Rethinking Marxism

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Cognitive Mapping and Class Politics: Towards a

Nondeterminist Image of the City

Enid Arvidson

To cite this article: Enid Arvidson (1995) Cognitive Mapping and Class Politics:
Towards a Nondeterminist Image of the City, Rethinking Marxism, 8:2, 8-23, DOI:
10.1080/08935699508685439

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 Rethinking MARXISM Volume 8, Number 2 (Summer 1995)
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Cognitive Mapping and Class Politics:

Towards a Nondeterminist Image of the City
Enid Arvidson

Anyone familiar with its vast and growing literature knows that postmodernism means
many different things in different discussions and debates. In the spatial disciplines
(planning, geography, architecture), it has come to refer to a new form of the built
environment. A recent article describes postmodernism as a reaction against
modernism’s pretense to rationality, comprehensiveness,and universality (Hemmens
1992).’ Such modernist spatial visions as Daniel Burnham’s 1909 “bold, logical
diagram” for Chicago or Le Corbusier’s 1929 “fundamental principles of planning”
for any contemporary city have been opposed by postmodernism’spastiche of details
and irreconcilabilityof meanings. From the mismatched faCades and fantasy interiors
of new buildings now gracing nearly every urban skyline, to the “neotraditional”
communities of Seaside, Florida, or Laguna West, California, to the “edge cities” and
“urban villages” of increasingly polycentric metropolitan areas, the postmodern built
environment challenges modem theories and forms of spatial organization.
This spatialized meaning of postmodernism is found in Marxian as well as non-
Marxian literatures; that is, both Marxists and non-Marxists agree that since the 1970s
and 1980s there has been a profound shift in the meaning and organization of space.
The Marxist version, or story, of this putative shift in spatiality has primarily been
developed by the “L.A. School,” named both for its frequent object of study and for
the home base of many of the theorists (at the University of California-Los Angeles,
the University of Southern California, and the Southern California Institute of Archi-
tecture) (Davis 1990).
The Marxist story, as portrayed by the L.A. School, differs from that of non-Marx-
 Postmodern City 9

ists (e.g., Leinberger and Lockwood 1986) in that it is highly critical of the
“postmodernization”of the built environment, attempting to link it to changes in the
underlying capitalist mode of production. There clearly is a tone of disdain and horror
in this analysis of a new stage of capitalism seen to fragment and commodify space,
pandering to a new yuppielmanagerial class while creating conditions for
hyperexploitation of Third World immigrants.
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The Marxist story, however, criticizes postmodern space using what we call
here modern Marxist categories. Theorists of the L.A. School are aware of the
need to develop alternative, perhaps indeed postmodern, forms of criticism of
postmodern space.’ Yet, I argue, they consistently return to modernist forms of
explanation.
By modem Marxist analysis I mean a triad of characteristics that tends (often
implicitly) to be assumed by theorists deploying this mode: 1) a notion of a “depth
model” where an underlying economy structures superstructural form (this could be
called economic reductionism, or economism); 2) a notion that within the economy
there is only one set of productive relations, namely capitalist relations, that is
dominant or has effectivity (this might be called class reductionism, or “capitalism-
ism”); and 3) a notion that the economy, however specified, exists as an independent
reality that is revealed, rather than constituted, by thought (this might be called
epistemologicalreductionism).
There is no necessity that all three reductionisms occur together in modernist
Marxism (e.g., Amin as read by Medley 1989). In the works of the L.A. School,
however, not only do all three occur but the distinctions among them are collapsed,
producing such phrases, in explaining postmodern space, as “the underlying capitalist
reality” or “the real capitalist conditions of existence.” In such phrasest there is the
unspoken conflation of economism (“underlying”), capitalism-ism (“capitalist”),and
epistemologicalreductionism (“reality”).
I suggest an alternative analysis, which might be called postmodern Marxist (cf.
Shin 1993, that struggles against these three reductionisms. By understanding the
economy as, in part, theoretically produced, I show that what it “is,” its components
and its relations to other processes, is up for grabs. I attempt to respecify it as neither
singularnor determinant, mapping it instead, as the L.A. School maps space, as diverse
as well as both constituting and constituted by other processes. Borrowing Althusser’s
spatial image of discourse-as-terrain,I attempt to shift the terrain from a modernist to
a postmodernist, nondeterminist one. Rather than situating postmodern space on the
“real” terrain of a singular underlying economy, I attempt to produce an economic
knowledge where capitalism is one of several class processes that overdetermines

I . An inventory of the literature and debate on postmodernism and space would be too lengthy to catalog.
Good introductions, however, include many of the authors referenced in this essay.
2. “For those of us who have the strength left to struggle against [the] alluring and illusive embrace [of the
scam-scapesof exopolis], Modernist modes of resistance and demystificationwill probably not be enough,
for the terrain has shifted too much. . . . New postmodern modes of criticism and confrontation will be
needed” (Soja 1992,122).
 I0 Arvidson

spatial form. In so doing, I hope to open a vision for potential new sites of struggle
against exploitation amidst this illusive new spatiality.

