Social & Cultural Geography

ISSN: 1464-9365 (Print) 1470-1197 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rscg20

Carto-fiction: narrativising maps through creative

writing

Giada Peterle

To cite this article: Giada Peterle (2018): Carto-fiction: narrativising maps through creative writing,
Social & Cultural Geography, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2018.1428820

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2018.1428820

Published online: 23 Jan 2018.

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Social & Cultural Geography, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2018.1428820

Carto-fiction: narrativising maps through creative writing

Giada Peterle
Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This study reacts to the recent call for a narrativisation of maps’ life in Received 29 December 2016
post-representational cartography, proposing ‘cartographic fictional Accepted 16 December 2017
writing’ as a means to move geography’s ‘creative (re)turn’ from a place-
KEYWORDS
centred to a ‘carto-centred’ perspective, and as an epistemological tool Post-representational
to go on rethinking maps from post-representational perspectives. cartography; creative
First, ‘carto-fiction’ is defined as a self-reflexive (autoethnographic), writing; ethnofiction;
ethnofictional, creative carto-centred product/practice of research. narrative cartography;
Second, by including the entire short story entitled ‘Unfolding Berlin’ creative geography;
and an autoethnographic account on how it emerged, this study autoethnography
strives to both theorise and perform carto-fictional writing as an
MOTS CLÉS
embodied and trans-subjective mapping experience. My goal is to cartographie post-
propose ‘carto-fiction’ as a prolific tool to let emotional, subjective représentationnelle; écriture
cartographies emerge and to narrativise maps as mapping practices. créative; ethno-fiction;
The article further strives to focus on the mapping power of creative cartographie narrative;
writing, and carto-fictional writing and reading will be interpreted as géographie créative; auto-
mapping performances, in which subjects are bodily and emotionally ethnographie
engaged. The inclusion of original illustrations aims to involve
readers in a visual experience and to further stimulate their spatial PALABRAS CLAVES
imagination: each reader is asked to reflect on his/her own mapping cartografía post-
experiences to interpret the fictional story and, thus, the paper itself representacional; escritura
attempts to unfold unpredicted creative cartographic practices. creativa; etno-ficción;
cartografía narrativa;
geografía creativa; auto-
Carto-fiction: narrativiser les cartes à travers l’écriture etnografía
créative
RÉSUMÉ
Cette étude est une réaction à la demande récente de narrativisation
de la vie des cartes dans la cartographie post-représentationnelle,
proposant « une écriture de fiction cartographique » comme moyen
de déplacer le « (re)tour créatif » d’une perspective centrée sur le lieu
vers une perspective carto-centrée et en tant qu’outil épistémologique
pour continuer à repenser les cartes à partir de perspectives post-
représentationnelles. Tout d’abord, la «  carto-fiction  » est définie
comme un produit/une pratique créative, auto-réflexive (auto-
ethnographique) et ethno-fictionnelle centrée sur la carte. Ensuite,
en incluant la nouvelle complète intitulée «  Déplier Berlin  » et un
récit auto-ethnographique de la façon dont elle est née, cette étude
s’efforce de théoriser et en même temps de donner une représentation
de l’écriture carto-fictionnelle en tant qu’outil prolifique pour laisser
les cartographies émotionnelles et subjectives émerger et pour
narrativiser les cartes comme pratiques de cartographie. Cet article

CONTACT  Giada Peterle  giada.peterle@unipd.it

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2   G. PETERLE

s’efforce en plus de se concentrer sur le pouvoir cartographique

de l’écriture créative et de l’écriture carto-fictionnelle et sa lecture
sera interprétée en tant que représentations cartographiques, dans
lesquelles les sujets sont engagés charnellement et émotionnellement.
L’inclusion d’illustrations originales vise à engager les lecteurs dans
une expérience visuelle et à stimuler en plus leur imagination spatiale :
on demande à chaque lecteur de réfléchir sur ses expériences
cartographiques pour interpréter l’histoire fictive et de cette façon,
l’article en soi tente de dévoiler des pratiques cartographiques
créatives imprévues.

La carto-ficción: la narración de mapas a través de la

escritura creativa
RESUMEN
Este estudio reacciona a la reciente llamada a una narrativización
de la vida de los mapas en la cartografía post-representacional,
proponiendo la ‘escritura ficticia cartográfica’ como un medio para
mover el ‘(re)torno creativo’ de la geografía desde una perspectiva
centrada en el lugar hacia una ‘carto-centrada’, y como una herramienta
epistemológica para seguir repensando los mapas desde perspectivas
post-representacionales. En primer lugar, la ‘carto-ficción’ se define
como un producto/práctica de investigación auto-reflexivo (auto-
etnográfico), etno-ficcional, y creativo centrado en la cartografía. En
segundo lugar, al incluir todo el cuento titulado ‘Unfolding Berlin’ y
una narración auto-etnográfica sobre cómo surgió, este estudio se
esfuerza por teorizar y llevar a cabo la escritura carto-ficcional como
una experiencia de mapeo corporal y transubjetiva. El objetivo es
proponer la ‘carto-ficción’ como una herramienta prolífica para hacer
emerger las cartografías subjetivas y emocionales y para narrativizar
los mapas como prácticas de mapeo. El artículo se esfuerza además por
centrarse en el poder de mapeo de la escritura creativa, y la escritura
y la lectura carto-ficticia se interpretarán como representaciones
de mapeo, en las cuales los sujetos están comprometidos corporal
y emocionalmente. La inclusión de ilustraciones originales tiene
como objetivo involucrar a los lectores en una experiencia visual y
estimular aún más su imaginación espacial: se le pide a cada lector que
reflexione sobre sus propias experiencias de mapeo para interpretar
la historia ficticia y, por lo tanto, el estudio intenta desplegar prácticas
cartográficas creativas impredecibles.

Prologue
Note to the readers
The day I began to write down in a confused, imprecise, full of gaps and holes, subjective
and therefore absolutely partial and incomplete manner my thoughts about what I saw,
about what I was told someone else had seen or heard, I didn’t expect that my notes might
have been read, someday, even by just one other person. But sometimes things don’t happen
the way we plan them to. Nevertheless there’s one thing I’m absolutely certain about: if I
had known, that day, that my notes might have been read, someday, even by just one other
person, then the following pages might not be here, or at least they might be totally different.
I think it’s something one may consider, if reading them.
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   3

Now, some of you readers will think I’m too distracted and absentminded to be a reliable
writer. That’s probably true. Others, on the contrary, will think that I’m a clever plotter playing
with the minds of her readers in the same way she manipulates those of her characters. No
matter who I am, I hope the story – if it can be called a story – speaks now for itself. And
please, just remember that if something seems to you somehow out of the ordinary and
incomplete, or even trivial and insignificant, in the way characters move and make their
decisions, in the way the narrator comments what they’re doing or not saying, well, that’s
not only the way fiction works but also the way life plots our existences.
Because this is not a book, and more important I’m not a writer, I don’t want to spin out
this... prologue? At this point, all I ask of you unexpected readers is to help me make Frank’s
story happen, again and again, until we find at least one reasonable sense to give to his map.
Thus, even you are asked to fill up some holes hither and thither, being yourself a party to
a trick that some would just call fiction. The border between reality and fiction will sometimes
be evident; at other times it will fade away, dissolving into the intricate maze of lines com-
posing this urban map. All I can say is that if it’s important to you to draw a line between real
and fictional maps, to separate facts and ‘stories’, then you’d better leave these pages where
you accidentally found them all. I ask of you readers is to help me make Frank’s story happen,
again and again, until we find at least one reasonable sense to give to his map. Thus, even
you are asked to fill up some holes hither and thither, being yourself a party to a trick that
some would just call literature. The border between reality and fiction will sometimes be
evident; at other times it will fade away, dissolving into the intricate maze of lines composing
this urban map. All I can say is that if it’s important to you to draw a line between real and
fictional maps, to separate facts and ‘stories’, then you’d better leave these pages where you
accidentally found them.

