Title: Hyperspace, Hypertext, Political Unconsciousness: The Cognitive Mapping Strategy in 19th-century American Travelogues on Cuba

Abstract: Nineteenth-century American travelogues on Cuba possess the hypertextual characteristics of transversality and multilinearity, and the Cuban architecture represented in them exhibit distinct hyperspace features. As an epistemological strategy to address hyperspace, Jameson’s theory of cognitive mapping pursues a totality perspective, adheres to Marxist cultural and political strategies, and advocates continuously approaching the totality of history through textual interpretation. By drawing on Jameson’s theory of cognitive mapping to conduct cognitive mapping of the hyperspace in nineteenth-century American writers’ travelogues on Cuba, this paper reveals the political unconscious embedded within them—the international proletarian consciousness repressed by the capitalist ideology (reification)—and constructs a path that transcends the limitations of capitalism.

Keywords: American travelogues on Cuba, cognitive mapping, hyperspace, hypertext, political unconsciousness

Author: Jie Hou, Associate Professor, School of Foreign Studies, Nankai University, Tianjin, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2025.04.002