Jameson’s Critique of Postmodern Space

In one of the earliest, most provocative criticisms of postmodernism, Jameson
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(1984) argues that “postmodern hyperspace” is a mutation in space, a bewildering loss

of spatial orientation. In postmodern hyperspace, the individual’s real conditions of
existence are obscured by hisher immediate surroundings; the individual can no
longer locate himherself in, cannot understand the relationship between hisher
immediate built environment and, the external multinational world.
Jameson describes Los Angeles, particularly (from his mid-1980s vantage point)
the downtown’s Bonaventure Hotel, as paradigmatic expression of the new
postmodern space.3 This space, however, is no mere optional aesthetic style. Rather
Jameson sees it as the “superstructural logic” of the third, late stage of capitalism,
following the Cartesian grid as the spatial logic of capitalism’s first, competitive stage,
and modernism as the spatial logic of’ its second, monopoly or “imperialist” stage.
Different capitalist spatial logics “are all the result of discontinuous expansions or
quantum leaps in the enlargement of capital, in the latter’s penetration and colonization
of hitherto uncommodified areas” (Jameson 1988,248).
Jameson’s argument is now well-trod ground in many studies of postmodernism
(e.g.. Best and Kellner 1991). Less understood, however, is why spatial issues are an
organizing concern in his Marxist c r i t i q ~ e For
. ~ Jameson, borrowing Althusser’s
architectural (base/superstructure) metaphor, postmodern spatiality is different from
both modernism and Cartesian realism in its very articulation with the economic base.
Whereas these earlier spatialities occupied their own relatively autonomous sphere,
postmodern hyperspace collapses relative autonomy; any palpable difference between
superstructure and infrastructure, culture and commerce, is obscured? This spatial
collapse and disorientation cripples socialist politics. In postmodern hyperspace, the
microcosm becomes the universe; micropolitics replace (international) class politics;
everything appears to be represented locally, nothing else exists.
To oppose this spatial obscuration and nihility, Jameson (1984, 1988, 1991) calls
for a new aesthetic whose purpose is to teach, similar to his view of all Marxist
aesthetics (his example is Brecht’s). The new aesthetic raises spatial issues as its
organizing concern since it is spatial collapse that now hides our real underlying
3. The Westin Bonaventure Hotel-which went into bankruptcy in late 1991-might be seen today as a
preliminary example of Los Angeles’s pastmodernism, obscured by such newer layers of glitz as I. M. Pei’s
Library Tower.
4. While Jameson’s “primary focus is on the new spatial disorientation [and the inability of individuals] to
position themselves . . . it is not clearly demonstrated why ‘spatial issues’ should constitute the ‘fundamental
organizing concern’ of [radical] politics” (Best and Kellner 1991, 188-89).
5 . Thus, for example, John Portman, architect of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, is also owner of a vast
real-estate empire, including (in partnership with the Mitsubishi Corporation) the Bonaventure, which was
$2 billion in debt at the time the Bonaventure filed for bankruptcy (Shiver 1991).
 Postmodern City II

economic conditions of existence. “Cognitive mapping,” a concept Jameson borrows

from non-Marxist planners and geographers such as Lynch (1960). would transform
postmodern spatial obscuration by teaching us about the economic reality located
underneath, (re)placing postmodernism into its own sphere of appearances or super-
structure, (re)asserting its critical distance from the economic base.
Jameson sees cognitive mapping as analogous to Althusser’s concept of ideology
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(1971, 158-76), as a representation of individuals’ imagined relationship to their real

conditions of existence. Such a mapping would oppose disorienting hyperspace with
a new interpellation, a deliberate intervention to redirect individuals onto the terrain
of global capital. It would simultaneously reassert and span the gap between locally
lived experiences of postmodern space and underlying multinational capital that
comprises their real conditions of existence.
For Jameson, this unapologetic engagement of determinist Marxism (i.e., the
language of base/superstructure) is a deliberate oppositional move against the
postmodern apostasy of post-Marxism with its focus on power and the micropolitics
of groups. Indeed, Jameson hopes that his suggested mapping of postmodernism
may put us back on course towards a truly multinational proletarian struggle for
socialism.

