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INTRODUCTION TO A
CRITIQUE OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY
Of all the affairs we participate in, with or without interest, the
groping search for a new way of life is the only aspect still
impassioning. Aesthetic and other disciplines have proved blatantly
inadequate in this regard and merit the greatest detachment. We should
therefore delineate some provisional terrains of observation, including
the observation of certain processes of chance and predictability in the
streets.
The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general
term for the phenomena a few of us were investigating around the summer
of 1953, is not too inappropriate. It does not contradict the
materialist perspective of the conditioning of life and thought by
objective nature. Geography, for example, deals with the determinant
action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic
conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the
corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world.
Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and
specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized
or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The adjective
psychogeographical, retaining a rather pleasing vagueness, can thus be
applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to
their influence on human feelings, and even more generally to any
situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same s pirit of discovery.
It has long been said that the desert is monotheistic. Is it illogical
or devoid of interest to observe that the district in Paris between
Place de la Contrescarpe and Rue de l'Arbalete conduces rather to
atheism, to oblivion and to the disorientation of habitual reflexes?
The notion of utilitariness should be situated historically. The concern
to have open spaces allowing for the rapid circulation of troops and the
use of artillery against insurrections was at the origin of the urban
renewal plan adopted by the Second Empire. But from any standpoint other
than that of police control, Haussmann's Paris is a city built by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Today urbanism's main
problem is ensuring the smooth circulation of a rapidly increasing
quantity of motor vehicles. We might be justified in thinking that a
future urbanism will also apply itself to no less utilitarian projects
that will give the greatest consideration to psychogeographical
possibilities.
This present abundance of private cars is nothing but the result of the
constant propaganda by which capitalist production persuades the
masses--and this case is one of its most astonishing successes--that the
possession of a car is one of the privileges our society reserves for
its privileged members. (At the same time, anarchical progress negates
itself: one can thus savor the spectacle of a prefect of police urging
Parisian car owners to use public transportation.)
We know with what blind fury so many unprivileged people are ready to
defend their mediocre advantages. Such pathetic illusions of privilege
are linked to a general idea of happiness prevalent among the
bourgeoisie and maintained by a system of publicity that includes
Malraux's aesthetics as well as the imperatives of Coca-Cola--an idea of
happiness whose crisis must be provoked on every occasion by every means.
The first of these means are undoubtedly the systematic provocative
dissemination of a host of proposals tending to turn the whole of life
into an exciting game, and the continual depreciation of all current
diversions--to the extent, of course, that they cannot be detourned to
serve in constructions of more interesting ambiances. The greatest
difficulty in such an undertaking is to convey through these apparently
delirious proposals a sufficient degree of serious seduction. To
accomplish this we can imagine an adroit use of currently popular means
of communication. But a disruptive sort of abstention, or manifestations
designed to radically frustrate the fans of these means of
communication, could also promote at little expense an atmosphere of
uneasiness extremely favorable for the introduction of a few new
notions of pleasure.
This idea, that the realization of a chosen emotional situation depends
only on the thorough understanding and calculated application of a
certain number of concrete techniques, inspired this "Psychogeographical
Game of the Week" published, not without a certain humor, in Potlatch #1:
"In accordance with what you are seeking, choose a country, a more or
less populated city, a more or less busy street. Build a house. Furnish
it. Use decorations and surroundings to the best advantage. Choose the
season and the time of day. Bring together the most suitable people,
with appropriate records and drinks. The lighting and the conversation
should obviously be suited to the occasion, as should be the weather or
your memories.
"If there has been no error in your calculations, the result should
satisfy you."
We need to work toward flooding the market--even if for the moment
merely the intellectual market--with a mass of desires whose realization
is not beyond the capacity of man's present means of action on the
material world, but only beyond the capacity of the old social
organization. It is thus not without political interest to publicly
counterpose such desires to the elementary desires that are endlessly
rehashed by the film industry and in psychological novels like those of
that old hack Mauriac. ("In a society based on poverty, the poorest
products are inevitably used by the greatest number," Marx explained to
poor Proudhon.)
