Conflation of agency models in Francesco Guala’s social ontology sheds light on how normativity of social institutions might have evolved

Abstract

According to Hannah Arendt, a hallmark of the modern era is the alienation of the individual from the world, understood, in part, as a loss of interest in the common things that mediate political process. Оne of the origins of modern alienation for Arendt was the discovery of the New World and the ensuing explosion of cartography. This article attempts to demonstrate the political potential of maps as a means of “re-engaging with the world”. Following Bonnie Honig, one could argue that the pre-modern tradition of participatory cartography has such potential. The reconnection proposed by this tradition could lie in the transformation of the world reflected on the participatory map into a thing that can serve as a subject of discussion and a basis for the selfidentification of the collective. As a positive illustration of the work of participatory cartography today, the article turns to the late work of Bruno Latour. Seeing modern cartography as a means of reproducing the erroneous notion of the Earth as a closed totality of the Globe, Latour proposes as an alternative other principles of cartography appropriate to the age of the new climatic regime. Some of these principles, in particular the identification of intangible and not always visible agents of territory on cartographic projections, formed the basis of his last experiment ‘Où Atterrir?’. In it, the final maps of territories produced by the research participants become a means of making the public's concerns visible, ensuring the sustainability and accessibility of the political space.