Jameson and the L.A. School

Jameson’s work has been remarkably influential in defining the terms of debate
about postmodern space. Many left planners and geographers, including Bob Beaure-
gard (1989,1991), Phil Cooke (1988), Mike Davis (1985, 1987,1990), Michael Dear
(1986 and Dear and Wolch 1992), David Harvey (1989), Ed Soja (1986,1989,1992),
Sharon Zukin (1988), and others, inspired by Jameson’s work, have further developed
mappings of the postmodern built environment. Yet the L.A. School remains distinct
within this broader New Left critique in its focus, following Jameson, on Los Angeles
as the quintessential example of postmodern space. A brief survey of works by Dear,
Davis, and Soja, central figures in the L.A. School, will help illiminate the threefold
reductionism at play in their analyses.
Dear agrees with Jameson that postmodern hyperspace is a political economy of
social dislocation whose coordinates we are unable to grasp. To oppose the confusing
array of spatial forms, Dear argues for a new metanarrative, or mapping. His
(“meta”)narrative maps postmodern hyperspace as a “deliberate mutation. .. a mutant
money machine . . . driven by economic return, in fiscal or profit forms.” The city is
thus both “an exceedingly complex ensemble of signs” and also “certainly a product
of capitalism” (Dear 1986).
Los Angeles, for Dear, is a prototype of the new postmodern spatiality. A “pastiche
. . . in . . . disharmony,” Los Angeles is “one of the nation’s most geographically
divided cities. It is . . . segregated by income class” as well as by race (Dear 1986;
Dear and Wolch 1992). Its spatial polarization reflects the economic polarization of
late capitalism, with those on the poverty end left with little hope. Indeed it was this
 12 Arvidson

lack of hope that led to the “riots” of April 1992 much more than solely the verdicts
on four police officers.
Despite, or indeed because of, this metanarrative, Dear also finds it hard to see
much hope amid the sociogeographic polarization. For things to improve “a truly
unprecedented degree of sensitivity to difference and diversity will be needed, along
with a fundamental realignment of political and economic priorities” (Dear and Wolch
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1992,920).
Davis, while clearly influenced by Jameson, is troubled by his “totalization” of
contemporary space as postmodern. Davis argues that Jameson’s three-stages-of-cap-
itaYthree-stages-of-space schema may be the return of essentialism and reductionism
with a vengeance.6 Davis’s own mapping charts postmodern hyperspace as the result
not of capitalist expansion but of a three-fold crisis characterized by: 1) the over-
accumulation of global finance capital now searching for further investment outlets,
such as real estate, in the face of industrial capital’s retrenchment; 2) a mass immigra-
tion of cheap labor-power, mainly from the Pacific Rim; and 3) the deliberate
polarization and decollectivization of urban space as a method of social control and
staving off revolution.
Davis (1985, 1987) agrees that recent redevelopment in Los Angeles is a particu-
larly vivid example of the emerging postmodern spatiality. His mappings of Los
Angeles (1985, 1987, 1990, 1992) site militarization of city life and the destruction of
public space as typical of postmodernism:

In cities like Los Angeles, on the bad edge of postmodernity, one observes an unprece-
dented tendency to merge urban design, architecture and the police apparatus into a
single, comprehensive security effort (Davis 1990,224).

The resulting “South Africanization of spatial relations” (227-28) is a new form of

class warfare at the level of the built environment.
Davis nonetheless retains a revolutionary hope. Despite their ingenious security
measures, the anxious middle and upper classes will not be safeguarded against social
unrest if the bamos and ghettos continue to deteriorate:

The working classes of the inner city, for all their potential power, are still a sleeping
dragon: Blacks, declining in electoral influence and betrayed by city hall; Chicanos,
gerrymandered and divided between rival Democratic clans; new immigrants, disfran-
chised and ignored. Whether this sleeper will awaken, or whether this remains “just
Chinatown,” is, as always, the question (Davis 1987,86; original emphasis).

Here, despite his criticisms of Jameson’s totalizations, Davis produces a mapping

that is just as totalizing. He argues that the postmodern restructuring of space is a
symptom of capitalist crisis rather than expansion; his mappings chart oppression
rather than disorientation. Yet for him, crisis and oppression are nonetheless still

6. Cf. Norton (1995), who criticizes Jameson for what he does-and does not-borrow from Mandel.
 Postmodern City I3

“capitalist through and through” (Davis 1985, 110). In heeding Jameson’s call for a
mapping of postmodernism that might put us back on course towards a true proletarian
movement, despite its attempts to eschew Jameson’s essentialisms, Davis’s base
map-upon which he charts an elaborate and disturbing landscape-is itself still of
essentialist terrain.
For Soja also, postmodernism is a radical deconstruction and reconstitution of
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spatial forms. This new spatiality is produced by post-Fordist reindustrializationwith

