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Title: Theory of the Dérive Author: Guy Debord Date: November 1956 Language: en Topics: situationist, psychogeography Source: Retrieved on 8th July 2021 from https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html Notes: Originally published in Les Lèvres Nues #9 (November 1956), reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #2 (December 1958). Translated by Ken Knabb.
ONE OF THE BASIC situationist practices is the dérive [literally:
“drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances.
DĂ©rives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of
psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the
classic notions of journey or stroll.
In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their
relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual
motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the
attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is
a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a
dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with
constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage
entry into or exit from certain zones.
But the dérive includes both this letting-go and its necessary
contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the
knowledge and calculation of their possibilities. In this latter regard,
ecological science — despite the narrow social space to which it limits
itself — provides psychogeography with abundant data.
The ecological analysis of the absolute or relative character of
fissures in the urban network, of the role of microclimates, of distinct
neighborhoods with no relation to administrative boundaries, and above
all of the dominating action of centers of attraction, must be utilized
and completed by psychogeographical methods. The objective passional
terrain of the dérive must be defined in accordance both with its own
logic and with its relations with social morphology.
In his study Paris et l’agglomération parisienne (Bibliothèque de
Sociologie Contemporaine, P.U.F., 1952) Chombart de Lauwe notes that “an
urban neighborhood is determined not only by geographical and economic
factors, but also by the image that its inhabitants and those of other
neighborhoods have of it.” In the same work, in order to illustrate “the
narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives ... within a
geographical area whose radius is extremely small,” he diagrams all the
movements made in the space of one year by a student living in the
16^(th) Arrondissement. Her itinerary forms a small triangle with no
significant deviations, the three apexes of which are the School of
Political Sciences, her residence and that of her piano teacher.
Such data — examples of a modern poetry capable of provoking sharp
emotional reactions (in this particular case, outrage at the fact that
anyone’s life can be so pathetically limited) — or even Burgess’s theory
of Chicago’s social activities as being distributed in distinct
concentric zones, will undoubtedly prove useful in developing dérives.
If chance plays an important role in dérives this is because the
methodology of psychogeographical observation is still in its infancy.
But the action of chance is naturally conservative and in a new setting
tends to reduce everything to habit or to an alternation between a
limited number of variants. Progress means breaking through fields where
chance holds sway by creating new conditions more favorable to our
purposes. We can say, then, that the randomness of a dérive is
fundamentally different from that of the stroll, but also that the first
psychogeographical attractions discovered by dérivers may tend to fixate
them around new habitual axes, to which they will constantly be drawn
back.
An insufficient awareness of the limitations of chance, and of its
inevitably reactionary effects, condemned to a dismal failure the famous
aimless wandering attempted in 1923 by four surrealists, beginning from
a town chosen by lot: Wandering in open country is naturally depressing,
and the interventions of chance are poorer there than anywhere else. But
this mindlessness is pushed much further by a certain Pierre Vendryes
(in MĂ©dium, May 1954), who thinks he can relate this anecdote to various
probability experiments, on the ground that they all supposedly involve
the same sort of antideterminist liberation. He gives as an example the
random distribution of tadpoles in a circular aquarium, adding,
significantly, “It is necessary, of course, that such a population be
subject to no external guiding influence.” From that perspective, the
tadpoles could be considered more spontaneously liberated than the
surrealists, since they have the advantage of being “as stripped as
possible of intelligence, sociability and sexuality,” and are thus
“truly independent from one another.”
At the opposite pole from such imbecilities, the primarily urban
character of the dérive, in its element in the great industrially
transformed cities — those centers of possibilities and meanings — could
be expressed in Marx’s phrase: “Men can see nothing around them that is
not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very
landscape is alive.”
One can dérive alone, but all indications are that the most fruitful
numerical arrangement consists of several small groups of two or three
people who have reached the same level of awareness, since
cross-checking these different groups’ impressions makes it possible to
arrive at more objective conclusions. It is preferable for the
composition of these groups to change from one dérive to another. With
more than four or five participants, the specifically dérive character
rapidly diminishes, and in any case it is impossible for there to be
more than ten or twelve people without the dérive fragmenting into
several simultaneous dérives. The practice of such subdivision is in
fact of great interest, but the difficulties it entails have so far
prevented it from being organized on a sufficient scale.
The average duration of a dérive is one day, considered as the time
between two periods of sleep. The starting and ending times have no
necessary relation to the solar day, but it should be noted that the
last hours of the night are generally unsuitable for dérives.
But this duration is merely a statistical average. For one thing, a
dérive rarely occurs in its pure form: it is difficult for the
participants to avoid setting aside an hour or two at the beginning or
end of the day for taking care of banal tasks; and toward the end of the
day fatigue tends to encourage such an abandonment. But more
importantly, a dérive often takes place within a deliberately limited
period of a few hours, or even fortuitously during fairly brief moments;
or it may last for several days without interruption. In spite of the
cessations imposed by the need for sleep, certain dérives of a
sufficient intensity have been sustained for three or four days, or even
longer. It is true that in the case of a series of dérives over a rather
long period of time it is almost impossible to determine precisely when
the state of mind peculiar to one dérive gives way to that of another.
