Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Gift City, continued*) Do we deserve the city we have? Is it not of our own devising? The capital city is rational, the likely corrollary of a series of rationalizations, of bargains struck with our conscience, which knows a few things and half-knows many more. On Boxing Day I came to the capital city and to the Eaton Center after twenty or thirty years absence, seeking the past but finding a bright present future, sixty thousand of us in a single glass-topped amphitheather sliced through with the clean rise-over-run diagonals of the escalators, barkers crying percentages in a hundred doorways, the ceaseless pacing and questing of the gods, and I almost cried out at the glory of it, but I bowed my head and said “amen.” What can be said of a day marking exchange, the triumph of capital, the gift spurned?
*) The capital city is a map of itself. The notation for this is not 1:1, but simply unity. Is there anywhere besides the capital city? Perhaps the introduction of scale marks something new in the history of the capital city. The vagaries of scale suggest an outside. A map is born. This is day one of a new era. The inaugural moment is renewed every day, and there have always already been a thousand maps. Nevertheless the bifurcation of scale is the conscience of the city. Representation is quickened into being. How can this be, in the secular specular city, where there is nothing that is not representation?
*) If you can make a map of the city, you can make the wrong one.
*) The map of capital city is a gift. At the scale of 1:2 it cramps the style or enlarges the prospect, depending which way you are going. Capital city is true. In unity, it is as coterminous with itself as a McDonald’s french fry in the lotus position. It is not a pipe, it is merely itself. Paradoxically, it means nothing to say, “capital city is true,” but capital city abides in this truth. Even if you make the right map, things are unravelling. It’s a question of scale. At 1:4, the constrictions and liberties are manifest. Where shall we go?
*) Is capital city the dominion of the owners of production, while we are the dispossessed? Are we not the heirs of this city? Once you admit the possibility of a map, the map of Manhattan can be shown to be a map of Calcutta or of a forgotten or unacknowledged province of China. The coordinates are clear. We can get there from here because we have never left. Yet this is a map of the puritan psyche, a bus schedule for the giddy sublimations of Disneyland, transposed onto other industrialized nations. Its contours are best negotiated in a Volvo loaded with Ikea products. Its interpellations are in perfect synch with our guilt. “Here be dragons.” And once we’ve recognized ourselves as the dragons, the map can no longer help us.
*) Gift is the terra icognita. It acknowledges our guilt and, inappropriately, denies justice. The gift map is wrong, unjust.
*) Guilt is a spur to justice, but it cannot solve our problem, which is suffering. There is a formal reason for this. Guilt is a map to a temporal elsewhere, but we possess only the present, a moment so small as to resist location. We are responsible only for what we can control, and the past is beyond our control. Suffering is not merely everywhere, but always, and the present is too small to get a purchase on it. Gift has a vigor which guilt cannot attain. Gift recognizes itself as a rhetorical strategy, as a fiction, with no rational connection to justice, while justice fibs about its tenuous hold on the past. Gift is the truth of a false map, and justice the lie of a true one. Move carefully in capital city, try to understand the lie of the land.
Children of Men...London in February. "Gherkin pickle" Swiss Re Building partly visible in bottom right corner.
For a new translation of The Society of the Spectacle click on Guy Debord.
My work is on the construction of space in the Essex landscape. Click on space to see someone else's article on the construction of space in such a landscape.
Click here to see Robert Macfarlane's article on J.A. Baker's Essex landscape book.
Ladder poised in Essex garden. In our Contemporary Psychogeographies course, we will be reading Iain Sinclair's "Edge of the Orison," about the poet John Clare's escape from Essex.
Click here to see a literary journal on London and in particular an article on Iain Sinclair's psychogeography.
Psychogeographers' walk: Click on dérive to see an article by Debord on how to walk in the city.
Purloined Essex: I found this article after I'd taken some of my most serious sillywalks in the Dantean landscape of an Essex slash London I was becoming more and more convinced had been spirited away. Click on LostEssex to see the article.
Derrida's intuition was that writing always implies your death, since it isn't writing unless it could work when you're not around.
