Kartografska vizualizacija i slika Drugoga na primjeru višestruko graničnih prostora
Cartographic Visualisation and the Image of the Other in the Example of Multiple Borderlands

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the communication possibilities of early modern maps as historical sources within the methodological frame of imagology and constructionist theory. A comparative analysis reveals numerous visualisations or images of the Other, which depend not only on the author’s cartographic skills, the selection of the offered information and applied cartographic code, but also on the Habsburg, the Venetian or the Ottoman imperial strategic and cartographic policies on the multiple borderlands of early modern Croatia. Due to their highly suggestive nature, maps were easily used for interpretation and even manipulation with geographic, ideological, confessional, cultural and even linguistic images and denotations. The Other was not always illuminated as being different on the other side of the border, but also as diversity “among us”. Through the whole panoply of complex images of the Other, some of them imposed by a certain imperial power, European as well as Croatian cartographers have created a structured and hierarchical approach to cartography and mapping of the Other. Contemporary rereading of these sources requires a good understanding of the circumstances in which an individual map was made, but also a critical approach not only to sources but to interpretative patterns as well. In the end, it is necessary to compare the map in question with a a complementary source from the “Other side” in order to bridge the gap and remake the existing mental maps, adding intercultural competence aimed at getting to know better the Other.

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