Introduction
After the so-called ‘crisis of representation’, geographers and social scientists have called for
‘resolute experimentalism’ (Dewsbury, 2010, p. 321) to realise a more creative and perform-
ative engagement with qualitative research (Banfield, 2016; Hawkins, 2013, 2015; Marston
& De Leeuw, 2013). Working closely with artists and art-based practices, geographers have
been stimulated to rethink their traditional research tools, engaging more thoroughly with
‘storytelling’ as a means to express emotion and subjectivity and to convey a deeper under-
standing of spatial experience in academic research (Cameron, 2012; Lorimer & Parr, 2014;
Wylie, 2005). Despite the prolific emergence of journals and special issues – as, for example,
the section in Practice of Cultural Geographies or the special issue of the Geographical Review
103(2) 2013 – that openly welcome and put creative research endeavours at the centre of
their analysis, many interesting lines of intersection between theoretical thinking and cre-
ative practices still lack exploration. Aiming to contribute to this fervent debate, this paper
strives, in its form and contents, to both reflect on and perform creative fictional writing and
propose it as a research method in cartographic theory. Through a hybrid-form that alternates
the creative paragraphs of a fictional short story with more traditional methodological ones,
my attempt is to propose a hybrid-space in which to theorise and perform the prolific employ-
ment of fiction as an epistemological tool for ‘emergent cartography’ (Kitchin & Dodge, 2007),
and in which to cross the borders between representation/practice in academic writing and
reading. Thus, the fictional text titled ‘Unfolding Berlin’, which is included in this contribution,
4   G. PETERLE

not simply accompanies, but frequently integrates the theoretical paragraphs. In the same
way, the included illustrations are meant to enrich the evocative power of the fictional par-
agraphs, trying to stimulate readers’ spatial imagination through a creative graphic beyond
textual support.
Primarily, this paper tries to address the challenge of proposing creative writing as a
qualitative method of interdisciplinary research that could be profitably employed to explore
‘emergent’ and ‘post-representational cartographies’ (Fernández, Iván, & Buchroithner, 2014;
Kitchin, Gleeson, & Dodge, 2013; Rossetto, 2015) from an emotionally charged, strongly
affecting and deliberately subjective perspective. ‘Ethnofiction’, a method introduced by
anthropologist Marc Augé to employ fictional writing in ethnographic research that was
already explored in geographical research as well (Augé, 2013; Lancione, 2016; Sjöberg,
2008); ‘fictional vignettes’, fictional narrative texts invented by geographers to illustrate and
present research outcomes (Rabbiosi & Vanolo, 2016); ‘auto-geography’ (Sullivan, 2015) and
‘autoethnography’ (Butz & Besio, 2009; Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011), auto-reflective forms
of spatio-centred writing, represent recent examples that pave the way to propose ‘carto-fic-
tion’ as a cartographic, fictional and autoethnographic practice to perform and product to
(re)present qualitative research.
By understanding stories as modes of knowledge production (Cameron, 2012, p. 586),
this article contributes to the lively ‘creative (re)turn’ in geography (Eshun & Madge, 2016;
Madge, 2014; Marston & De Leeuw, 2013) suggesting creative fictional writing as a way for
cartographic thinking to emerge. Therefore, the reasoning is structured around two main
challenges. First, by proposing creative cartographic-writing as a method for post-representa-
tional cartographic research, this paper aims to move geography’s ‘telling turn’ (Lorimer &
Parr, 2014, p. 544) beyond its place- and landscape-centred perspective (Hawkins, 2013;
Lorimer, 2008; Ward, 2014), moving from place-writing to cartographic-writing. Second, the
article reacts to the recent call in post-representational cartography to engage with narratives
‘to tell the stories of the map’s life’ (Caquard & Cartwright, 2014, p. 104). Instead of simply
interpreting maps as generative means of storytelling (Field, 2014, p. 100), I propose inter-
preting fictional narratives as generative means of mapping practices, and of autoethno-
graphic reflections on subjective mapping experiences and cartographic emotions. From a
self-reflective perspective, I read my cartocentred writing as a creative practice that made
my emotional mapping of the city of Berlin emerge; focus on the way in which the practice
of storytelling permits us to elicit unpredicted understandings of our own mapping expe-
riences and cartographic thinking; and propose ‘carto-fiction’ as a means for both authors
and readers, not simply for representing, but even rethinking and performing, maps as
mapping practices (Kitchin et al., 2013).
Hence, in the first part entitled Thinking cartographic fiction: The narrativisation of maps
as mappings, I introduce ‘carto-fiction’ as a method of research to be at the same time the-
oretical and emotional, rigorous and creative, self-reflexive (auto-ethnographic) and
trans-subjective (ethnographic). In the second part, entitled Doing carto-fiction: An autoeth-
nographic account, I bring non-representational approaches in geography together with
‘relational thinking’ in literary geography that understands text and writing as ‘spatial events’
(Anderson & Saunders, 2015; Hones, 2008; Saunders, 2013), to consider ‘carto-fiction’ as both
a product and process, with its doings beyond its representational outcome (DeLyser &
Hawkins, 2014). Therefore, in Writing carto-fiction I will focus on the process of textual pro-
duction/consumption that I was involved in during Summer School at the Humboldt
Universität zu Berlin in 2014; and in Reading carto-fiction I will interpret the short story
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   5

‘Unfolding Berlin’ and its illustrations as representations (i.e. products of creative endeavours)
in fictional form of my mapping experience and emotions.
Finally, through its hybrid structure this paper strives to provide readers with a more-
than-reading experience, with a place for cartographical (re)presentation, thinking and
doing. Being at the same time critical academic scholars and enchanted readers of fictional
stories, you are asked to make the ‘spatial event’ of this text happen (Hones, 2008, p. 1301)
and ‘to fill up some holes hither and thither, being yourself a party’ to this research process.
From this experiment in representing and performing (Cook, 2014, p. 136) cartographic
fiction, undisclosed cartographic emotions are expected to emerge. The major part of the
unfolding effort is now up to you. Enjoy your reading.

Unfolding Berlin
Part one. The ‘city-plan’
Frank has never been an adventurous or daring guy. I could tell you many stories about his
past, from his childhood up to the present day. Stories that would reveal the kind of fearful
coward he has always been. But it might take too long. And this story might become another
story altogether. It may suffice to say that in kindergarten he wasn’t in the habit of playing
with other children. Frank preferred to play with Legos, building cities that he could renew
and control from above and destroy precisely when he felt certain he wanted to raze his
miniature geographies.
The situation didn’t improve when he grew up. At 14, when all his peers started falling in
love, Frank preferred to read love stories. With the passing of time, he recognised himself as
not only a good reader, but also a good writer. Apparently, writing creatively involved for
him even less risk than reading a plot that goes wherever someone else wanted it to. He
discovered that the best way to avoid the risks of life was to watch it distantly, with a pen in
hand, telling stories he could start, stop and rewrite at will in case something went wrong.
He spent a few years – maybe more than a few – reading and writing the lives of others
instead of living his own. I don’t know whether it was a novel or an adventure movie that
changed his mind. Nobody will ever know. However, he suddenly decided to start living his
life. It was a big turn, an important decision. For him, it was simply a brave choice.
Why he decided to do it precisely in Berlin is one of the mysteries about Frank that will
never be revealed. I believe he used to travel a lot, around the world, just sitting on his couch,
by reading maps and novels about the most beautiful cities in the world, and thus feeling
increasingly close to them. Paris could be a good choice, he might have said, but if you’ve
ever read Zola, Balzac, Hugo or Baudelaire, your mind would be flooded by so many images
of that city you would feel as if you had always lived there, or at least as if you had been there
many times before. There are cities – I’m quite sure Frank felt pretty sure of this – where the
presence of narratives will never let you indulge in loneliness. Those cities don’t offer empty
spaces to inhabit with your own stories. Paris is an archaeological site. You can visit it, maybe
add some new layers, but you can’t lay a new foundation. Berlin is not like that, he thought.
Of course, he had read about Berlin before. According to what he had gathered on his
way to Alexanderplatz, the opportunity to find a free room in which to stop, and then to
take up a new life was not out of reach there. The city’s history, its commitment not to forget
together with its desire to move forward made it a nomadic city, full of cranes constantly
rebuilding its self-portraits. Berlin is the perfect place for me to be!, he believed, staring
finally at the Fernsehturm. In truth, he was underestimating the mobile nature of its map.
6   G. PETERLE

Even though he had started a new life, Frank maintained his confidence in cartographic
representations. He was deeply convinced maps were the best way to decipher the com-
plexity of a city, and thus to dominate it. For him, survival in a metropolis required a blueprint,
or better a plan. Or, even better, a ‘city plan’. He believed maps were the best means for
representing, and thus exploring and dwelling in places. To be honest, this preoccupation
with having plans and drawing maps was for our dear Frank a way to preserve himself from
future events and what they might bring.
That’s why Frank, before departing for Berlin, began to explore the Berlin subway map,
following the directions and stories of the coloured metro lines, sometimes imagining enter-
ing and exiting their yellow cars.

