assuming its perspectives, its (more or less exotic) monumental vision, its historicist interpretation, its search for – and reconstruction of – “Oriental”atmospheres. Traveling across this Orientalist space, which assumes the shape of a veritable territorial strategy, our traveler can choose to accept it, in uncritical fashion, as simply a plausible – and consumable – interpretation of Cairo as a representative fragment of the Orient. He can, however, also choose to adopt a series of what de Certeau (1984) would term tactics : utilizing the tools and representational codes of the tourist cartography to undermine this latter‟s credibility “from the inside”, unmasking its perspectives (by, for example, photographing the Sphinx from “the wrong side”, from behind, and thus exposing Cairo‟s rampant building speculation, rapidly encroaching upon the park grounds); exposing, in other words, the mechanisms which allow the strategy to capture Cairo‟s spaces within its grid of power, within its order. An interesting and creative exercise, certainly ; one whose object would lie not within a deconstruction of the strategy‟s “scheme of things” (in order to attempt to impose another, “better”, order) but which would, rather, attempt to unmask the partiality – and the underlying dynamics of power – of this very strategy within its own spaces. Yet both above perspectives are still inescapably bound to the tourist cartography, caged within the closed space that this latter attempts to impose upon any interpretation of Cairo‟s urban context » (2001: 219; souligné

dans l‟original). Minca en conclut: « A seemingly revolutionary and (admittedly) “alternative”attitude is

that of the traveler-spectator who „detaches‟ himself from the map, wholeheartedly rejecting the tourist reading of Cairo : […] Determined to flee the constraints of the tourist cartography, our “alternative” traveler seeks to reach out and touch the true Orient, to experience the genuine atmospheres of the “real life”of this pulsating city, to capture within his mind a “truer”image of the spaces before him. Yet he too

c) Une autre acception de la notion de marqueur qui s‟applique à la carte pourrait être envisagée. La carte porte en elle les deux bords du voyage: l‟horizon d‟attente du touriste et son « usage du monde », autrement dit « l‟espace du désir » et « la construction maîtrisée de l‟espace » (Bouvet, 2003 : 279). Comme le constate Hutnyk, « […] tourists need maps and guidebooks which calibrate with expectations and

evocations formed before their arrival (often of the city as a place of immanent exotic adventure) and often throughout their stay » (ibid. : 117). Il s‟ensuit que les enjeux

cartographiques trouvent leur efficace non dans la simple inscription des lieux effectifs, mais plutôt dans la construction des « resting places for the imagination » pour reprendre l‟expression de P. Carter (1987 : 68). Nous pouvons illustrer ce propos en recourant à la réflexion poétique de T. Shapcott: « The problem with maps is they take

imagination./ Our need for contour invents the curve » (1987, cité dans Huggan, 1989).

C‟est là que nous rejoignons la problématique de Duncan et Gregory (1999) qui repose sur la dimension de la traduction de la spatialité impliquée dans l‟écriture des récits de voyage122. Ils introduisent le concept de l‟espace « in-between » qui offre, à notre avis, un approfondissement de la compréhension de la « géographie imaginaire » de la cartographie.

Travel writing as an act of translation […] constantly works to produce a tense „space in-between‟. Defined literally, „translation‟ means to be transported from one place to

for a “better” map than the one provided by the tourist imaginary » (ibid.: 219-220 ; c‟est nous qui

soulignons).

122 Très emblématique se révèle d‟ailleurs l‟exemple suivant dans la compréhension de cette problématique: « Explorers who eventually found the real Australia imposed their own mappings on the

territory. The early maps and journals were filled with misnomers: “meadows”and “mountains”that owed little in appearance to what usually went by the names, but that provided forms of spatial punctuation [Carter, 1987 : 47]. The English language lacked the words in which to characterize an alien landscape in its own terms, but the problem was more than simply one of naming pre-existing features. They were to be constructed according to a rhetorical process of ordering and claiming the territory. Important signposts on the map such as mountains, hills and rivers were scarce in parts of the Australian interior. Where they did not exist on the ground they might be invented, translating a hostile landscape into a legible text. The less there was for the explorer to see, Carter suggests, the greater might be the need not just to write about but to write the terrain itself. To designate a feature such as a “mount” might precisely be to express the absence of such a feature as usually understood. In some cases the process went a stage further. One surveyor working in the sand dunes of the Victorian Mallee is reported to have constructed his own hills to make up for the shortcoming of nature [ibid.:51]» (King, 1996 : 62, souligné

dans l‟original). King cite Carter pour souligner la portée arbitraire de la cartographie: « They were

nothing more than names and outlines on maps. They bore no relation to reality, but without them travelling was impossible. Whether or not they deceived with their promises of water and anchorage, they did not deceive in harbouring “resting places for the imagination”» (1987 : 68). King en conclut: « The

meaning of such landscapes is neither something given objectively by landforms themselves nor a matter of free individual interpretation. It is an essentially collective, cultural meaning, found at both macroscopic and microscopic social levels, on the map of the whole territory and in the multiplication of symbolic boundaries at the domestic scale » (King, 1996 : 62).

