From: "Steven Snell" <04048675-AT-brookes.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Raoul Vaneigem, Refusals and Passions and psychogeography
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 17:56:16 -0000


Eric -- thank you for your warning.

I'm looking to operate the condition of psychogeography, not psychogeography 
per se. But in this it is necessary to look at the etymology of 
psychogeography and thus acknowledge the SIs. Perhaps further research will 
push me more into the direction of the politics of psychogeography and the 
derive. I'm in the processing of 'focusing' my research and starting to 
ponder if the ability to wander has been lost with the overconstruction of 
the built form. This has led me to look at behaviourism, which apparently is 
fading in importance; then I've looked at man, sorry, person-environment 
studies, as well as castells, de certeau, soja, rapoport...
Is this doing "psychogeography" justice if I stick to the condition of it 
and not the, for a lack of better work, semantic baggage it brings with it?

Steven.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
To: <lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 11:51 AM
Subject: RE: Raoul Vaneigem, Refusals and Passions and psychogeography


> Steven,
>
> Part of the problem with your approach is that it becomes susceptible to
> the most common critique leveled at academic studies of the S.I.,
> namely, that by focusing on the aesthetic to the exclusion of the
> political, a very homogenized version of situationism is produced, as
> authentic as Taco Bell.
>
> Of course, this form of mass-marketing allows for increased consumption
> which is exactly the critique Debord made about the fetishism of the
> commodity in the Society of the Spectacle.
>
> Having made that warning, let me say that I agree with you
> psychogeography is a fertile site. You made already been familiar with
> him, but Henri Lefebvre is kind of the godfather of the movement, with a
> fascinating relationship to this group. His Production of Space is a
> seminal book in this area. Edward's Soja's Postmodern Geographies - The
> Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory is also worth looking
> into, especially for its reading of Foucault in terms of space.
>
> On the literary front, Iain Sinclair has promoted a kind of
> psychogeography in relation to a gothic London with his strange radicals
> like Stewart Home, aloof writers like Lord Archer, satanic architecture,
> Jack the Ripper and crazy booksellers. The graphic novel From Hell by
> Alan Moore is very influence by Sinclair's work. Sinclair has also
> written a short book comparing Ballard's Crash with the movie version
> that Glen might find interesting.
>
> eric
>
>
>
>