Far from dry land on an Essex floodplain, tide rising, I found the hardly-dry tools of a local scribbler.
Click on Warner to see British cultural icon Marina Warner's site "Memory Maps," including some exuberant claims about the new psychogeography.
Click on Sebald to see an article on the German psychogeographer of East Anglia.
Roof detail, London's Liverpool Street Station (gateway to East End)
Monday, January 08, 2007
Psychogeographies
The syllabus.
The time spent in class will be about twenty-four hours. That’s a single revolution of the planet, but with breaks for coffee and for what Michel de Certeau might have called “the practice of everyday life,” so that the revolution will last one semester. We will take as our topic London, Buenos Aires, and Paris, or at least certain literary experiences derived from those urban centers and continuously re-invented in a Toronto of our own devising.
Our emphasis will be on psychogeography—the name suggests its purview: self/place/writing—as a literary phenomenon, and our approach will be comparatively literary, with French and Spanish texts in English translation. Students are encouraged to read the texts in the original language if they are competent to do so, and to bring as much of the energy of original quotation and translation to class as possible. We will also consider many para-literary phenomena of the urban experience, including parkours or free running, urban nature, manufactured landscapes, mapping, drifting, street haunting, graffiti, shopping as poaching. The vocabulary of Situationism—derive, détournement, flaneur—is likely to find a completely new context in contemporary London and Toronto.
My own musings on “Gift City” will highlight ways in which the city, the rectilinearity of which can appear to be simply a given, might be susceptible to a supplementary logic, a sort of froth or slush which arises in the midst of the certainties of exchange in the “capital” city. Gift economy might be capable of “solving” the problem of the city even if gift never quite exists.
The first part of the course will focus on essays which tend to celebrate the emergence or re-emergence of psychogeography as a literary phenomenon. The essays selected suggest some of the range and intensity of psychogeography. Cities tend to look a bit like motherboards and to have circuitry that is both vexed and miniaturized. Or at least that seems to be the perspective, we might say, from the flight deck of globalization (first class). The specular character of the city is ingeniously theorized in Akira Mizuta Lippit’s hypotheses on atoms, bits of solid Western matter so small their paths must be imagined. We will read two works, Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and selections from Walter Benjamin’s unfinished Arcades Project, across several class periods, as if the aphoristic style of these texts were able to perform for us as a sort of scripture. We will read the final jeremiad from Jane Jacobs, the American writer on cities who was adopted by Toronto: Dark Age Ahead. In addition to the essays listed, students will be asked occasionally to read other short essays.
The second part of the course will investigate fictions of the city. Lisa Robertson’s Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture will hint that the city must be lyrically produced; Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion will show how the city has always already been produced by workers from below. Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday maintains the unities of time and place (the city, a 24-hour period) by which we will be governing ourselves in the course. The novel begins with a vision of “icy white light” and “skeletal trees,” as if its London were to be revealed in x-ray. Ricardo Piglia’s novel on Buenos Aires, The Absent City, makes it easier for us to ask if the city is even there. We will spend almost three segments of our precious twenty-four-hour period on Iain Sinclair, writer’s writer, psychogeographer extraordinaire, bard of east London, and play his works against the classic psychogeography available in selections from the German/English writer W.G. Sebald and in selections from “Memory Maps.” A perusal of this latter site, overseen and quickened by British cultural icon Marina Warner, gives some sense of how vast is the literature of psychogeography, and of how firmly entrenched it is in the European literary imagination.
I should add that many of the books on the reading list, and perhaps all of them, have been selected for the pure pleasure of reading them.
Required texts
(Library and scrounged copies are permitted.)
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle / La societe du spectacle (1967)
Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead (2004)
Lisa Robertson, Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture (2003)
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (1987)
Ian McEwan, Saturday (2005)
Ricardo Piglia, Absent City / La ciudad ausente (1992)
Iain Sinclair, Edge of the Orison (2006), Liquid City (1999), Downriver (1991)
Required actions
Final research paper, 15-20 pages: 55%
Choice between short paper, 5-7 pages, and annotated bibliography, due 6 Feb: 25%
Participation, including short response papers: 20%
Schedule of readings
9 Jan.
Introduction.
