A characterization of the total variation $TV\left(u,\mathrm{\Omega }\right)$ of the Jacobian determinant $detDu$ is obtained for some classes of functions $u:\mathrm{\Omega }\to {\mathbb{R}}^n$ outside the traditional regularity space $W^{1,n}\left(\mathrm{\Omega };{\mathbb{R}}^n\right)$. In particular, explicit formulas are deduced for functions that are locally Lipschitz continuous away from a given one point singularity $x_0\in \mathrm{\Omega }$. Relations between $TV\left(u,\mathrm{\Omega }\right)$ and the distributional determinant $\text{Det}Du$ are established, and an integral representation is obtained for the relaxed energy of certain polyconvex functionals at maps $u\in W^{1,p}\left(\mathrm{\Omega };{\mathbb{R}}^n\right)\cap W^{1,\mathrm{\infty }}\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\left\{x_0\right\};{\mathbb{R}}^n\right)$.