Social critique and the aesthetic of cognitive mapping

Abstract

By exploring the relationship between Fredric Jameson’s notion of an aesthetics of cognitive mapping and Luc Boltanski’s critical sociology, this chapter discusses the status and modalities of ‘social totality’ in critical theory. By examining the possibilities of holding an emancipatory notion of social totality, Rodríguez shows that the very notion of social critique presupposes the idea of social totality and that a non-reductionist version of social totality is urgently required to aid critical theorists and social movements in approaching the complex realities of contemporary global capitalism and locating their practices in relation to both broader social structures and individuals’ experience.