{"id":6,"date":"2005-09-01T00:27:12","date_gmt":"2005-09-01T04:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/01\/cognitive-mapping\/"},"modified":"2005-09-01T00:28:10","modified_gmt":"2005-09-01T04:28:10","slug":"cognitive-mapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/01\/cognitive-mapping\/","title":{"rendered":"Cognitive Mapping"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m most interested in Fredric Jameson\u2019s discussion of \u2018expression\u2019 and its reliance on the centered subject. He suggests that postmodernism solves the problem of alienation by doing away with the subject entirely, which means forgoing expression. But it\u2019s interesting that Jameson seems to quickly replace the concept of \u2018expression\u2019 with an interest in feelings, emotions, and affect. The \u2018waning of affect,\u2019 for Jameson, is tantamount to the complete loss of expression. I think this is because Jameson privileges alienation as an appropriate display of emotion, while the \u2018euphoria\u2019 that replaces alienation is inappropriate to the late capitalist socioeconomic situation. Euphoria, then, reifies the prevailing economic logic. It\u2019s not a stretch to consider this view a bit dour. For Jameson, the centered subject acts as an anchor that keeps one from drifting, providing a stationary place from which one can begin the project of cognitive mapping, Jameson\u2019s antidote to postmodernism. I don\u2019t think many people would argue against cognitive mapping \u2013 after all, what\u2019s the matter with attempting to create \u201ca pedagogical political culture which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of its place in the global system\u201d? \u2013 but what happens when someone actually attempts such a mapping? I think Thomas Pynchon shows us in The Crying of Lot 49, and in the process challenges Jameson\u2019s perspective by problematizing cognitive mapping. The novel begins with a jokey quality that steadily dissolves into the anxieties that attend an unrewarded search for epistemological certainty. In the early going, the story of the Peter Pinguid Society (rife with the same or\u2019s or possibly\u2019s in the DeLillo story we read in class) exemplifies the sort of euphoric free-floating indeterminacy Jameson criticizes. But the novel takes a turn when Oedipa tries to root out the truth about Trystero\/W.A.S.T.E. Her attempt to gain a sense of her \u2018place in the global system\u2019 reads like the kind of dark descent that only an anchor can provide. In other words, the attempt to map so alienates her that it becomes ridiculous. Despite the darkness of the descent, we realize that her object is a mysterious postal service<\/em>, after all. This zany detail allows the novel to poke fun at the uses of committed alienation \u2013 in direct opposition to Jameson\u2019s tack (i.e. taking seriously the euphoria of postmodernism). This opposition condemns the novel to charges of political what-me-worryism, but it also opens up a sharp critique of the attempt to totalize society or \u2018euphorize\u2019 alienation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m most interested in Fredric Jameson\u2019s discussion of \u2018expression\u2019 and its reliance on the centered subject. He suggests that postmodernism solves the problem of alienation by doing away with the subject entirely, which means forgoing expression. But it\u2019s interesting that Jameson seems to quickly replace the concept of \u2018expression\u2019 with an interest in feelings, emotions, … Continue reading Cognitive Mapping<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}