On the Road Again: Metaphors of Travel in Cultural Criticism

Theory is a product of displacement, comparison, a certain distance. To theorize, one leaves home (Clifford, 1989: 177). A model of political culture appropriate to our own situation will necessarily have to raise spatial issues as its fundamental organizing concern. I will therefore provisionally define the aesthetic of such new (and hypothetical) cultural form as an aesthetic of cognitive mapping (Jameson, 1984: 89). While it is important to recognize the specific power of intellectual practices, they cannot be separated from our existence as nomadic subjects in everyday life… Cultural critics are co-travelers. (Grossberg, 1988: 388–9)