highly segmented labor markets and flexible production. He argues that these socio-
economic changes are inherently spatial, and yet the spatiality of capitalism’s dynam-
ics are a lacuna in most social theory. Indeed, understanding spatiality-its origins,
its production-is the key, more than history, to understanding-and resisting4ap-
italism. Soja thus agrees with Jameson that spatial issues must be an organizing
concern in any radical politics. He calls for a reassertion of space in critical social
theory so that the constitutive role of space might be understood and become another
site of struggle against capitalism.’
There is “[no better place] to illustrate and synthesize the dynamics of capitalist
spatialization,” in Soja’s view, than Los Angeles (Soja 1989, 191). Early twentieth-
century Los Angeles followed the model of the modem Fordist region (stylized as the
Park-Burgess-McKenzie model). By the 1970s, however, “[a] far-reaching and fixa-
tive reorganizationof the social and spatial structures of accumulationwas necessary”
(197).Deindustrializationin Los Angeles’s manufacturing zone, typical of Fordism’s
shattering and capital’s restructuring, has been accompanied by a reindustrialization,
occurringin the suburbs and exurbs, in outer L.A. County as well as Orange,Riverside,
and San Bernardino counties. The resulting polarized spatial division of labor, running
largely along race lines, is increasingly obscured from view, ‘‘imaginativelymystified
in an environment more specialized in the production of encompassing mystifications
than practically any other” (Soja 1986,270).
Soja’s mappings attempt to theorize as well as to struggle against postmodern
spatial obscuration by “taking it apart” and “sighting/siting its politics.” These efforts
lead him to hope, 2 la Jameson, that his explicitly spatialized mappings of capitalism
might contribute to a

resistance, rejection, [or] redirection in the nonetheless structured field of urban lo-
cales, creating an active politics of spatiality, struggles for place, space, and position
within the regionalized and nodal urban landscape (Soja 1989,235).

Soja’s spatialized knowledge, however, despite mapping geographic specificity,is

still subsumed to the totalizing discourse of capitalism. He, of course, would argue
that it is not subsumedbut is as fundamentally significant in a “socio-spatialdialectic,”

7. Indeed such a spatially centered criticism is precisely what Soja means by “postmodern modes of
criticism.”He opposes this postmodern, “simultaneity-focused,”geographical materialism to the modern,
“sequentially-focused,”historical materialism of traditional Marxism. See Gregory (1990), however, for a
friendly criticism of Soja’s call for this sort ofpostmodernist critique of postmodern space.
 14 Arvidson

a historico-geographical materialism. Yet it is clear that for him capitalism, while

changefuland spatial, is also timeless, spaceless,universal. As Gibson-Graham (1993)
puts it: “Our lives are dripping with Capitalism.”’ While Soja has spatialized our
knowledge of economic processes, he has “allowed the economy-under the name of
capitalism-to colonize the entire” space of knowledge (Gibson-Graham 1993, 17).
With Soja, we now know the geographically specific as situated on a terrain of
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unspecified, global, capitalism. Thus despite Soja’s hope for resistance and struggles
for place within the polarized landscape, we must wonder: If capitalism is the
underlying terrain, how can we ever be somewhere else?

The Modernist Terrain of the L.A. School

The L.A. School’s mappings of postmodern space certainly help us learn about it.
Their mapping the city on a terrain different from that of non-Marxists; their anger at
the xenophobia and spatial assault against the new “working class”; their rooting the
commercializationand privatization of space in global capital-all these interventions
into the bourgeois dialogue about spatial redevelopment in the 1970s and 1980s are
indeed powerful. Their power, their ultimate explanation, however, is also their
weakness, at least from the viewpoint of postmodern Marxism.
For purpose of criticism, these left critiques of postmodem space can be
understood as coalescing around certain issues that might permit us to characterize
a single critique, summarized as follows. It attempts to make sense of, map, the
decentered and disorienting space of postmodernism as the spatial form produced
by the underlying dynamic of capitalism in its late or post-Fordist stage, in which
capital is moving everywhere, exploring all hitherto uncolonized spaces for potential
superprofit, collapsing the difference between the economic and the cultural,
ruthlessly commercializing and polarizing the built environment. By mapping
postmodern space in this way, the L.A. School attempts to expose the real capitalist
roots of postmodernism, thereby struggling for a better, more spatialized, interpre-
tation of the world, thus creating space for a truly multinational socialist movement.
In addition to their stated criticisms and strategies, this left critique of postmodern
space also tends to be unified by its implicit commitment to modem modes of
analysis and criticism.
It is modernist firstly in its theory of knowledge. Theorists of the L.A. School tend
to root their mappings of postmodern space in the epistemological presumption of a
“reality” that exists independently of mappings of it. Indeed, reality is the extra-car-
tographic reference point against which competing mappings can be compared for
truth images. While reality exists “out there,” it nonetheless is hidden by superstruc-
tural appearances. Knowing global capitalism, however, is having successfully pene-