16 Jan.
Robert Pogue Harrison, “Vico’s Giants” (3-13) and “The Ways of Method” (108-114), from Forests.
Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method, part IV
Dr. Eva-Lynn Jagoe speaks on artist Jorge Macchi, Wed. 17 Jan.
23 Jan.
Paul Shepard, “The Mechanists,” from Nature and Madness, 93-108.
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, sections I-III.
30 Jan.
Akira Mizuta Lippit, “Universes” and “The Shadow Archive,” from Atomic Light (Shadow Optics)
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel,” from Ficciones.
Debord, sections IV-VI.
6 Feb.
Susan Buck-Morss, “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe”
Patrick Wright, “Industrial Bread…”
Debord, VII-IX.
Bibliographies or short papers due.
13 Feb.
Jane Jacobs, Dark Ages
Selections from Benjamin, The Arcades Project
*********reading week
27 Feb.
Lisa Robertson, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture
Benjamin selections
6 March
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
13 March
Ian McEwen, Saturday
20 March
Ricardo Piglia, The Absent City
27 March
Marina Warner’s “Memory Maps” site.
Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City,” from The Practice of Everyday Life
Iain Sinclair novel.
3 April
Selections from W.G. Sebald, Rings of Saturn
Iain Sinclair novel.
10 April
Selections from 350 Miles, A journey through Essex (2005).
Iain Sinclair novel.
The syllabus.
The time spent in class will be about twenty-four hours. That’s a single revolution of the planet, but with breaks for coffee and for what Michel de Certeau might have called “the practice of everyday life,” so that the revolution will last one semester. We will take as our topic London, Buenos Aires, and Paris, or at least certain literary experiences derived from those urban centers and continuously re-invented in a Toronto of our own devising.
Our emphasis will be on psychogeography—the name suggests its purview: self/place/writing—as a literary phenomenon, and our approach will be comparatively literary, with French and Spanish texts in English translation. Students are encouraged to read the texts in the original language if they are competent to do so, and to bring as much of the energy of original quotation and translation to class as possible. We will also consider many para-literary phenomena of the urban experience, including parkours or free running, urban nature, manufactured landscapes, mapping, drifting, street haunting, graffiti, shopping as poaching. The vocabulary of Situationism—derive, détournement, flaneur—is likely to find a completely new context in contemporary London and Toronto.
My own musings on “Gift City” will highlight ways in which the city, the rectilinearity of which can appear to be simply a given, might be susceptible to a supplementary logic, a sort of froth or slush which arises in the midst of the certainties of exchange in the “capital” city. Gift economy might be capable of “solving” the problem of the city even if gift never quite exists.
The first part of the course will focus on essays which tend to celebrate the emergence or re-emergence of psychogeography as a literary phenomenon. The essays selected suggest some of the range and intensity of psychogeography. Cities tend to look a bit like motherboards and to have circuitry that is both vexed and miniaturized. Or at least that seems to be the perspective, we might say, from the flight deck of globalization (first class). The specular character of the city is ingeniously theorized in Akira Mizuta Lippit’s hypotheses on atoms, bits of solid Western matter so small their paths must be imagined. We will read two works, Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and selections from Walter Benjamin’s unfinished Arcades Project, across several class periods, as if the aphoristic style of these texts were able to perform for us as a sort of scripture. We will read the final jeremiad from Jane Jacobs, the American writer on cities who was adopted by Toronto: Dark Age Ahead. In addition to the essays listed, students will be asked occasionally to read other short essays.
The second part of the course will investigate fictions of the city. Lisa Robertson’s Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture will hint that the city must be lyrically produced; Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion will show how the city has always already been produced by workers from below. Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday maintains the unities of time and place (the city, a 24-hour period) by which we will be governing ourselves in the course. The novel begins with a vision of “icy white light” and “skeletal trees,” as if its London were to be revealed in x-ray. Ricardo Piglia’s novel on Buenos Aires, The Absent City, makes it easier for us to ask if the city is even there. We will spend almost three segments of our precious twenty-four-hour period on Iain Sinclair, writer’s writer, psychogeographer extraordinaire, bard of east London, and play his works against the classic psychogeography available in selections from the German/English writer W.G. Sebald and in selections from “Memory Maps.” A perusal of this latter site, overseen and quickened by British cultural icon Marina Warner, gives some sense of how vast is the literature of psychogeography, and of how firmly entrenched it is in the European literary imagination.
