Mapping Texas

The evolution of scientific reasoning and its practice today is noticeable to say the least. Access to the Internet exemplifies how technologies redefine the speed, access and interaction with information. In cartography, innovations at the turn of the twenty-first century travel alongside the growth of computation and the Internet, particularly in the graphic presentation and reproduction of maps. The Internet has molded cartographic practices to advance the virtual representation of space, a tool bounding potential voters for political ends. Simply, they provide a platform to make populations legible to the point of immediacy. The method of this thesis is to get entrenched in the fiction of Texas. Fiction, here, is interchangeable with the idea of social constructions. It is an attempt to build off the approach of Walter Benjamin, as described in Susan Buck Morris's The Dialetics of Seeing (1989) where consumers get engulfed in a dream world with the commodities that makes their relation to society more personal. The commodity of interest for this work is that of maps. Accordingly, this work builds its analysis on the fiction that makes up the Texas story, as told by maps and cartography. In addition, fiction itself is specifically theorized in analyzing the field of demography and cities in Texas. In conclusion, in calling for critical thought, particularly feminist thought, modern mapping practices are presented to help provide voters an empowering lens in relation to electoral mapping.