Thinking cartographic fiction: the narrativisation of maps as mappings

From place-writing to cartographic-writing
Just like ‘our dear Frank’ imagines the stories dwelling in the subway map (Illustration 1) in
this last passage from ‘Unfolding Berlin’, cartographic theorists, too, have widely recognised
the intrinsic ‘power of maps to stimulate and support narrative process’ (Caquard & Cartwright,
2014, p. 104). This narrative power is not merely confined to the creative effort made by the
cartographer but is refracted in every moment maps-users engage with maps, composing
their emotional, affected, memorial and sensuous narrative trajectories to follow. Increasingly,
the power of maps to stimulate stories is not limited to the large use and study of ‘maps in
literature’ (Muehrcke & Muehrcke, 1974) but involves also quotidian micropolitics of ‘vernac-
ular mapping’ (Gerlach, 2014), leading non-professional map-users to become narrators of
their everyday cartographic practices.

Illustration 1.  Entering the U-Bahn. Author: Giada Peterle.

According to emergent, post-representational cartographies, maps are in-becoming map-

ping processes (Caquard, 2015; Kitchin & Dodge, 2007; Rossetto, 2015) that constantly work
in the world through practices (Kitchin et al., 2013, p. 481). At the same time, it could be
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   7

argued that carto-centred narratives are not simply narrative processes but even ‘car-
tographic events’, mapping practices that come to life every time someone engages with
them through writing/reading practices. Therefore, given the capacity of maps to tell stories,
I would like to focus on the mapping power of creative writing and on creative writing/
reading as mapping practices, considering another generative entanglement between sto-
ries and maps to be explored in cartographic theory. If maps stimulate stories to emerge, at
the same time stories, and the practices of writing and reading them, have the power to
make authors and readers aware of their everyday engagement with maps as embodied
and affected, subjective and relational mapping experiences. Thus, on the one hand, ‘car-
tographic-fiction’ could be a prolific tool for encountering geography’s ‘re-invigorated inter-
section with art and artistic practices’ (Banfield, 2016) from a still unexplored ‘cartocentred
and cartocritical’ perspective (Peterle, 2017; Rossetto, 2014). On the other hand, the (re)
emergent collaboration between creativity and geography, with its peculiar attention to
creative writing as an epistemological practice, could offer a response to the recent call for
a narrativisation of maps’ life in cartographic theory (Caquard & Cartwright, 2014, p. 104).
Artistic practice and creative ‘doings’ have been taken seriously as a mode of inquiry in
qualitative research (Banfield, 2016, p. 464), especially for the critical exploration of several
geographical themes such as the body, identity, home, memory, urban politics, post-hu-
manism and post-colonialism (Hawkins, 2013, pp. 53–54). Among this broad thematic spec-
trum, attention has mainly been focused on ‘creative-critical place-writing’ (Ward, 2014, p.
756) and to place, landscape, and the subject’s body from a non-representational perspective
(Wylie, 2011, p. 111). Since site and place are understood now as fluid, virtual assemblages
of multi-scalar heres and nows (Hawkins, 2015, p. 252), creative-critical place-writing has
been recognised as a method for ‘researching differently’ (Hawkins, 2015, p. 261) the
ever-changing ‘poetics of place’ (Cresswell, 2014; Lorimer, 2008). If geographers are using
storytelling as a research method to reveal the subjective and affective dimensions of place
(Jacobson & Larsen, 2014, p. 180), I argue that creative writing could be profitably used by
cartographic theorists, too, to illustrate maps as ongoing mappings. Indeed, the exploration
of creative writing as a method of research in the field of cartographic theory could stimulate
the affective, emotional and embodied aspects related to maps as mapping experiences to
emerge, making them readable through the telling of stories. This would involve the author
of the story, who performs creative fictional writing as a means to re-elaborate his/her own
mapping experiences; and the reader, who is asked, on the one hand, to be involved in the
characters’ mapping practices, embodied perceptions and emotional connections through-
out the text and, on the other hand, to enrich his/her reading with emotions, perceptions
and sensations coming from his/her own real mapping experience.
To move from a place-centred to a carto-centred perspective on creative writing, I refer
to ‘The art of writing place’ (2014), where Ward individuates three main topics emerging
from geographers’ creative place-writings: the understanding of place as a fluid, in-becoming
process; the relationship between the body and place and the intertwined nature of sub-
jectivity and place in the experience of landscape; and the interpretation of both text and
place as relational ongoing ‘spatial events’ emerging through networks of spatio-temporal
interactions (Ward, 2014, pp. 761–763). I suggest that a proposal for creative cartographic
writing could start from these three topics, replacing relational place with post-representa-
tional ‘maps as mappings’ as the main focus. The restated goals would be to explore the
following: maps as ongoing processes, as always mappings; the relationship between the
8   G. PETERLE

map, the subject and the body, and the embodied, emotional, affective and sensuous aspects
of the individual mapping experience; the cartocentred creative text as a ‘cartographical
event’, as a place for ongoing mapping practices for authors and readers, map-makers and
map-users to emerge and intertwine, stimulating each other.
Where Kitchin et al. (2013) asked to ‘concentrate on how mappings unfold through a
plethora of contingent, relational and contextual practices’ (p. 494), I argue that a creative
writing practice informed by post-representational perspectives on cartography could
respond to their call by playing on two levels: on the intra-diegetic one, where ‘carto-fiction’
represents embodied, affective, and emotional mapping practices within the fictional nar-
ration; and on the extra-diegetic one, where it provides author/reader with a narrative of
maps as well as a mapping performance in the composition/reception of the text. These two
levels are also at the core of this contribution that represents maps as practices, both theo-
rising and narrating mapping experiences; and that also presents, by the insertion of the
entire short story ‘Unfolding Berlin’ and its illustrations, an opportunity for the readers to be
involved in a process of meaning-making.

‘Carto-fiction’ as method
In ‘Narrative cartography: from mapping stories to the narrative of maps and mapping’ (2014)
Caquard and Cartwright addressed the importance for post-representational cartography of
‘developing narratives that critically describe the cartographic process and context in which
maps unfold’ (p. 101). They further underlined that ‘telling the story about how maps are
created and how they come to life in a broad social context and in the hands of their users
has become a new challenge for mapmakers’ (p. 101). It is especially to the multiple ways and
manifold social, spatial and temporal contexts in which maps come to life, becoming mapping
practices in the hands of their users, that I would try to refer proposing creative writing as a
prolific means for cartographic research. Where the practices of mapmaking and using have
already been profitably approached through (auto)ethnographical, phenomenological, nar-
rative and self-reflective research methods (Boria & Rossetto, 2017; Kitchin et al., 2013;
Rossetto, 2012; Wood, 2010), the employment of fictional writing to both narrate and reflect
on maps as ongoing mapping practices appears as a still uncharted field in cartographic
theory. Telling fictional stories of map use could be a new challenge for map-thinkers.
There are a few questions that need to be asked to start defining ‘carto-fiction’ as a creative
written representation and writing practice and to suggest it as a useful tool for narrativising
maps’ life: How would carto-centred narratives, as textual representations, meet the idea of
maps as never-ending processes? From what kind of writing processes do these narratives
emerge, and what kind of reading experiences do they provide their readers with? And
which kind of narratives could best meet the need to narrativise maps as mappings?
Reacting to these three main questions will help me to outline ‘carto-fiction’ as a method
for cartographic research. As emerges from the special issue of Cultural Geographies in Practice
21(1) 2014, devoted to modes and experiments in writing creatively, a non-representational
approach to the different forms of writing praxis in geography (Kitchin, 2014, p. 156) has
already moved geographers’ attention from the written page as a representation to the
writing practice as a performance of thought. This suggests to engage with creative car-
tographic-writing not just as a posteriori representation but as a cartographical practice and
method for knowledge-making (DeLyser & Hawkins, 2014, p. 132). Cartographic theorists
should be aware of themselves as writers and of how texts actively work on and through
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   9

