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Archipelagic American Studies
Duke University Press
Copyright:
This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved.
ISBN electronic:
978-0-8223-7320-9
Publication date:
2017
Book Chapter
Islands of Resistance
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Published:May 2017
This chapter argues that a spatial paradigm shift that occurred in the 1940s, imagining a break with the long-accepted Mercator projection, had a significant bearing on the African American planetary imaginary. Mercator’s map rapidly lost its narrative power during World War II. Instead, an innovative cartography adopting an aerial perspective—popularized by Richard Edes Harrison’s “One World, One War” map, drawn in an azimuthal projection centered on the North Pole—represented the United States’ fresh world outlook. It ushered in “air-age globalism.” This chapter asks what is enabled by critical inquiry into such paradigm shifts. By examining the air travels of Walter...
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