Week 6-Mapping decadence

I chose to analyze “Mapping Decadence: Visualizing Relationships Between Writers and Publishers” due to its relevance to my major of literature. This set of five digital visualizations investigates the correlation between four authors’ residences and locations of the publishers of the decadence genre in the end of the 19th century in Paris. With the digital tool of ArcGIS, although the author attempted to present certain objective connection between the two data types, her view was somehow pre-determined by her assumptions of the topic.

First, the author believed the spatial factor determined the interactions between the authors and publishers. That is to say, there is interdependence between the physical proximities of the authors of decadence literature and of the publishers who were prone to publish decadence literature. If this assumption was true, the authors had to often communicate with the editors face to face. Visits to the publishers needed to become part of the authors’ routine life. On the other hand, it may indicate that the publishers published based on the distance from the authors. The closer to the authors the more likely the authors’ works would get published. So validity of this assumption depends on the deficiency of public transportation/postal service and on the frequency of intimate interactions between the authors and editors. However, this may not be necessarily true. There could be other reasons to influence the locations of those two parties. For example, perhaps the authors decided to live in the neighborhood for economic reasons or convenience rather than considering the distance to the publishers.

The visualizations also select a unidirectional visualization to reveal the connection between the authors and publishers. The maps only geocode the four authors’ locations in relation to the locations of their preferred publishers but did not show all the authors who the publishers chose to publish. It is possible that the publishers also published works by authors writing decadency literature who lived far from the locations of the publishers or by authors in the provincial areas.

Moreover, she assumes the authors’ and publishers’ locations were static over the years in Paris. On the maps, we could see that one author could have several locations while one publisher only stayed in one dot. There is no timeline for the changed locations even though I assume the various locations of the authors could mean they moved over the time. Fortunately, on the “About” page, there was a link to her presentation on this project in a conference. She acknowledged the problem of chronological limitations and probably she will address it in her future research. “Photogrammar” the data visualization I analyzed in Week One is a contrast which relatively successfully combined timeline and geocoding.

The maker also expects viewers understand the background of the decadence movement in French literature because the website did not offer much information of the statuses of those writers and publishers in the Decadence Movement. A viewer would hope to get more knowledge of the authors or the publishers presented in the maps. The makers’ interpretation of the maps and her intentions with the mapping should also be revealed through more textual explanations. So far it is still only the visual part of her dissertation project rather than inclusively contains all aspects of her dissertation.

This mapping project came from a scholar who was preoccupied to prove the interdependence of the locations of authors and publishers from the perspective of the authors. It reveals the four authors’ one possible motivation of choosing residences, namely the proximity with the locations of the publishers. But it obscured many other factors that could cause the correlations of those locations such as economic considerations, cultural atmospheres etc. it also ignored one important factor in the literary market, namely the readers. How could the works inspire a literary movement after publishing without the locations of the readers?

An alternative mapping could be made after the makers define to what extent the proximity to the publishers determined the locations of the four authors and how the publishers made decisions on publishing. The maker also needs to make a timeline. I would add two more bar charters to explain the authors’ and the publishers’ statuses in the Decadence Movement. One is to explain the four authors’ statuses in terms of their works’ quality and quantity. The other is to list all the publishers who published decadency literature at the time and compare them with the publishers who published the four authors’ works. The locations of markets of this literature could also be mapped.