TITLE:
Cognitive Mapping and the Aesthetics of Liberation: Towards a Critique of the Postmodern Notion of Space
AUTHORS:
Gianna Katsiampoura, Andreas Kargopoulos, Kostas Skordoulis
KEYWORDS:
Cognitive Mapping, Fredric Jameson, Space, Postmodernism, Late Capitalism, Critical Spatial Theory, Historical Materialism
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.16 No.4,
April
2,
2026
ABSTRACT: This paper employs conceptual analysis to examine how Fredric Jameson’s materialist critique of postmodernism (1991) reframes space as socially produced and politically consequential. Drawing primarily on Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space (Lefebvre, 1991), Harvey’s materialist geography (Harvey, 1989) and Vygotsky’s social interactionist account of cognition, we argue that the concept of “socially produced space” enables a move beyond the limits of postmodern spatial thinking. We further show that Jameson’s schema of “cognitive mapping”—understood as the aesthetic and political practice of orienting oneself within the disorienting “hyperspace” of late capitalism—offers a productive framework for spatial learning and meaning-making in educational contexts. This paper does not adjudicate debates in the physics of spacetime, nor does it advance empirical claims about classroom practice; it is a theoretical argument connecting critical spatial theory to emancipatory educational possibility. We conclude that cognitive mapping is ultimately a call for radical transformation of the social conditions of today.