another, so that it is caught up in a complex dialectic between the recognition and recuperation of difference (Miller 1996). […] In re-presenting other cultures and other natures, then, travel writers „translate‟ one place into another, and in doing so constantly rub against the hubris that their own language-game contains the concepts necessary to represent another language-game (Dingwaney 1995, 5, Asad and Dixon 1973 ; 1985). Just as textual translation cannot capture all of the symbolic connotations of language or the alliterative sound of words, the translation of one place into the cultural idiom of another loses some of the symbolic loading of the place for its inhabitants and replaces it with other symbolic values. This means that translation entails both losses and gains, and as descriptions move from one place to another so they circulate in what we have called „a space in-between‟. This space of translation is not a neutral surface and it is never innocent: it is shot through with relations of power and of desire. In general, and as Venuti (1993, 210) points out, translation is either a « domesticating method, an ethnographic

reduction of the foreign text to target language cultural values, bringing the author back home » or a « foreignizing method, an ethnographic pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad »(Duncan et Gregory, 1999 : 4 –5 ; c‟est nous qui soulignons).

d) Cela nous amène à envisager l‟autorité de la carte qui découle de la représentation de la spatialité. Il est loisible de dire que les stratégies rhétoriques de la carte employées dans la construction et l‟organisation de la spatialité ont une double ambition, à savoir la production d‟une entité géographique qui soit conceptuellement contrôlable et la maîtrise réelle de l‟espace. Hutnyk nous renvoie à l‟ordre cartographique sous-jacent à cette double entreprise de déchiffrage épistémologique et de contrôle spatial : « In an

immense overlay of representations, a vast series of like images find, and communicate with, each other to make it possible to imagine an orderliness under the name [of the place] which can be visited, known, and (perhaps) controlled » (1996 : 125; c‟est nous

qui soulignons). Dans ce sens-là, G. Huggan avance que la cartographie se caractérise par une contradiction « between its authoritative status and its approximative function», contradiction qui délimite « the „recognizable totality » of the map as a manifestation of

the desire for control rather than as an authenticating seal of coherence » (1989 : 117).

Il tient à insister que « [t]he “uniformity” of the map […] becomes the subject of a

proposition rather than a statement of fact » (ibid. : 117).

e) À ce stade, il importe d‟interroger ici la carte selon un autre angle d‟attaque qui la considère comme une figure topographique des limites. Dans une telle optique, nous pouvons avancer que l‟omniscience du monde de la carte (autrement dit la « totalité reconnaissable » émanant de la carte) serait sujette à des limites qui imposent une sorte de réduction. King fait remarquer que « Choices always have to be made about what to

represent and how, and what to be leave out. It is here that cartographic meaning is created. To be included on the map is to be granted the status of reality or importance.

To be left off is to be denied » (1996 : 18). Hutnyk fait pour sa part le constat que « […] the purpose of a map is never “full” representation but, rather, adequate and convenient reduction, there is still a slippage which conflates reduction with representation with illustration with manifestation » (1996 : 140)¹²³. Il souligne à juste titre que « [i]n this

sense, cartography is a mode of enclosure, and the constructed boundaries are a kind of stagnation » (ibid. :125). Dans le même esprit, C. Minca avance que « [t]he space of the

“real” thus finds itself enclosed within the order of the representations which narrate it» (2001 : 207)¹²⁴. Par conséquent, on peut se demander avec Minca si l‟ordre des limites ne se calque pas sur les limites de l‟ordre.