8. Cf. also Gregory: “Soja locates all [the peripheries of exploited workers, tyrannized peoples, dominated
women] in relation to a single center; he convenes all their oppressions within the plenary geography of
capitalism” (Gregory 1990.82).
 Postmodern City 15

trated appearances; it is knowing the real conditions of postmodern space. Luckily

their mappings know capitalism and hence manage to locate the essential reality
surrounded and obscured by the murky dross of postmodern space. Mappings that do
not know capitalism do not chart “the real” and remain in the realm of individual
experience.
Capitalism is not only a (hidden) reality. It also underlies spatial form in an
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ontological sense. This system moves through stages, yet somehow is always deter-
mining, structuring and restructuring, space. If monopoly, or Fordist, capitalism gives
rise to the modem spatial form of concentric circles, separation of land uses, and the
rejection of ornamentation for functionality (its Taylorization of space), then global,
or post-Fordist, capitalism turns modernism on its head, producing mixed-use, poly-
nodal, Disneyized spaces. Knowledges that root spatial form in such a structuring
totality would not know changes outside this totality as effective or transformative.
Changes in the realm of the local or the noncapitalist would count neither as important
nor transformative, since it is always capitalism, now global, that is understood to
structure spatial form.
Finally, the L.A. School theorists are on modernist terrain in their class analysis.
They both conflate class with other, nonclass relations and also only see one mode of
production when indeed they should see more. Jameson, for example, argues for a
commitment to class analysis of postmodernism as opposed to the “amorphous
ubiquitous” power analyses of post-Marxists. In contrast, Dear, Davis, and Soja, who
surely are not post-Marxists, all nonetheless emphasize the importance of theorizing
the power relations underlying and obscured by postmodern space. In addition to
power, class in this literature is also conflated with race relations, as well as with
income distribution. By defining class as a simple contradictionbetween qpital versus
labor-where capital is the oppressor, white, and well-off and labor is the oppressed,
nonwhite, and poor-the mappings of the L.A. School obscure the siting of surplus-
labor extraction which takes a variety of capitalist and noncapitalist forms, unevenly
articulated across the landscape.
The L.A. School critics are explicitly aware of the issues surrounding such
reductionisms, yet they continue to consistently deploy them in their analyses. Davis
(1985), as stressed earlier, argues that Jameson’s mapping of postmodernism is
certainly essentialist since it charts the spatial superstructure as unproblematically
arising with changes in the capitalist base. Yet Davis’s own mapping also locates
postmodernism on an underlyingterrain of capitalism, albeit one ridden by crisis rather
than of expansion.
Similarly, Jameson (1991) is not unconvinced by Foucault’s and others’ critique
of totalizing discourses and their oppressive and repressive tendencies. Yet, as we
have seen, he makes sense of postmodernism by theorizing it as the superstructure
of the capitalist mode of production in its late stage. This seemingly totalizing
move is justified by understanding “base and superstructure” as a starting point,
an undogmatic heuristic device with which to make sense of the mode of production’s
heterogeneous and diverse social forces. He also argues however--eschewing the
 16 Arvidson

designation “post-Fordist” used by other theorists of the L.A. School-that the

mode of production is simply and clearly “capitalist,” structured by the latter’s
“logic” now gone global. He thus reasserts one totalizing concept, “the logic of
capital,” in his attempt to free another, base/superstructure, from its homogenizing,
dogmatic role.
Soja also is influenced by Foucault, by the latter’s interest in questions on geogra-
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phy and the “spatialization of history, the making of history entwined with the social
production of space” (Soja 1989, 18). Emerging from these interests, for Soja, is a
“call for a new critical perspective, a different way of seeing the world” (23). This
new perspective could be “not from some privileged vantage point but simply from
another vantage point dispel[ling] . . . ‘the sort of routine . . . self-assurance’ people
have about things” (Gregory 1990, 55; original emphasis). Yet, for Soja, it is not
simply different but is “the most revealing critical perspective” since it “enables us to
see.. .the spatializations ...associated with the historical developmentof capitalism”
(Soja 1989, 23-24; added emphasis). Seeing the spatiality of social life is thus, for
Soja, not just another view but is the best one, since taking it helps us see the real
capitalist terrain underlying everyday life.
Despite its tendency toward reductionism, the L.A. School’s mappings can indeed,
as Jameson hopes, teach us about thejumbled, oppressive,potentially explosive spaces
of postmodemism. Laying this complexity at the doorstep of an “underlyingcapitalist
reality,” however, is a weakness of these mappings. On the one hand, these critics have
a complex analysis of the postmodem built environment as pastiche, diverse, contra-
dictory. On the other hand, this spatial diversity is at root simple since it is understood
to stem from a single universal source, namely, the logic of capital. At worst, this move
has a debilitating effect on the politics of class since its theoretical focus on capital,
now global, obscures the siting of both noncapitalist as well as capitalist class
processes in the local landscape that may have important constitutive and transforma-
tive effects (Graham 1992).

Modern or Postmodern Mappings?

