Radio documentary production as cognitive mapping in sound: The making of La Frontera

In response to the depthlessness and fragmentation of postmodern experience, Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson offers the anticipatory and utopian concept of cognitive mapping. Cognitive mapping holds out the promise for radical social transformation, in times when such possibilities can seem remote. One of the limitations of Jameson’s articulation of cognitive mapping is that he does not offer a viable practice of cognitive mapping. The making of the radio documentary, La Frontera: A journey into the borderlands of Mexico and the United States, is an experiment in cognitive mapping in sound, grounded in an emergent practice: the art of listening. To draw out and explain the thinking and practices that constitute the making of La Frontera, I examine the pre-production, production and post-production phases in turn. To conclude I draw out the implications of this experiment for the field of radio studies.