their readers (ibidem). Thus, to answer the first question, cartographers’ creative texts could
be compared to maps as mappings, since they are both practices that unfold every time
readers/users bring them into action through embodied, affective and emotional interac-
tions (Kitchin et al., 2013). Moreover, if we sustain the co-constitution between ‘text, writer,
and us as readers’ (DeLyser & Hawkins, 2014, p. 133), ‘carto-fiction’ is interpreted as a process
in which authors/readers give sense and significance to their own mappings, intertwining
them with the ones told in the fictional story. In the ‘cartographic event of the text’ emotional,
subjective and intimate impressions connected to mapping experiences coexist with theo-
retical, social, inter-subjective and relational reflections on them, being constantly stimulated
by the fictional texts’ narrated situations and impressions. Thus, never-ending mapping
processes unfold from the encounter between authors, readers and texts.
Non-representational, practice-based approaches further suggest that (writing) practice
has to be recognised as ‘the means through which theory is created’ (Morton, 2009, p. 124),
and that representation could be thought of as an ongoing, constantly assembling and
disassembling, timing and spacing process of ‘worlding’ (Dewsbury, Harrison, Rose, & Wylie,
2002, p. 438). This process of ‘wor(l)ding’, of creating projections of actual and virtual worlds
through words just like the story ‘Unfolding Berlin’ does, could be compared with the process
of letting new mappings emerge from carto-centred narratives. Writing and reading stories
in which maps are narrated as mapping practices are understood here as processes for
experiencing beyond theorising maps in post-representational ways. Thus, to answer the
second question, cartographic writing and reading are capable of unfolding cartographic
knowledge and of providing authors/readers with mapping experiences in several manners.
First, the written product is interpreted as a representation that is iterative and disseminative,
being performative in itself (Dewsbury et al., 2002, p. 439). This means that the text, like a
map, is produced by authors through relational networks but also always re-produced by
its readers’ engagements. Second, the writing/reading practices are interpreted as mapping
performances in which subjects are bodily, emotionally and actively involved to question
and enhance their cartographic knowledge, and experience.
Finally, the third and last question helps me to introduce ‘carto-fiction’ and to characterise
it as a method. While geography’s ‘telling turn’ (Lorimer & Parr, 2014, p. 544) has been widely
enriched by qualitative, ethnographic methodologies coming from the social sciences, the
question about how to preserve scientific rigour and yet ‘construct texts and performances
that challenge the reader more thoroughly’ (Pratt, 2000, p. 648) has been asked many times.
One of the challenges of proposing ‘carto-fiction’ as a method would be to involve also
cartographic theory in the same geographical debate, through the exploration of ethno-
graphic methodologies and even fictional narration. Given its main carto-centred perspec-
tive, which means that maps and mapping practices represent both its theoretical and
narrative focuses, ‘carto-fiction’ is characterised by two further complementary components:
an autoethnographic, self-aware and self-reflexive component, and a creatively fictional one.
First, with reference to its ‘auto-ethnographic’ component, carto-fictional writing aims to
be theoretical and rigorous through being emotional and creative, intimate and self-reflexive
through being trans-subjective and relational. Therefore, ‘carto-fiction’ is not inspired by the
literary genre of autobiography but rather by experimental writing methods developed for
qualitative research, like ‘autoethnography’ (Butz & Besio, 2009; Ellis et al., 2011), for its self-re-
flexive character, and ‘ethnofiction’ (Augé, 2013; Sjöberg, 2008), for its fictional one. Following
recent definitions of ‘autoethnographic sensibility’ (Butz & Besio, 2009, p. 1671), ‘carto-fiction’
is thought of as a method that strives to understand wider spatial and social cartographic
10   G. PETERLE

phenomena by transposing the embodied and subjective aspects of mapping experience

in an evocative narrative form. The author of carto-fictional writing is supposed to be both
an imaginative creative writer and a cartographic theorist. This intertwined identity makes
him/her aware of the processes of producing and using maps; it further makes him/her
emotionally affected by his/her own mapping experiences while composing the narrative
text; finally, he/she is the situated subject of the performative process of writing itself, and
thus is able to self-reflexively think about the networks of spatio-temporal and social inter-
actions that influenced him/her during the writing process. Furthermore, as for ‘autoeth-
nography’, ‘carto-fiction’ aims to collapse conventional distinctions between the subject and
the object of research, and it deliberately makes use of the researcher’s situatedness and
subjectivity as epistemological resources (Butz & Besio, 2009, p. 1662).
Second, with reference to its ‘fictional’ component, ‘carto-fiction’ employs literary story-
telling conventions to engage readers more thoroughly (Ellis et al., 2011) through a more
accessible text that should reach a wider audience and engage it in a more intimate and
emotional way. Furthermore, because carto-fictional writing is informed by both cartographic
theories and personal, imaginative engagements with maps as mapping practices in everyday
life, its product and ‘doings’ are meant to be cartographically rigorous and analytical, espe-
cially because of their fictional and creative form. In ‘carto-fiction’, the actual and the virtual
mapping experiences blur into another, being mutually enriched. Therefore, even when
conveying a sense of realism by referring to real places, plausible practices, events and people
(Jacobson & Larsen, 2014, p. 181), ‘carto-fiction’ emphasises its fictive essence. According to
Anderson (2015), fiction has the power ‘to invent, alter, and influence space not only in the
reader’s imagination, but also in terms of more material geographies’ (p. 128). Thus, after
Auge’s (2013) experiment in ethnofictional writing, even geographers have started to play
with the hybridisation between academic and fictional writing, composing ‘fictional vignettes’
(Rabbiosi & Vanolo, 2016) and short stories (Lancione, 2016) purposely invented as research
tools to access specific social phenomena; to translate results of research in an effective and
appealing way that could facilitate their dissemination; to privilege the role of emotions and
take advantage of positionality and reflexivity in geographical research; and to emotionally
engage the reader and bring him/her closer to the empathetic understanding of the described
situations. ‘Carto-fiction’ takes advantage of these examples. Reading the story of Frank,
readers are supposed to be engaged by his cartographic emotions, embodied perceptions
and cartographic projections. ‘Unfolding Berlin’ as an example of ‘carto-fiction’ aims to be a
relational space for authors/readers to explore their own understanding of post-representa-
tional cartographies and to perform mapping experiences and cartographic thinking.
In the second part of this paper, the analysis of carto-fictional writing ‘as a geographical
process’ (Saunders, 2013, p. 286), through an autoethnographic account, will help me to
self-reflexively think about my creative writing practice/product and to cross the dichotomy
of knowledge production/consumption in academic research. All I ask of you now, is to
immerse yourself in Frank’s mapping experience, while thinking about your own will maybe
help you in composing the reading route throughout the text.