We return momentarily to the political consequences of the L.A. School’s analyt-
ical focus. Before doing so, let us further problematize their critique by examining
tensions between determinist and nondeterminist mappings of postmodernism. In
mapping global capital as the real conditions of existence of postmodern space, the
L.A. School draws on both non-Marxist notions of cognitive mapping and Marxist
economic science found, among other places, in parts of Althusser’s work. Drawing
on both these literatures presents a problem, however, a resolution to which might be
found by drawing instead on a nondeterminist Marxist economics.
The cognitive mapping literature is influenced by the antiempiricist epistemology
of American philosopher Norwood Hanson and others (Olson and Bialystok 1983). It
argues that the city, on the one hand, and the image or concept of the city, on the other,
are distinct, neither one underlying or determining the other. Images or knowledges
 Postmodern City 17

of urban space, then, may vary significantly among different knowers due to different
experiences, preconceptions, and so on, which affect what is seen and has meaning.
Agreement about what is seen, or imaged, signifies not correspondence with reality
but rather consensus among perhaps similarly situated knowers. This deconflation of
the city with its image implies that a plurality of different knowledges or cognitive
maps of the city coexist, no one of them better grasping reality than another (Lynch
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1960, 1973).
By describing their analysis of postmodern space as a cognitive map, the L.A.
critics discussed here distance themselves from modem positivism, decentering their
image and mapping of “the real” conditions of postmodern space as one among the
many that might, or could, exist. Their mapping, while certainly an intervention into
spatial knowledge, is nonetheless theirs and images the built environment no more
really, simply differently, from others. Their mapping charts a different terrain that
might help us see some hitherto unseeables in the postmodern city. At the same time,
however, they claim not merely that their mapping charts urban space differently;they
claim that theirs captures the “real” capitalist conditions hidden by but underlying
postmodern spatial forms?
In making this last claim, these critics stray from the potentially antiessentialist
epistemology of cognitive mapping onto a particular Marxist terrain often, but not
uniquely, associated with Althusser (1969, 1971; Althusser and Balibar 1970). Here,
the mode of production’s economic base is understood to ultimately determine its
cultural and political superstructure. Marxism here is understood to be the positive
science or knowledge of (as opposed to imaged or imagined relationships to) real
economic conditions of existence. Marxism as economic science demystifies social
complexity by knowing the economic base as obscured by, but determinhg in the last
instance, superstructural experiences. This economic science relies for its proof or
defense on determinist epistemology, either rationalism or empiricism or both. That
is, by conflating reality with its own particular concepts or images of reality (namely,
the economic base underlying and determining the superstructure),Marxist economic
science “proves” to itself (and, if compelling, to others too) that it grasps reality while
others, who do not see reality in these terms, have imaged or imagined relationships
to reality (Amariglio 1987; Resnick and Wolff 1982).
Drawing on both traditions-cognitive mapping and Marxist economic science-
thus presents a problem for the L.A. School. On the one hand, it distances itself from
modem, reductionist forms of criticism by calling its analysis a cognitive map. On the
other hand, it situates itself on modem terrain by claiming to grasp, via Marxist
science, the “real” economic conditions ultimately determining space. This turn to
unreconstructed Marxist economic science is one reason why this critique, complex
and biting though it is in its spatial analysis, can root spatial diversity in a simple
economic unity. Such a turn obscures the mapping of a more heterogeneous econ-

9. “ ‘The representation of the subject’s Imaginary relationshipto his or her Real conditions of existence’
. . . is exactly what the cognitive map is called upon to do” (Jameson 1991,51, quoting Althusser).
 18 Antidson

omy-an economy understood to exist in contradiction with, but not a simple deter-
minant of, spatial structure-that a nondeterministMarxist economics might allow us
to see.

Against Economic Science: The “Amherst Althusserians”

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Developed in large part by those whom Harvey (1987) sympathetically calls the
“Amherst Althusserians” (named for their original home base at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst), nondeterminist Marxist economics focuses not on
Althusser’s economic theory of “structures in dominance” but on his critique of
epistemological and economic determinism (Althusser 1969, 1971; Althusser and
Balibar 1970). Indeed, these different aspects in Althusser’s work (structures in
dominance and the critique of determinism) could be, and have been, seen as
irreconcilable,or at best difficult to integrate, and thus as a condition of the continued
existence of long-standing debates within Marxism over determinism versus non-
determinism(Amariglio 1987;Resnick and Wolff 1982).While it is not the intent here
to resolve this debate, it is the intent to intervene in the particular context of the L.A.
School by opposing its use of economic science and Althusser’s basehperstructure
analysis with his argument for non- or overdeterminism.
The nondeterminist Marxism of the Amherst Althusserians criticizes economic
determinism and its rationale, epistemological determinism, arguing instead for
overdetermination both in, and of, theory. It argues for overdetermination in theory
by understanding society as heterogeneous and diverse, wherein every social process,
including economic processes, unevenly conditions the existence of (overdetermines)
all other social processes. It argues for overdetermination of theory by understand-
ing theory itself as a process-the process of producing and organizing knowl-
edge-whose existence and veracity cannot be guaranteed by roots in either reality
or logic but rather is contradictorily conditioned by all nonknowledge processes.”
Finally, it argues for focusing on class because class is a “lacuna” (Althusser’s
phrase) in most social analyses. Class is the “thin” economic process of producing,
appropriating. and distributing surplus labor, distinct from but contradictorily condi-
tioned by such nonclass processes as power, race, income, and so on.” This definition

