Charting the use of cartographic metaphor in postmodern literature and theory, Mitchell argues that the ongoing reworking of the map metaphor renders it a formative and performative metaphor of postmodernity. This metamorphosis draws together poststructuralist conceptualizations of epistemology, textuality, cartography, and metaphor, and signals a shift away from modernist preoccupations with temporality and objectivity to a postmodern pragmatics of spatiality and subjectivity.