Unfolding Berlin
Part two. Unfolding the ‘city-plan’
When he finally reached Alexanderplatz, he held the subway map in one hand and a plan
– quite similar to a city plan – in his head. Some say he might have been carrying a red
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   11

notebook with him, and even if we actually don’t have any reliable confirmation about this
– rather just plenty of rumours circulating about him, about what he might have done or
written or said – I believe it’s more likely to be true. Yet, what we are almost sure about is
that, according to his plan, he wanted to start from the centre of the city – of course it was
Alex – and move outward drawing concentric circles on the map. He wanted to discover the
spaces step by step, leaving an old road for a new one, at least not before feeling completely
safe in that old road. It was the right compromise – I believe – between the new, brave Frank,
and the old, fearful one.
When he found himself staring for the first time at the big swarming square, a shiver ran
down his spine. He wasn’t sure whether it was fair or simply life, but it was in that moment
that his city-plan began to change without Frank was even noticing it. It was in that moment,
the map in his hand, the smell of asphalt mingled with fried oil and Bratwurst penetrating
his nostrils, that Frank saw her. A girl who resembled no character he had ever read about
in any book by any author, living or dead. No one had ever written about her incredibly
nimble figure. He was not prepared for that, and the voice of his thoughts seemed amplified
by the sound of the large moving crowd, working as a megaphone in his head.
She wore her backpack like an armour, and headphones that made her seem invulnerable.
Her steps were quick and confident, so fast that Frank didn’t even realise he was following
her across the square, over the tram rails, inside the station with all its glaring neon signs.
McDonald’s, Burger King, Rossmann, Deutsche Bahn, Bvg, Le Crobag, journals that smelt as
if they were fried, dogs with bottles, punks parading like well-dressed women. When he
finally found himself waiting with her on the U2 platform for the Underground to come, he
knew he couldn’t stop, even though it wasn’t planned at all, even if his blueprint – I’m almost
sure – didn’t include to meet any female character.

Illustration 2.  Meeting the girl. Author: Giada Peterle.

12   G. PETERLE

It’s difficult for me to account now for what happened at that time. I can only imagine
that Frank was totally overtaken by the unknown charm of that girl, overpowered by all the
city’s noises and faces, smells and lights and movements. What I know for sure is that he
boarded the subway without even thinking about it, as if he were a regular customer of the
U-Bahn.
Perhaps it was the rising noise of the car moving beneath the square that woke him as
though from a deep dream. At that point, when he realised where he was and what he
was doing – I have to be accurate and honest – he wasn’t that brave, not at all. He started
sweating, and salt beads formed across his face. He needed a plan, a rearranged plan – of
course – but still a plan. So, he pulled the subway map from his pocket to determine where
he was on it, and whither he was moving along its lines. He remembered from his pre-
paratory journeys that the U2 was the orange line, so he found it quite easily. Like it was
easy to find Alexanderplatz, a prominent intersection of lines on the subway plan. Yet the
point was to find himself, and he knew he could do so only by reaching the next station.
When the speakers announced ‘Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz’, he knew he was moving north. As
soon as the subway reemerged into sunlight, he felt as if his mental obscurity were falling
away.
Perhaps, the old Frank might have simply left the train at the next stop to go back to
Alexanderplatz, to the barycentre of his city plan. Yet – according to what I read about that
day – that’s not what he did. He decided to speak with her, at least to ask her her name. She
was sitting on the opposite line of seats, almost directly in front of him, writing in a red
notebook. The rhythm of her pen changed constantly. Sometimes it touched the page for
only a few seconds – Just some words or impressions? – and sometimes it lasted a bit longer
– Perhaps a whole sentence, a complete thought? – Frank thought, staring at her. He could
have asked her for a pen, pretending to have something important to write down in his red
notebook as well. But as soon as she looked up from the page, running the risk of crossing
his eyes, Frank just looked away. As you might know, readers, bravery does not grow that
fast!
Once again, it’s hard to know if it was the confusion created by the multitude of people
leaving and entering the car from the Eberswalderstraße platform, or if it was all his fault,
and he had been too deeply absorbed in his thoughts. Anyway, by the time the car restarted
and the passengers found their seats, the girl had disappeared, swallowed up by the city.
Frank decided to exit the U-Bahn, even if he was beginning to feel safe there. At the next
station, Schönhauser Allee, he exited the car convinced that he would simply catch the
subway going in the opposite direction, in order to return to Alex and to finally find his room
at the Park Inn skyscraper.
I am quite sure that, at this point in the story, something had already changed in Frank’s
way of being, though he was not aware of it. None of us, including me, stood on that platform
on that day. So the only way to go on telling this story is to follow the bare things we know
about it, taking them to be real. According to what I was told, when Frank left the car and
began to move to the other side of the platform, direction Olympia Stadion – Ruhleben, the
girl with the backpack reappeared on the escalator. Frank began to run, taking the steps two
at a time. This time, he wasn’t scared of going down unpredicted paths for taking unexpected
directions. As she stopped, waiting for the Ring-Bahn to arrive, Frank was panting only a few
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   13

metres behind her. He moved closer, determined not to let her disappear again. Thinking
about it now, it seems quite impossible that the girl didn’t notice Frank at all. Anyway, she
must have been very charming if Frank boarded the train without so much as a glance at
the number of the line, without even checking its colour or terminus on the map. Hard to
believe, the direction didn’t matter to him anymore.
At any rate, it was the Ring, a line with no end. Which is probably why Frank, while he was
literally moving around the Berlin city centre, stopped thinking about time and stations,
stops and departures. The Ring moved like a clock that always knows where it’s going,
whither it’s always coming back again and again in a few hours. Clocks have no fear of the
future, they just keep on moving. And the same does the Ring. Not by chance, Frank was on
the S41, the train running clockwise around the city.

Illustration 3. Moving clockwise. Author: Giada Peterle. 

When the girl left the train at Ostkreuz – three o’clock on the map – Frank didn’t even
notice it. He was looking out the window. Surely, in the meantime, the girl left once again,
and a boy holding a small dog with laboured breathing sat in her place together with an old
Turkish woman with a spotted silk scarf, who carried a brown cart that must have been
extremely heavy, and a red-faced man with a belly his shirt could barely contain. In my
opinion, the girl didn’t disappear. Frank was simply still too much of a coward to fall in love.
But that’s only my opinion, you’d be better to have yours.
Frank’s mind was racing as fast as the stops succeeded each other. Points on a circular
line, dots on the map. Yet, I can only imagine his thoughts, and I’ll never know exactly how
he came to the decision to leave the Ring at Westkreuz – nine o’clock on the subway map
– and join the city centre with the S5. He passed by Charlottenburg, with its elegant buildings
14   G. PETERLE

and refined restaurants, and crossed the cleaned-up Zoologischer Garten, ready to open
another chair shop, and the Tiergarten, with the bicycles and small paths drawing a labyrinth
on the green grass.

Illustration 4. Embodying the map. Author: Giada Peterle.

Maybe it was because he saw himself reflected in the glass of the Hauptbahnhof and the
face he saw was his bravest face ever. Maybe it was because the blood running through his
veins reminded him, at that precise moment, of the coloured lines of the Underground
pulsating through the city with their burden of stories and lives. We’ll never be sure. But as
soon as he reached Friedrichstrasse, he exited the S-Bahn, running down the stairs to catch
the violet U6 towards Alt-Mariendorf, going down. Constantly checking the subway map in
his hands, Frank realised he was passing through Mitte, and started thinking of its iconic
buildings on the overground. But that was just before turning to the right on the subway
map, towards Kreuzberg with its graffiti-painted walls and small cafés on the blue U7. Yet
that was just before changing his mind again, this time to follow the darker blue of the U8
up through Neukölln, with its Turkish markets and people speaking loudly, the spicy coloured
foods and scarves and the spinach-cheese börek wrapped in glossy art paper. Frank felt like
he would have been able to do it again and again, moving as fast as his finger on the map.
And this is why, when the subway speaker announced ‘Alexanderplatz, change here for U2’,
he hesitated for a moment before deciding that it was time for him to go to the Park Inn.
Climbing the stairs to leave the station, his heart was beating as after a long run, his legs
hurting as they hadn’t in a long time.
It was noon, the Alexanderplatz station full of voices and footsteps and sounds. A young
Asian man was singing near a column while the horde of workers, and tourists and cops
never stopped to watch him, not even to listen to his voice. Frank was one of them.
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   15

Illustration 5. Touching the map. Author: Giada Peterle.

