55 (Keith and Pike 1993, 3)

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(Keith and Pike 1993, 3)

In order to counteract the political paralysis of today, Jameson develops a alternative view of space and political action, provisionally naming it as the aesthetic of cognitive mapping. Jameson is not calling for the mapping of notions of space, instead this is the name of a new form of radical politic culture; its fundamental object is the ’world space of multinational capital’ (Jameson 1991: 54). Cognitive mapping is in some senses recognized to be both unimaginable and impossible; it attempts to steer between Scylla and Charybdis, between an awareness of global processes and the inability to grasp totality. Nevertheless, it is also meant to allow people to become aware of their own position in the world, and to give people the resources to resist and make their own history. It is the logic of capital itself which produces an uneven development of space. These spaces need to be ‘mapped’, so that they can be used by oppositional cultures and new social movements against the interests of capital as sites of resistance. [Keith, Michael and Steve Pike. 1993. "Introduction Part 1: The Politics of Place." in Place and the Politics of Identity. London: Routledge. Pp. 1-22.]