10. See Resnick and Wolff (1982, 1987). I am indebted to many of the Amherst Althusserians,
particularly Steve Resnick and Rick Wolff, for the reading of Althusser and nondeterminist Marxism
rendered here.
11. As Soja and Davis rightly point out, there are other ‘‘lacunae’’ besides class (such as seeing spatiality
and the militarization of urban space) that are important if one is struggling to transform “bad” things. The
argument here is not that one should not see those things and focus on class instead but that one should see
both. And this is particularly urgent since, when Davis and Soja see militarization and spatiality they do
also consider class, but they consider it as relations of power or race, leaving the relations of production
and distribution of surplus labor-time unseen, still “lacunized.” On the other hand, however, Soja’s and
Davis’s lacunae are from a different problematic from the class lacuna discussed here, since their siting of
lacunae reveals essential aspects of urban life, the real yet unseen oppressive relations of capitalism, which
for them is the key to struggling against “bad” things.
 Postmodern City 19

of class implies that capital, rather than being a heavy “ism,” is also “thin”: strictly
defined as “self-expanding value” (Resnick and Wolff 1987) or “value in motion”
(Harvey 1982), capital structures the class process when surplus labor takes the value
form. Class processes can also take noncapitalist forms such as feudal, ancient, slave,
and communal.’2
From the perspective of a nondeterminist Marxism, socio-spatial formations are
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overdeterminedby the various forms of the class process and all the nonclassprocesses
present at any temporal-spatial conjuncture. Individuals in any given formation
usually participate in more than one class process over the course of their day or week
and hence occupy more than one class position. An individual’s consciousness and
actions, rather than being simply determined by one class process to which they are
nonetheless blinded, are understood to be contradictorily conditioned by the multiple
class as well as multiple nonclass positions which that individual occupies (such as
power, gender, ethnic, ownership, etc.) (Resnick and Wolff 1987).

Changing Terrain
This nondeterministMarxian economics, based on Althusser’s critique of econom-
ism and epistemological essentialism, produces a knowledge of socio-spatial forma-
tions that cannot be guaranteed as real or true via its correspondence to an underlying
reality or textual logic. Rather it knows itself as one knowledge among many with no
independent standard to judge whether or not it is more real (or more logical) than
others. Its differentia specifics lies in filling in the blank space of class missing from
most mappings of socio-spatial formations. This “filling-in,” however, is not a
colonization by Marxism of the spaces in other knowledges left open by’the absence
of class analyses; that is, it is not postmodern in Jameson’s sense.
Rather, in mapping a socio-spatial formation Marxism charts a different terrain
that, once one is situated on it, allows the sightingkiting of certain (overdetermined
class) processes that cannot be seen, are invisible, when located on the terrains charted
by non-Marxist maps. Marxist mappings site these processes not because Marxists
have better vision and hence can see through the obscuring hyperspaces of
postmodernism to the (singular) reality underlying all maps: They “see” these pro-
cesses because of the complex histories, struggles, and debates of Marxism which
position it to “image” and map these processes rather than others.
Such a nondeterminist Marxian economics thus suggests a possible resolution to
the problem faced by the L.A. School. Nondeterminist Marxism argues that many
conflicting mappings of postmodern space all coexist, yet that its mapping charts
something different, something unseeable by other mappings, something social theo-
rists ought to see if they are struggling for more communal forms in society. Non-
determinist Marxism maps not only the built environment as diverse and decentered

12. See, for example, Resnick and Wolff (1987. 1988), Fraad, Resnick. and Wolff (1989). Gabriel (1990),
Cullenberg (1992), and Gibson (1992) for discussions and concrete analyses of these different class forms.
 20 Awidson

but also knowledge and the economy as such. It locates spatial form not superstructur-
ally, determined by an underlying economic base, but conjuncturely, overdetermined
by economic as well as noneconomic processes. Its mapping, one among many, sites
various forms of class, not because class is real or fundamental while other things are
specious experience, but because seeing class is absent from most social analyses yet
is politically crucial to struggles for transformative change.
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NondeterministMarxism might chart the landscape as a mosaic of overdetermined