As he climbed the last step, the sunlight slowly beginning to replace the synthetic lights
of the station, he put his hand on his breast pocket to confirm that the map was there, in its
appointed place. Preserved for another day, maybe tomorrow.
The big sheets of glass that formed the east and south walls of room 1041 of the Park Inn
Hotel in Alexanderplatz were like windows on the infinite abyss of city life. Down there, on
the square, trams and trains were passing by, dropping off and taking on dozens upon dozens
of young, old, kind, strange, native, foreign, small, big, thin, fat, happy, sad, bold and of course
cowardly human beings. Even if Frank was up there, apparently safe, watching the lives of
others from above as he always did with his Lego geographies, he felt somehow in danger,
as if the city held an attraction he couldn’t resist. A magnetic power streaming from
Alexanderplatz was persuading him to do something he never would have done before: to
leave the safe indoor space of the room and become part of the flow of the crowd, to move
around the city, maybe even taking the S-Bahn or U-Bahn. On my first day? That’s not a brave,
but an imprudent and reckless decision! Frank reasoned, trying to justify himself.
Of course, he knew the plan, the blueprint according to which he was supposed to be
able to start a new life, a real life made of accidents and failures, disappointments and frus-
trations and successes and good feelings as well. At that moment, he had already began to
absolve himself of his hesitation – he was not in a hurry, he had just arrived, he would have
plenty of time to start a new life. On the first day – according to him, we guess – it was enough
to arrive and take the elevator to the 20th floor. A rather brave act for a man who had never
done such a thing before.
Holding his binoculars in one hand, with the other he unfolded the Berlin subway map
and propped it against the window. Frank observed the square beyond the map, and it was
in that moment, the grey of the asphalt blending with the red and yellow of the Bratwurst
men, it was exactly in that moment that he saw her. A girl who looked like someone no one
has ever read or written about. A girl wearing headphones and a backpack like an armour,
16   G. PETERLE

carrying a red notebook in her hand. Just ‘a girl’, simply ‘that girl’, one like many others.
Grasping the subway map, he followed her with his gaze across the square, over the tram
rails and into the station.
How the story continues, well, you should already know.

Doing carto-fiction: an autoethnographic account

Writing carto-fiction
Unlike the narrator of Frank’s story, who is constantly forced to rely on others’ stories, taking
them to be real – ‘according to what I read about that day’, ‘according to what I was told’ – to
proceed with the protagonist’s adventure, here I do not study others’ stories. Rather I tell a
fictional story (Cameron, 2012, p. 584) with the possibility to retread the process of its com-
position through an autoethnographic account. Indeed, to be the author beyond a critical
reader of the short story ‘Unfolding Berlin’ enables me to engage with the written product
as well as with the ongoing ‘geographical process’ of its creation (Saunders, 2013, p. 2) and
reception. Through my personal involvement, I can reflect both on the intertextual references
and real-life experiences I was inspired by and on the socio-spatial context in which the
drafts came into being and developed. In addition, focusing on the doing and product of
my creative writing helps me to collapse the dichotomy and go ‘beyond the binaries’ between
the subject and the object of my research (Del Casino & Hanna, 2006): the ‘researcher I’,
understood as a ‘creative subject posited as a changeable possibility’ (Wylie, 2011, p. 105),
and the relational ‘spatial event’ of ‘Unfolding Berlin’, intended as the writing process and
the text itself, become inseparable elements of my ‘carto-fictional’ experience.
The first draft of this short story emerged in July–August 2014, during the course ‘Writing
the City’ held by Dr. Dorothea Löbbermann for the HUWISU Summer Programme of the
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. As a young Ph.D. student in geography, with a deep interest
in both concrete and printed urban wor(l)ds (Saunders, 2013, p. 1) and with an academic
education in Writing Languages and Techniques (BA) and Literary Theory and Criticism (MA),
I was captured by the opportunity to move beyond the scientific critical reader’s perspective
becoming myself an author of creative urban texts. I saw it like a role reversal, a shift of
perspective that would put me in the shoes of a creator of those geo-centred urban narratives
I usually analysed in their final, printed version.
‘Let’s take the city as a text!’ reads the official website of the HUWISU 2016, and the pres-
entation, similar to that I was captivated by in 2014, continues as follows:
Capture moments and the feeling of being in a new environment, turn people you meet
into characters and create stories on places you visit. Reading and writing Berlin […]. Take
ownership of your urban experience – observe how you become a writer of Berlin (italics
added).1
During the course, I actually experienced a creative shift that led me from reading to
actively writing my own experience-based ‘city text’. By merging the reader’s and writer’s
perspectives, I realised a narrative text that was ‘intertextually’ imbued with my previous
academic, literary, geographical and cartographical readings but also rearranged through
my creative sensibility. In the ‘doing’ of writing, I was engaged in ‘“being” a writer in a per-
formative sense’ (Brace & Johns-Putra, 2010, p. 411), freeing myself from the constraints of
academic writing to embrace a creative, subjective and intimate perspective on my own
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   17

experience of living and cartographically orienting myself in Berlin, from the first, short
experiences as a tourist, to the long-lasting ones as an Erasmus Student in 2009/2010 and
as a Ph.D Visiting Student in 2014 and 2015.
Furthermore, being part of the ‘creative community’ of the Summer School class, I per-
formed creative writing as a ‘trans-subjective’ and ‘intersubjective’ experience (Cameron,
2012, p. 584; Dewsbury et al., 2002, p. 439), as a relational spatial event emerging from dif-
ferent networks of actors coming together in a given spatio-temporal frame. At that time,
the composition of my creative text was deeply influenced by the feedbacks by Dr.
Löbbermann, a researcher in American Studies with an interest in creative writing and urban
literature, as well as by the comments of my classmates, who were students of different ages,
coming from all over the world (Australia, USA, Asia, and Europe), at all levels of education
and with several educational backgrounds (including literary studies, languages, economics,
sociology, cinema and arts). After that, when I came back home at the University of Padua,
leaving the creative context of the Summer School, the carto-centred perspective of my
Ph.D. Supervisor Dr. Tania Rossetto, a cultural geographer with an education in literature
and a deep interest in cartography, further helped me in addressing my self-reflective under-
standing of my creative writing practice/product from a carto-centred viewpoint.
The shift by which I became a creative writer did not simply involve myself in an individual
writing practice, influenced by my own feelings, encounters and spatial knowledge. The
class before, and, more broadly, the text in itself, became spaces for creative negotiation in
which to perform creative writing, reading and editing, as relational, trans-subjective, trans-
local, interdisciplinary and intertextual spatial practices. Carto-fiction became an ongoing
creative process for ‘Berlin to unfold’, for my city’s actual and virtual, subjective and relational
cartographies to disclose, and to become readable even for myself. The fact that, at that
time, I had already graduated in June 2014 in Comic-Script Writing at the International School
of Comics of Padua further stimulated the graphic illustration of the short story to emerge
in parallel with the composition of the text: drawing appeared as a natural creative extension
of my own writing practice, through which imagined characters (Illustrations 2 and 5), emo-
tions and perceptions (Illustration 3), locations and times (Illustrations 1 and 4) could find
their narrative consistency. Illustrations further revealed themselves as significant evocative
tools to guide the readers’ gazes along the reading route, capable of stimulating but not
restricting their own capacity to imagine the unfolding of the story (Lancione, 2016).