In consequence, if no other reality exists outside of that which is representable within our categories, all that which has not yet been included in our classification or traced upon our maps simply does not exist, or appears to our eyes as disorder, chaos, as an order

waiting to be uncovered, to be « put in order ». (ibid. : 207; souligné dans l‟original).

f) Or cette « appearance of order » projetée par la carte présuppose la position détachée (le « point de vue » au double sens du mot) du sujet observant le panorama du monde, c‟est-à-dire « […] a dominating, external observatory, a perspectively “meaningful” vantage point from which to view the object of interest » (Minca, 2001: 204). Autrement dit, « […] such a detachment is only possible if the “reality” before our

traveler‟s eyes is imagined as a façade, as a spectacle – as the panorama of a whole which represents something else, which is endowed with some underlying meaning waiting to be revealed. (ibid. : 205)¹²⁵.C‟est ce qu‟indique T. Mitchell dans Colonising

Egypt (1988): « […] the visitor carries out the characteristic cognitive manœuvre of the modern subject, who separates himself from an object-world and observes it from a position that is invisible and set apart » (1988 : 28)¹²⁶.

123 Tout en gardant en tête que toute sémiose implique une réduction entre le monde et le signe, il est loisible de dire que les limites cartographiques qui s‟imposent sont aussi des limites qu‟imposent (ou du moins matérialisent, confirment ou appuient) une vision du monde. Selon King :« Every map offers only

its own perspective on the world, however objective it may appear or claim to be, a perspective that implies a particular assertion of reality » (1996 : 175).

124 Il convient de nuancer ce propos. La carte est un formidable support de récits, comme l'a bien vu Pierre Jourde (1991), mais elle n'est pas elle-même un récit.

125 Hutnyk a donc raison d‟affirmer que « the map-reader is able to treat the world as an object, as

something which stands ready to be understood » (1996 : 124).

126 En ce qui concerne la position du sujet ou de son point de vue, il faut tenir compte que « [t]he point of

view [is] not just a place set apart, outside the world or above it. It [is] ideally a position from where, like the authorities in the panopticon, one [can] see and yet not be seen. […] To see without being seen confirm[s] one‟s separation from the world, and correspond[s] at the same time to a position of power »

(Mitchell, 1988 : 24-26). Il faut ajouter qu‟il y a cependant une contradiction « between the need to

separate oneself from the world and render it up as an object of representation, and the desire to lose oneself within this object-world and experience it directly » (ibid. : 27). Cette double position, celle du

Selon lui, cette « appearance of objectness » pourrait s‟expliquer ainsi : « [t]he inert

objectness of this world is an effect of its ordering, of its setting up as though it were an exhibition » (ibid. : 62). De là, il introduit la notion de « world-as-exhibition » qui jette

un éclairage important sur notre conceptualisation de la carte. Cette notion qui évoque la « […] celebration of the ordered world of objects and the discipline of the [Western]

gaze » (1988 :12) pourrait se saisir dans la citation qui suit :

[…] in his immersion within the « real » Orient, our traveler is constrained, despite himself, to reduce it to a text, to a representation of something else, to a reproduction of some symbolic but « true » order.

It is a meaning, however, that is never present […], never accessible, but only represented […] (in [the] catalog of ambience and image within which our traveler has become accustomed to describing the world).

Yet […] our explorer is not content with remaining invisible, or considering himself as such. Addicted to the logic of the world-as-exhibition, he still longs to immerse himself within that « reality »; to « enter », at least for an instant, into that exterior whose descriptions he knows so well.

[…] Trapped within this contradiction, he can only take refuge within the certainty of representation¹²⁷ offered to him by the logic of the world-as-exhibition. For it is only within an exhibition, or within a world conceived as a pure exhibition of something beyond it, that [the] two positions – participation and « objective » detachment – can be reconciled ; a well-elaborated assumption in so many theme parks, shopping centers, and tourist itineraries, all of which accomplish such a reconciliation in an admirable fashion, playing upon the ambiguity between a passive and detached observation, on the one hand, and interaction/participation on the other (Minca, 2001: 205-206).

La question de la carte constitue ainsi une porte d'entrée intéressante à l'épistémologie de la représentation, si l‟on considère que dans la production de la carte « [e]verything [is] arranged before an observing subject into a system of signification […], declaring

itself to be the signifier of a signified » (Mitchell, 1988 : 12-13). Pour le dire autrement,

une implication de l‟hypothèse du « world-as-exhibition » est que la production de la carte « […] set[s] up the world as a picture […] [and] order[s] it up before an audience

as an object on display, to be viewed, experienced and investigated » (1988 : 6). Dans ce processus, la spatialité devient « a text to be transcribed and translated » (Gregory, 1995 : 51) et en conséquence, « readable, like a book, in our own sense of such a term »