Many ideas of nation, many national maps Edoardo Boria Department of Political Science, Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy Abstract Contrary to the traditional approach to the analytical category of the national map, Tania Rossetto and Laura Lo Presti use it to highlight the cultural pluralism inherent to the national experience in Italy. Their study offers a conceptual framework with considerable potential, capable of developing an insightful observation into the practices of everyday nationhood through which nationalism takes on concrete mean- ing. Moreover, the category of the national map appears to be usable in different theoretical paradigms, provided that the conditions for its use are specified. Keywords National map, critical cartography, deconstructionism, cartographic paradigms, nationalism, cartography of power I do not know, as Rossetto and Lo Presti (2021) argue in their ‘Reimagining the National Map’, if ‘maps are among the few spaces left’ for a progres- sive nationalism, but the authors certainly document that national maps are a space that can accommodate ‘progressive imaginaries of cultural diversity and migration as intrinsic, positive features of national experiences’. The demonstration of this observation is already a great merit of their article and I will not dwell on their evidence. I feel it would be more appropriate to reflect on the possible reasons behind this phenomenon, following the points raised by the authors. Two features of the relation- ship between cartography and nation seem decisive: firstly, the two terms are closely interconnected, with consequent inevitable cross-contamination between the respective disciplinary fields; secondly, the study of this relationship has long been monopo- lized by the critical approach. The first statement seeks to assert that the concept of nation is intrinsically spatial, and there- fore cannot be dissociated from its graphic represen- tation. Therefore, a map expresses the territoriality implicit in the concept of the nation, indicating its ‘sacred land’ in a unique way. Unlike other forms of politicized collective aggregation – for example, social class or trade unions – the nation is inextric- ably linked to a territory. This is inseparable, consti- tutive and legitimizes the political project that gives meaning to the nation, which in turn draws nourish- ment from the territory, finds its self-justification and identifies itself geographically. For this reason, the nation cannot but think of itself Corresponding author: Edoardo Boria, Department of Political Science, Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy. Email: edoardo.boria@uniroma1.it Commentary Dialogues in Human Geography 1–5 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/20438206211044580 journals.sagepub.com/home/dhg