Reading carto-fiction
As the narrator affirms, in ‘Unfolding Berlin’ no secure line needs to be drawn between ‘real
facts and stories’. Indeed, the blurring of the borders between what I studied, what I actually
experienced and what is just part of Frank’s fictional realm was a significant part of my car-
to-fictional writing. When composing the text, on the one hand, the study of urban literary
texts helped me in exploring the possibilities creative fictional writing offers to turn urban
structures and dwellers into textual form. In fact, beyond the many narrative texts, journal
articles, movies, songs, oral testimonies and pictures I collected during my stays in Berlin,
composing my personal sense of place in this constantly ‘new’ city (Till, 2005),2 there are
many works of literature that have openly influenced my writing. These comprise: Paul
Auster’s City of glass (2006) and its graphic novel transposition by Paul Karasik and David
Mazzucchelli (Auster, Karasik, & Mazzucchelli, 2004), especially for the entanglement between
18   G. PETERLE

cities, maps, writing and drawing practices as well as between narrative structures and
post-modern architectures in the story; Walter Benjamin’s Berlin childhood around 1900 (2006),
for the association of personal memories, sense of place and narration in Berlin urban space;
finally, both Franz Hessel’s Walking in Berlin: a flâneur in the capital (2017) and Michel de
Certeau’s The practice of everyday life represented two fundamental points of reference for
the aim to focus on urban everyday life and its micro-histories. Where the red notebook is
an explicit reference to the one carried by Daniel Quinn in Auster’s novel, the final scene in
which Frank looks out the window of the Park Inn skyscraper at Alexanderplatz is a tribute
to De Certeau’s famous passage describing the experience of ‘seeing Manhattan from the
110th floor of the World Trade Center’ (De Certeau, 2011, p. 91): as in De Certeau’s perspective,
Frank’s will to dominate urban space watching it from above and drawing his static maps
turns out to be a vain illusion, renegotiated by the girl moving with thousands of pedestrians
across the square, down there.
On the other hand, when writing the short story my carto-centred perspective and spatial
sensibility as a cultural geographer and cartographic theory scholar urged me to focus my
creative attention on the possibility of transposing cartographic emotions, sensations and
experiences into a narrative text. In this sense, the multiple voices I embraced for narrating
‘Unfolding Berlin’, being a narrator, a copy editor and maybe even a character myself in the
short story, represent a multifocal narrative choice I made to represent maps as ongoing
mapping practices and urban space as an assemblage of manifold perspectives and trajec-
tories (Butz & Besio, 2009, p. 1666). The creative writing practice became an opportunity not
simply to deepen my own self-reflective perspective about maps but also to distance myself
from my own positionality as a reader, timid writer and illustrator and as a young woman,
to explore other subjects’ fairs, emotions and movements. For example, the decision to enter
a male protagonist’s perspective and body, imagining his processes of decision-making and
his first steps in Berlin, permitted me to reflect on the different relationships subjects establish
with maps and mapping practices. Not by chance, Frank – a male character whose choices
and thoughts are told from a female authorial viewpoint – is forced to question and rene-
gotiate his ‘transparent’ idea of space as always mappable and knowable (Rose, 1993) due
to his encounter with a female character. Frank’s confidence in maps as static representations
is deconstructed by the girl’s body, which moving self-confidently in urban space constantly
recomposes her, and consequently Frank’s, urban map through sudden turns and changes
of direction. However, the characters share also common features: both entertain a peculiar
relation with urban space that is based on the close connection between their mapping and
writing practices. These shared traits blur the borders between their apparently opposite
characters, between their separated male and female, coward and self-confident, outsider
and insider perspectives. Significantly, the ‘Note of a mere copyeditor’ does not resolve the
doubts about whose notebook is the red one the copyeditor found in the U-Bahn: from an
autoethnographic point of view, this means my own mapping experience does not fully
coincide with Frank’s but neither with the girl’s one.
The trans-subjective and multiple spatio-temporal contexts in which the short story
emerged, the need to constantly mediate between different opinions, and readers’ expec-
tations to be satisfied, further strengthened the idea that single perspectives on the city-text
must be constantly negotiated through multifocality and fluidity. Thus, the narrator’s declared
hesitations and the gaps in the narration aim to be read as empty spaces for you readers to
inhabit Berlin’s real and fictional spaces with your own stories. As expressed in the ‘Note to
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   19

the readers’, the role of every reader in the process of re-composing Frank’s mapping expe-
rience is crucial. Throughout the narration, you are constantly asked to make the cartographic
event of the text happen by challenging the narrative voice’s reliability. Even the conclusion
– ‘How the story continues, well, you should already know’ – has to be interpreted not simply
as a ring composition that sends readers back to the start of Frank’s arrival in Berlin again,
but as a call for actively re-composing his trajectories and re-writing his narrative lines. The
fragile, open-ended structure of the short story is a means to involve you, as readers, in a
more-than-reading experience, starting from your own actual and virtual mappings.
Through an autoethnographic analysis, the post-representational understanding of maps
as ‘always in the process of mapping’ (Kitchin et al., 2013, p. 481) emerged as a key element
for the composition of ‘Unfolding Berlin’ as well as for its a posteriori interpretation. In fact,
during the writing process, the actual subway map of Berlin became a means for me to
structure the plot of the short story, with stops and turns in the narration corresponding
with the dots and stations of the U-Bahn lines. Through its narrative power, the map helped
me in composing Frank’s trajectory as well as in imagining him as a character. In the same
way, the writing process stimulated my cartographic emotions to emerge through the text
and the drawing of illustrations. In fact, while sketching Frank’s character, I mirrored myself
in his cowardly attitude towards Berlin’s uncharted space. Reading the scenes in which he
constantly needs to reassure himself by checking whether the subway map still lies in his
pocket, as in Illustration 5, I recognised my own feelings of uncertainty, hesitation and anxiety
while taking my first steps as a tourist in the city. At that time, the subway map represented
a comforting talisman to be held tightly, a geometrical grid by which to decipher urban
space and orient myself in its entangled maze of streets and lines. Therefore, writing literally
became a mapping experience for me, because I steadily checked the same map and used
it as a route planner for my own writing. Nevertheless, I mirrored myself even in the female
character’s ‘quick and confident’ steps: drawing and writing of her confidence when she
crosses the city, I referred to my own feeling at ease in Berlin’s chaotic life after living there
for months (Illustration 2).
The pervasive role of the practice of dealing with the subway map in my experience did
not simply deeply influence my perception of urban space, but also the way I perceived, set
and lived time. In the same way, in the text, the subway lines not only literally moved Frank
through the space of Berlin but also represented a narrative tool for temporal articulation
in the story. Stations and misdirections on the subway plan influenced the rhythm of time
in the narration, the map becoming a projection of time, in which the spatial location cor-
responds to a precise temporal one. As in Illustration 4, entitled ‘Three o’clock on the map’,
where Frank is indicates also when he is.
Furthermore, the post-representational idea of maps as emergent processes of reconfig-
uration was a stimulus to conceive Frank’s opinion about the power of representations. Even
if holding a precise blueprint (not by chance a ‘city-plan’) for his brand new life in Berlin,
during the narration, the protagonist is constantly forced to challenge his preconceived idea
of representations as fixed entities. In fact, the only way Frank can still trust in the subway
map in his hand is to rearrange it through his emotional, embodied and synaesthetic sen-
suous mapping experiences along the coloured metro lines. This is the point in which ‘the
border between writer, character and reader’ fades away and my own experience enters
more thoroughly the narration. It would be impossible to draw a line between what really
happened to me the first time I planned to live in Berlin, when I was a young 22-year-old
20   G. PETERLE