One sequence of dérives was pursued without notable interruption for
around two months. Such an experience gives rise to new objective
conditions of behavior that bring about the disappearance of a good
number of the old ones.
The influence of weather on dérives, although real, is a significant
factor only in the case of prolonged rains, which make them virtually
impossible. But storms or other types of precipitation are rather
favorable for dérives.
The spatial field of a dérive may be precisely delimited or vague,
depending on whether the goal is to study a terrain or to emotionally
disorient oneself. It should not be forgotten that these two aspects of
dérives overlap in so many ways that it is impossible to isolate one of
them in a pure state. But the use of taxis, for example, can provide a
clear enough dividing line: If in the course of a dérive one takes a
taxi, either to get to a specific destination or simply to move, say,
twenty minutes to the west, one is concerned primarily with a personal
trip outside one’s usual surroundings. If, on the other hand, one sticks
to the direct exploration of a particular terrain, one is concentrating
primarily on research for a psychogeographical urbanism.
In every case the spatial field depends first of all on the point of
departure — the residence of the solo dériver or the meeting place
selected by a group. The maximum area of this spatial field does not
extend beyond the entirety of a large city and its suburbs. At its
minimum it can be limited to a small self-contained ambiance: a single
neighborhood or even a single block of houses if it’s interesting enough
(the extreme case being a static-dérive of an entire day within the
Saint-Lazare train station).
The exploration of a fixed spatial field entails establishing bases and
calculating directions of penetration. It is here that the study of maps
comes in — ordinary ones as well as ecological and psychogeographical
ones — along with their correction and improvement. It should go without
saying that we are not at all interested in any mere exoticism that may
arise from the fact that one is exploring a neighborhood for the first
time. Besides its unimportance, this aspect of the problem is completely
subjective and soon fades away.
In the “possible rendezvous,” on the other hand, the element of
exploration is minimal in comparison with that of behavioral
disorientation. The subject is invited to come alone to a certain place
at a specified time. He is freed from the bothersome obligations of the
ordinary rendezvous since there is no one to wait for. But since this
“possible rendezvous” has brought him without warning to a place he may
or may not know, he observes the surroundings. It may be that the same
spot has been specified for a “possible rendezvous” for someone else
whose identity he has no way of knowing. Since he may never even have
seen the other person before, he will be encouraged to start up
conversations with various passersby. He may meet no one, or he may even
by chance meet the person who has arranged the “possible rendezvous.” In
any case, particularly if the time and place have been well chosen, his
use of time will take an unexpected turn. He may even telephone someone
else who doesn’t know where the first “possible rendezvous” has taken
him, in order to ask for another one to be specified. One can see the
virtually unlimited resources of this pastime.
— Whom must I announce to my Lord Duke?
— The young man who one evening sought to quarrel with him on the Pont
Neuf, opposite the Samarataine.
— A singular introduction!
— You will find that it is as good as another.
— Dumas (The Three Muskateers)
Our loose lifestyle and even certain amusements considered dubious that
have always been enjoyed among our entourage — slipping by night into
houses undergoing demolition, hitchhiking nonstop and without
destination through Paris during a transportation strike in the name of
adding to the confusion, wandering in subterranean catacombs forbidden
to the public, etc. — are expressions of a more general sensibility
which is no different from that of the dérive. Written descriptions can
be no more than passwords to this great game.
The lessons drawn from dérives enable us to draw up the first surveys of
the psychogeographical articulations of a modern city. Beyond the
discovery of unities of ambiance, of their main components and their
spatial localization, one comes to perceive their principal axes of
passage, their exits and their defenses. One arrives at the central
hypothesis of the existence of psychogeographical pivotal points. One
measures the distances that actually separate two regions of a city,
distances that may have little relation with the physical distance
between them. With the aid of old maps, aerial photographs and
experimental dérives, one can draw up hitherto lacking maps of
influences, maps whose inevitable imprecision at this early stage is no
worse than that of the first navigational charts. The only difference is
that it is no longer a matter of precisely delineating stable
continents, but of changing architecture and urbanism.
Today the different unities of atmosphere and of dwellings are not
precisely marked off, but are surrounded by more or less extended and
indistinct bordering regions. The most general change that dérive
experience leads to proposing is the constant diminution of these border
regions, up to the point of their complete suppression.
Within architecture itself, the taste for dériving tends to promote all
sorts of new forms of labyrinths made possible by modern techniques of
construction. Thus in March 1955 the press reported the construction in
New York of a building in which one can see the first signs of an
opportunity to dérive inside an apartment:
The apartments of the helicoidal building will be shaped like slices of
cake. One will be able to enlarge or reduce them by shifting movable
partitions. The half-floor gradations avoid limiting the number of
rooms, since the tenant can request the use of the adjacent section on
either upper or lower levels. With this setup three four-room apartments
can be transformed into one twelve-room apartment in less than six
hours.