This is the fourth section of the above upcoming book. Please click here for the other sections, The Walker and the Landscape, Memory, Historicity, Time and Power and Place.
Debord wrote The Theory of the Dérive in 1959, setting out instructions on how to drift through the city in such a way where the participants are in tension between a relaxed state of being open to what may arise on the walk, and a conscious awareness in regard to the controlling force of urban décor. Recommending it as a group practice (even specifying the number of participants), suggesting the duration of the walk and discussing the logistics of the area under observation, we can see the genesis of a methodology unfolding in Debord’s text. He tentatively describes psychogeography as a methodology under development at the time of writing his essay and tells the reader how the dérive can be used as a springboard to further the purposes of the Situationists’ wider project, later laid out in Basic Programme of the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism (1961).
Formulating a methodology for philosophical (or scientific) inquiry is often necessary for an academic in order to propose potential work and to validate the results of findings. There are a number of situations where this might be required, for instance: when presenting one’s work to a particular body (such as an ethics committee) in order to validate a prospective research proposal.
The three essays in this section represent the scholarly work of three individuals from three different fields: performance, urban planning and cultural studies. The authors have developed a methodology for their walking-based practices and named the methodology in order to distinguish their form of walking from other psychogeographical practices. These essays show the development and evolution of a methodology over time, the fleshing out of a process for a specific project, and the practical aspects of applying a methodology to walking-based research.
Contributions are from Phil Smith, Victoria Henshaw and Tina Richardson.
Related Info:
Walking Inside Out – book cover and abstract.
The Drift is phenomenological intentionality - it starts as a cognitive map and that you go "into the Drift" - it involves shifting into an altered perceptual state...I have been in the Drift and walked through ever shifting, flowing urban spaces, perceptually rearranging them in the Drift......You have to go into the Drift to understand it - Mark Downham (Cyberpunk)
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