Erasmus student, or when I reached Alexanderplatz, with the small subway map of my Berlin
Moleskine notebook in the hand, on the one hand, and what happened to Frank, in the
intradiegetic urban space of the ‘Unfolding Berlin’ story, on the other. What I am certain about
is the co-constitution between the mapping experiences I had by living there and the ones
in which the protagonist of the short story is involved in: part of the embodied receptions,
sensuous perceptions, feelings of fear and anxiety, as well as curiosity and wonder that Frank
experiences during his narrative route are the same that I was involved in, felt, and experi-
enced during my own stays in the city. As Geraldine Pratt would put it, through carto-fiction,
‘I literally translated myself’ (Pratt, 2000, p. 644) and my cartographic imaginary and experi-
ential background.
There is a last passage in which the fall down of the border between my own mapping
practices in the city and Frank’s ones becomes evident in the story. When the girl finally
disappears, leaving the train at Westkreuz, the moment corresponds to a turning point in
the plot which is also a shift in Frank’s relation to the map, and to the city more in general.
Like my attitude towards Berlin’s subway map changed, day after day, year after year, as soon
as I started to collect pieces of memories, points of reference and sensations connected to
the dots of the stations of the subway line and became a temporary dweller of the city rather
than a tourist, so does Frank ‘bravely’ undertake a multi-sensory journey through the map.
The narrative rhythm accelerates to follow his fast changes of direction while he is passing
through the main neighborhoods of the city, from Charlottenburg to Friedrichshain, through
Mitte towards Neukölln and Kreuzberg. Significantly, at this point the protagonist experi-
ences a kind of bodily conflation with the subway map, the ‘blood running thorough his
veins’ corresponding with the ‘coloured lines of the Underground pulsating through the city
with their burden of stories and lives’. The synesthetic and embodied perceptions connected
to the different urban areas, in which emotional and bodily, visual and olfactory sensations
merge into each other, represent a narrative counterpart of my own mapping of the city, of
the emotions and sensuous perceptions I relate to the coloured lines, merging inextricably
my body and subjective mapping with the official cartographies of the city. In Illustration 3,
the brachial veins, representing the protagonist’s power to act as well as his bodily engage-
ment with the mapping experience, become coloured and geometric like the metro-lines,
Frank’s body physically and metaphorically coinciding with the map.
The reciprocal exchange between life and fiction that feeds the narration helped me to
take ownership of my urban experience; it further disclosed an ongoing mapping process
that will unfold every time I will engage with ‘Unfolding Berlin’ as a product and practice of
research, and whenever I will be involved in a mapping experience trying to orient myself
in Berlin. While moving along the coloured lines of the subway map, changing direction and
getting on and off the yellow cars, I will always be partly influenced by Frank’s fictional
experience and by the possibility to re-write his story and, in turn, my own narrative map of
the city. At the same time, ‘Unfolding Berlin’ aims to become an ‘ongoing composition’
(Anderson, 2015, p. 128) even for you readers, a means to let your mappings unfold every
time you engage with its text; a tool to explore Frank’s mapping experiences through the
lens of your own embodied and emotionally affected ones; and a proposal to engage with
‘carto-fiction’ not only as a product of research but also as a creative writing practice at your
disposal.
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   21

Conclusion
Being focused on the representation/practice of ‘carto-fiction’ as a product/process of qual-
itative research, and owing to its representational and performative configurations, this
contribution is primarily addressed to the interdisciplinary field of geohumanities, with par-
ticular attention devoted to scholars working in the fields of geography, cartographic theory
and literary criticism from a process-based, non-representational, relational, post-representa-
tional and emergent perspective.
First, the article aimed to contribute to the ‘creative (re)turn’ in geography and to move
geographical creative writing beyond its place- and landscape-centred perspectives, sug-
gesting to embrace still unexplored cartographic viewpoints. Second, the contribution strove
to present a response to the call for a ‘narrativisation of maps’ life’ in recent cartographic
theory (Caquard & Cartwright, 2014). Reflecting on the power of stories to stimulate the
unfolding of maps and of bodily, emotional and affected sensations connected to mapping
experiences, I proposed ‘carto-fiction’ as a means for narrativising and performing maps as
mapping practices (Kitchin et al., 2013). Since the narrative power of maps is increasingly
inviting non-professional map-users to become narrators of their everyday cartographic
experiences, the article suggests ‘carto-fictional writing’ as a profitable practice for them to
be aware that maps are the product of ever-changing mapping practices, as well as of their
cartographic emotions and embodied sensations. Thus, ‘carto-fiction’ is suggested as a
research practice that should be employed prolifically within academia, but also as a means
for us all to navigate everyday urban spaces while being conscious of our intimate relation-
ship with, as well as our subjective and emotional bond with, mobile and ever-changing
cartographies. Third, the contribution interprets both text and writing as ongoing, translocal
and trans-subjective ‘spatial events’ (Anderson & Saunders, 2015) by focusing on carto-fiction
from a privileged autoethnographic, self-reflexive perspective. Certainly, the autoethno-
graphic reflection on my own writing practice as well as on the fictional text I produced
permitted me to dis- and re-locate myself in Berlin urban space, to reflect on my positionality
as a critical literary reader and an amateur writer of fictional texts, as a young woman in a
‘new’ city and an academic scholar in a place of historical memory, as an outsider and insider,
a tourist and short-term inhabitant of a European metropolis, as a cultural geographer and
a map-user. Nevertheless, through my auto-ethnographic account, storytelling emerged as
a deeply intersubjective and relational process: the geographies of production, the spa-
tio-temporal context and the social and cultural networks in which the story is produced
and performed play a significant role in the way it is told and read. Therefore, ‘carto-fiction’
appears to be a useful tool not simply to narrate intimate cartographies and subjective
mapping practices, but also to embrace a multifocal perspective on urban space, exploring
the disparate ways in which it is lived, experienced and mapped by different subjects (male
or female, tourist or insider) or by the same subject at different times.
This paper further strove to demonstrate a resolute ‘commitment to experimentalism’
(Dewsbury et al., 2002, p. 440) in its hybrid form and contents: on the one hand, ‘carto-fiction’
has been presented by the insertion of the entire carto-centred short story; on the other
hand, it has been theorised and represented as a fictional, theoretical and evocative creative
method of research. Following Cameron (2012), this article attempted to understand and
perform stories as modes of knowledge production about maps, the body, memory and
emotion, urban space and spatial (creative) practices in social and cultural geography.
22   G. PETERLE

The aim was not only to give readers a methodological suggestion to employ fictional
cartographic-writing for go on thinking maps as always in-becoming mapping practices;
but also to provide them with a more-than-reading experience. ‘Carto-fictional’ narratives
are interpreted as a means for challenging preconceived ideas about maps as static objects,
for performing post-representational cartographic-thinking, and for authors’ and readers’
emotional, embodied and affective mappings to emerge.

Epilogue
Notes of a mere copy editor
When When I found this red notebook on the chair of the U-Bahn I take every day to reach
my workplace, it was a day just like any other. Except for that red notebook the faces I saw,
the places I passed by, the stations I crossed were the ones I see, pass by, and cross every
day.
Even though it was a personal notebook, I can’t be sure that no one else read these pages
before me and decided to leave them on that subway, on that day, at that time. Hence, how
many readers and editors this notebook has had, no one knows.
The author – we call her the author even though many of these pages are full of holes
and mistakes – must have used this notebook as a place for memories and notes and
made-up stories glaringly fictional even when they’re trying to look real. Indeed, the worry
is that it is exactly in those pages where the narrator’s voice appears most honest that fiction
takes the place of reality and the reporting of facts is replaced by the narration of stories.
In this sense, the Note to the readers is the clearest example of the way the author tries
to shuffle the cards. If she truly didn’t want this notebook to be published, why is she already
speaking about this possibility? Everything looks like an organised blueprint.
However, something must be true in these pages. Especially in the way the manuscript
is interrupted failing to reach any kind of conclusion. The story even lacks a moral; it just tells
things. Even the characters, if we can call them characters, are not that implausible. She
could have encountered them walking on the maps of the cities we all live in.
I can’t tell you what happened either to Frank or to Giada after she wrote these pages. If
she herself is one of those characters who disappeared into the city crowd, placed some-
where on the city map, I don’t know. I’m a mere copy editor; don’t ask me too much.

Notes
1. 
For the entire programme of the ‘Writing the City’ course, see: HUWISU 2016 Summer University
Courses (http://huwisu.de/courses/details/158/) Accessed 4 July 2016.
Karen E. Till’s The new Berlin: memory, politics, place (2005), a sort of ‘collage’ of photographs,
2. 
interviews, narratives, maps and public art, journal articles and personal notes, represents a
significant example of how personal memory and historical past, the ‘official’ image of a city
and its sense of place not simply intertwine but often need to be told together, especially when
speaking about the city of Berlin.

Acknowledgements
I am sincerely grateful to my supervisor Dr. Tania Rossetto for her constant thoughtful and fundamental
support, as well as to the editor Dr. Avril Maddrell and to the referees for their stimulating comments
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY   23

on the first drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Dr. Dorothea Löbbermann, my classmates
during my stay at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Prof. Veronica Della Dora, Prof. Jason Dittmer
and Dr. Lieven Ameel, as well as every unaware editor of this urban narration I met in these years, for
their inspiring critiques on the ‘Unfolding Berlin’ story. Finally, I am sincerely thankful to the graphic
designer Gaia Barina for her precious help with the digitalisation of my hand-drawn illustrations.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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