Editors' Introduction

Jorge Luis Borges provided one of the canniest images of the relation between empire and representation. In "On Exactitude in Science," he wrote of an empire whose ambition to map the entire world in all its detail and variations led it to gradually increase the scope and complexity of its maps. Its "Cartographers Guild struck a map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it."¹ Thus, in its bid for full and complete representation, the map moved closer and closer to coinciding with the territory to be mapped. Quite literally, the map promised (or threatened) complete coverage. Yet "the Following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless" (ibid.). Thus the next generations "delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters" (ibid.). Borges leaves us with an image of the map slowly wearing away, stretched and torn and tattered over its lands, inhabited by Animals and Beggars.

Borges's Map of Empire recalls an ideal of representation that, in retrospect, we associate with Cold War intelligence and academic disciplines centered on nations, areas, and regions; it was about mapping and knowing the enemy, point for point, as it were—and the ally as well, for one never knows when an ally might prove detrimental. Cold War strategic knowledge embraced point-for-point knowledge of peoples and of the history, psychology, and culture of potential enemies, that is, of whoever happened to play the role of "the rest" to the West. It involved constant fuss about detailed intelligence and in-depth coverage, about filling gaps and mapping the world. There was a sense that in time one might gather sufficient intelligence to know the world and consequently to predict and forestall the outbreak of hostilities. After all, professors were there to provide knowledge about every imaginable culture and territory in the world, while journalists reported on location and undercover operatives blended like chameleons into any possible environment, all apprising the West of what the rest were really doing.

Of course, with his image of the imperial map rotting over its territory, Borges exposed an ideal whose full absurdity and naïveté only appears now, in retrospect. Borges's story thus provides a useful point of departure for assessing the current situation.

With the benefit of hindsight, Borges appears to have produced a humorous assessment not of Empire in general but of the mapping of knowledge of the Cold War era. Today, however, the older ideal of empire based on point-for-point knowledge and detailed intelligence lies in tatters. For various reasons, and often with good reason, many still adhere to associated ideals of thorough and detailed knowledge, not to shore up empire but to challenge it where it works, in the hopes of besting the empire at its own game. Nonetheless, the situation has changed from that of the Wilsonian world and its Cold War aftermath, and not simply because the following generations have not been so fond of the prior mapping, as in the Borges fable. Nor is it simply that those responsible for intelligence have become lazy or stupid or simply overtaxed. As the appearance of a crisis in intelligence surrounding 9/11 makes clear, something has fundamentally transformed. As Fred Kaplan argues in his assessment of the 9/11 reports, "The failure was not one of imagination but rather of incentives."² No one in a position of power felt compelled to respond to reports.

Similarly, we might cite what appears to be a complete lack of concern about accuracy. We must, of course, hold the Bush regime (and prior regimes) accountable for deliberate deception about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and for continuing to lie about links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Nevertheless, we need...