class processes where capital is only one of the infinity of relations-conomic as well
as noneconomic-that overdetermine exploitation. The city of Los Angeles, for
example, might be seen as the location of such diverse class processes as capitalist,
ancient, feudal, and communal-all unevenly and contradictorilyarticulated with one
another across the 1and~cape.l~ The L.A. School assumes the globality of capital. Yet,
upon concrete analysis, we might find that ancient class processes (that is, the
production, appropriation, and distribution of one’s own surplus labor) have experi-
enced a resurgence in the past decade, in part conditioned by renewed celebration of
“the self’ and individual rights (McIntyre 1992; Hotch 1993),or that communistclass
processes have substantially grown in households, conditioned in part by women’s
increased participation in labor markets (Fraad, Resnick, and Wolff 1989).
Such a nondeterminist image of the city can show us not only the multiplicity of
exploitation in the landscape but also potential alternative routes to transformative
change. Exploitation and struggles against it might occur in manufacturing shops, the
home, at consulting offices, the mall-wherever surplus labor-time is performed,
appropriated, and/or distributed.

Consequences of Modern and Postmodern Mappings

The L.A. School’s mappings claim to chart reality rather than discursively consti-
tuted social processes. Such claims, however, shut down dialogue about what we,
leftists, are struggling against. Such a move forecloses dicsussion about other ways of
mapping exploitation. Who would dare map nonreality as long as “reality” exists and
is knowable? The L.A. School’s mappings claim that (their) reality is capitalist.
Capitalistclass relations, capital versus labor, are understood to structure spatial form,
indeed exclusively so.
By rooting spatial form in this simple two-class model, where each class, despite
internal differences, is ultimately united by its essential position as nonwhite/poor/op-
pressed or white/well-off/oppressive, the L.A. School attempts to make clear what
needs to be done: to hope and wait for the working class to awaken. But if there is still
hope for working-class revolution in divided, oppressive, mystifying Los Angeles,
why did it not occur in the highly unionized, centralized cities of modem industrial
geography? These hopeful mappings of class unification based on oppression obscure,
13. See Mclntyre (1995)for a discussion of uneven articulations of various modes of production in a social
formation.
 Postmodern City 21

for one thing, the many forms and sites of surplus-labor extraction and the contradic-
tory ways in which involvement in these processes affect people’s identifications and
struggles.l4
In this sense (of epistemological,economic, and class reductionisms)the mappings
of the L.A. School are “burdened.” Rather than rejuvenate socialist politics, they
contributeto its crippling. They cripple, both as representatives of what is and of what
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could be, because “too much [is] asked of [them]” (Cullenberg 1992,65). They claim
to show us not only the reality underlying the horrors of postmodernism but also the
route toward fixing them. They present capitalist class struggle as an elixir for
explanation as well as for change. When capitalism, however, is understood as the
single explanatory reality, “when it is allowed to define our entire societies and not
merely an aspect of our economic lives, it becomes somethingthat can only be defeated
and replaced by a massive collective movement” (Gibson-Graham 1993,21).
Alternatively, postmodern Marxist mappings attempt to chart a fragmented econ-
omy with a variety of class processes and their conditions of existence, to open up
alternative routes to transformative social change other than “waiting for the revolu-
tion” (or, when that seems unlikely, being left with little hope):

If we can . . . divorce our ideas of class transformation from projects of systemic

transformation, we may be able to envision local and proximate socialisms . . . [that]
could be visible and replicable now (Gibson-Graham 1993.22).

Such struggles are similar to what Soja calls struggles for place. Yet, as we have
argued, Soja’s and the L.A. School’s struggles, far from divorced from systemic
transformation, are precisely situated within a globalized landscape. ,
If “it is space . . . that [now] hides consequences from us” and obscures from us
our conditions of existence, as Soja and Jameson warn, it is also space, as Soja also
tells us, that allows us to see (Soja 1989,23). It allows us to see, however, not because
of redistancing the superstructure from the economic base, revealing the real under-
lying terrain of global capital, but because of changing terrain, situating ourselves to
see fragmented modes of production that overdetermineeach other as well as nonclass
processes. The postmodern hyperspaces of Los Angeles do not necessarily hide
exploitation, any more than did the modem rings of Chicago or the Cartesian grid of
New York. What hides exploitation, its consequences and potential transformations,
are our theories. By locating ourselves on a different terrain we might theoretically
decenter capital and see the lacunae that this singular underlying “reality” has
obscured.

I wish to thank Bob Beauregard, Julie Graham, Ric Mclntyre, Bruce Norton,
Richard Peet, Stephen Resnick, Richard Wolfi and particularly Rob Garnett f o r
their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. I also wish to thank this

14. Cf. DeMartino 1988.

 22 Arvidson

journal’s reviewers, George DeMartino and Janet Hotch, f o r their careful readings
and suggestions.

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