The revolutionary transformation of the world, of all aspects of the
world, will confirm all the dreams of abundance. The sudden change of
ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident
division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path
of least resistance which is automatically followed in aimless strolls
(and which has no relation to the physical contour of the ground); the
appealing or repelling character of certain places--all this seems to be
neglected. In any case it is never envisaged as depending on causes that
can be uncovered by careful analysis turned to account. People are quite
aware that some neighborhoods are sad and others pleasant. But they
generally simply assume elegant streets cause a feeling of satisfaction
and that poor street are depressing, and let it go at that. In fact, the
variety of possible combinations of ambiances, analogous to the blending
of pure chemicals in an infinite number of mixtures, gives rise to
feelings as differentiated and complex as any other form of spectacle
can evoke. The slightest demystified investigation reveals that the
qualitatively or quantitatively different influences of diverse urban
decors cannot be determined solely on the basis of the era or
architectural style, much less on the basis of housing conditions.
The research that we are thus led to undertake on the arrangement of the
elements of the urban setting, in close relation with the sensations
they provoke, entails bold hypotheses that must constantly corrected in
the light of experience, by critique and self-critique.
Certain of Chirico's paintings, which are clearly provoked by
architecturally originated sensations, exert in turn an effect on their
objective base to the point of transforming it: they tend themselves to
become blueprints or models. Disquieting neighborhoods of arcades could
one day carry on and fulfill the allure of these works.
I scarcely know of anything but those two harbors at dusk painted by
Claude Lorrain--which are at the Louvre and which juxtapose t extremely
dissimilar urban ambiances--that can rival in beauty the Paris metro
maps. It will be understood that in speaking here of beauty I don't have
in mind plastic beauty--the new beauty can only be beauty of
situation--but simply the particularly moving presentation, in both
cases, of a sum of possibilities.
Among various more difficult means of intervention, a renovated
cartography seems appropriate for immediate utilization.
The production of psychogeographic maps, or even the introduction of
alterations such as more or less arbitrarily transposing maps of two
different regions, can contribute to clarifying certain wanderings that
express not subordination to randomness but complete insubordination to
habitual influences (influences generally categorized as tourism that
popular drug as repugnant as sports or buying on credit). A friend
recently told me that he had just wandered through the Harz region of
Germany while blindly following the directions of a map of London This
sort of game is obviously only a mediocre beginning in comparison to the
complete construction of architecture and urbanism that will someday be
within the power of everyone. Meanwhile we can distinguish several
stages of partial, less difficult realizations, beginning with the mere
displacement of elements of decoration from the locations where we are
used to seeing them.
For example, in the preceding issue of this journal Marien proposed that
when global resources have ceased to be squandered on the irrational
enterprises that are imposed on us today, all the equestrian statues of
all the cities of the world be assembled in a single desert . This would
offer to the passersby--the future belongs to them--the spectacle of an
artificial cavalry charge, which could even be dedicated to the memory of
the greatest massacrers of history, from Tamerlane to Ridgway. Here we
see reappear one of the main demands of this generation: educative value.
In fact, there is nothing to be expected until the masses in action
awaken to the conditions that are imposed on them in all domains of
life, and to the practical means of changing them.
"The imaginary is that which tends to become real," wrote an author
whose name, on account of his notorious intellectual degradation, I have
since forgotten. The involuntary restrictiveness of such a statement
could serve as a touchstone exposing various farcical literary
revolutions: That which tends to remain unreal is empty babble.
Life, for which we are responsible, encounters, at the same time as
great motives for discouragement, innumerable more or less vulgar
diversions and compensations. A year doesn't go by when people we loved
haven't succumbed, for lack of having clearly grasped the present
possibilities, to some glaring capitulation. But the enemy camp
objectively condemns people to imbecility and already numbers millions
of imbeciles; the addition of a few more makes no difference. The first
moral deficiency remains indulgence, in all its forms.
GUY DEBORD
From Les Levres Nues #6, September 1955