I should add that many of the books on the reading list, and perhaps all of them, have been selected for the pure pleasure of reading them.
Required texts
(Library and scrounged copies are permitted.)
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle / La societe du spectacle (1967)
Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead (2004)
Lisa Robertson, Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture (2003)
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (1987)
Ian McEwan, Saturday (2005)
Ricardo Piglia, Absent City / La ciudad ausente (1992)
Iain Sinclair, Edge of the Orison (2006), Liquid City (1999), Downriver (1991)
Required actions
Final research paper, 15-20 pages: 55%
Choice between short paper, 5-7 pages, and annotated bibliography, due 6 Feb: 25%
Participation, including short response papers: 20%
Schedule of readings
9 Jan.
Introduction.
16 Jan.
Robert Pogue Harrison, “Vico’s Giants” (3-13) and “The Ways of Method” (108-114), from Forests.
Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method, part IV
Dr. Eva-Lynn Jagoe speaks on artist Jorge Macchi, Wed. 17 Jan.
23 Jan.
Paul Shepard, “The Mechanists,” from Nature and Madness, 93-108.
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, sections I-III.
30 Jan.
Akira Mizuta Lippit, “Universes” and “The Shadow Archive,” from Atomic Light (Shadow Optics)
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel,” from Ficciones.
Debord, sections IV-VI.
6 Feb.
Susan Buck-Morss, “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe”
Patrick Wright, “Industrial Bread…”
Debord, VII-IX.
Bibliographies or short papers due.
13 Feb.
Jane Jacobs, Dark Ages
Selections from Benjamin, The Arcades Project
*********reading week
27 Feb.
Lisa Robertson, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture
Benjamin selections
6 March
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
13 March
Ian McEwen, Saturday
20 March
Ricardo Piglia, The Absent City
27 March
Marina Warner’s “Memory Maps” site.
Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City,” from The Practice of Everyday Life
Iain Sinclair novel.
3 April
Selections from W.G. Sebald, Rings of Saturn
Iain Sinclair novel.
10 April
Selections from 350 Miles, A journey through Essex (2005).
Iain Sinclair novel.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Jump Toronto.
The reading list shown in the online Comparative Literature catalog for Psychogeographies is not in synch with the submitted version, though the course description is correct. The course description below (November 2 entry) has the correct readings, though there will be some modifications. The Psychogeographies course, which will be starting this Tuesday is a vibrant and intensive immersion in the theory and practice of urban experience, ranging from explorations of parkours ("free running and jumping") in Toronto to French theory (in translation). In the second half of the course we will read novels, and the reading requirements will be fairly extensive. The books aren't in at the bookstore yet but won't in any case be required for a while, since we will be working from photocopies during the first weeks. There is another but very different urban course in the department right now and students in that will find this course complementary. Good students from outside the department are also encouraged to attend Psychogeographies. Check back here on Monday for the most up-to-date list of texts. --dt
The reading list shown in the online Comparative Literature catalog for Psychogeographies is not in synch with the submitted version, though the course description is correct. The course description below (November 2 entry) has the correct readings, though there will be some modifications. The Psychogeographies course, which will be starting this Tuesday is a vibrant and intensive immersion in the theory and practice of urban experience, ranging from explorations of parkours ("free running and jumping") in Toronto to French theory (in translation). In the second half of the course we will read novels, and the reading requirements will be fairly extensive. The books aren't in at the bookstore yet but won't in any case be required for a while, since we will be working from photocopies during the first weeks. There is another but very different urban course in the department right now and students in that will find this course complementary. Good students from outside the department are also encouraged to attend Psychogeographies. Check back here on Monday for the most up-to-date list of texts. --dt
