The Jehovah Project

This is not a house. This a picture of a house on the Lea delta, London (formerly Essex), site of the 2012 Olympics, but encountered by the photographer during a psychogeographical tour of the vast demolition plains, and recorded here in the spirit of salvage ethnography. The psychogeophotographer would later have parkour fantasies about the building—simply walking past wasn’t going to be enough.

The New Psychogeography, a course in literature

University of Toronto

Fall, 2007

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 parkour 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. Psychogeography was an important part of 20th-century European literature and culture, and has been experiencing a revival in this century. It seems likely that even here in Canada we will begin to experience some of the energy of this re-invigoration, but the question is, will it be more of a street phenomenon, or will it have the wide literary input it once had?

Students interested in theory, urban studies, cultural studies, and various literatures will find the readings in this course useful. Required texts(Library and scrounged copies are permitted.)

Required texts

Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead (2004)

Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (1987)

Ian McEwan, Saturday (2005)

Ricardo Piglia, Absent City / La ciudad ausente (1992)

Final research paper, 15-20 pages: 55%

Choice between short paper, 5-7 pages, and annotated bibliography, due fourth class: 25%Participation, including short response papers: 20%

week one

Introduction: Jump City: parkour and the traces
Handouts from Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

weeks two through nine

[The readings in this period will be a mixture of photocopies and websites, so that students will not actually need to obtain books until week ten.]
Selections from The Arcades Project continued.
Selections from Jean Dubuffet, Asphyxiating Culture / Asphyxiante culture (1968).
David Harvey, “Possible Urban Worlds,” in Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, 403-438.
Le Corbusier, “The Voisin Plan for Paris: Can Buenos Aires Become One of the Great Cities of the World?” in Precisions,169-214.
Selections from Georges Perec Species of Spaces / Espèces d’espaces (1974) Begin properly with the “Surprise Me!” selections of Amazon (dot com).
Selections from Peter Handke, My Year in the No-Man’s Bay / Mein Jahr in der Neimendbucht (1994).
Guy Debord, “Theory of the Dérive,” J [“J” means it can be found at jehovahproject.blogspot.com, circa January 2007], also “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography”[ http://library.nothingness.org/articles/all/en/display/2], also selections from Society of the Spectacle / La societe du spectacle (1967) J
Henri Lefebvre, “Interview on the Situationists International” (1983) [http://www.notbored.org/lefebvre-interview.html] Ronald Blythe, Robert MacFarlane, Ken Warpole, Iain Sinclair and Marina Warner, at Marina Warner’s “Memory Maps” site. JMichel de Certeau, “Walking in the City,” from The Practice of Everyday Life, Chpt. VII.Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel,” from Ficciones.Susan Buck-Morss, “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe” JPatrick Wright, “Industrial Bread…” JSelections from W.G. Sebald, Rings of Saturn Selections from Ken Warpole, 350 Miles, A journey through Essex (2005).
Selections from Lisa Robertson, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture (2003)Selections from Iain Sinclair Edge of the Orison

week ten
Jane Jacobs, Dark Ages

week eleven

Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

week twelve

Ian McEwen, Saturday

week thirteen

Ricardo Piglia, The Absent City