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.
# posted by The Bad Yogi @ 11:45 AM 
