Page - 179 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Tanja Kapp | Journeying the Page 179 Personal Geography are literally centred around a map of Hebden Bridge, which takes up two pages right in the middle of the zine, locating the listed spots in bright pink [see Fig. 3]. The zine hereby breaks the claim of objectivity posed by maps, which are commonly understood as universal renderings of objective geography. While the visual appearance of a map suggests objectivity, Charleston ridicules this illusion by mapping personal landmarks rather than places whose relevance is approved of and thus privileged by hegemonic discourse. The normative places usually represented in maps are replaced by Charleston’s private points of reference, thus revealing the arbitrariness of institutionalized norms, and specifically the processes of privilege involved in geographical representation. The open framework of the zine invites all kinds of genres and encourages the juxtaposition of a variety of media. As is visible in the very appearance of each page, the zine’s design can be made up of anything that can be put on top of a photocopier (or created on computer software, for that matter). Personal Geography uses point-of-view drawings, texts, and a map in order to show how knowledge is always situated. Using the example of vision to describe her notion of ‘situated knowledges’, Donna Haraway explains that [t]here is no unmediated photograph or passive camera obscura in scientific accounts of bodies and machines; there are only highly specific visual possibilities, each with a wonderfully detailed, active, partial way of organizing worlds. All these pictures of the world should not be allegories of Fig. 3: Map locating landmarks in and around Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire (Charleston 2019: 8–9)