Let’s Talk About What People Don’t Like About Psychogeography – Part 4

The Spoon Bending…

This is the final part of the blog looking at psychogeography’s detractors. Please click here for part 1, part 2 and part 3.

What has been written about the urban spaces we occupy influences how we see those spaces to begin with: “there is no city that is simply outside the network of texts that circulate and shape our experience of the city” (Highmore 2005, 141). However, if we look at the reverse of this then we can also influence how our city is perceived through our explorations and writing of it. Our cities are in a continual state of flux, despite the appearance of some stability. Have you noticed how you see new hoardings appear, then later the building work begins behind the hoarding, then upon completion the hoardings are removed and the new building appears in its fullness? In a very short space of time you will have forgotten what was previously in its place. The space will become stable again. This stability is an illusion which is a side-effect or urban planning. Psychogeographers are one of the groups of writers who remark on the changing nature of space and contribute to the history of these places, the very spaces on our doorstep.

Possibly because of the prominence of the creative-writing/creative non-fiction background of many urban walkers historically, psychogeography has often been highlighted for not being critical enough of itself – although I believe this is unjustified. I would like to defend this strand of psychogeography and say I do not think this is necessarily the job of these writers any more than it would be for travel writers to critique their own field. However, for those of us in academia who are interested in psychogeography from a theoretical and/or methodological perspective, this is our job. One of the comments on the The Great Wen: A London Blog attached to the post mentioned previously, written by ‘Jason’, says: “Psychogeography has about as much rigour as spoon bending but I’ve always had a weakness for it” (cited in Watts 2014). So, let's change that perception.

It is difficult to get to the bottom of what some of these generic criticisms of psychogeography actually mean. In these instances I always want to ask the rhetorical question: ‘Which type of psychogeography are you talking about?’. However, I have to assume by their question that these individual’s think that all psychogeography is the same, since there is no nuance in their remark (although Jason does seem to actually like psychogeography despite this). It is quite apparent from researching psychogeography (especially that of the Situationists), that it has, and continues to be, critically assessed. I hope Walking Inside Out demonstrates that psychogeography can be rigorous when applied methodologically and it can also be aligned with relevant theories in order to be used to explore urban space by those in and outside academia.

Related Links:
The New Psychogeography
STEPZ

Bibliography:
Highmore, Ben. Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and Symbolic City. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Watts, Peter. "New London Writing, or What the Fuck Is Psychogeography Anyway?": The Great Wen, 2014.

Let’s Talk About What People Don’t Like About Psychogeography – Part 1

The Set...

So as to keep up-to-date with any current media-related references to psychogeography, from time to time I type into my search engine ‘psychogeography’ followed by the month and year. In April 2014 I did the same and an article in the The Guardian paired psychogeography with the name of a Britpop singer: ‘Damon Albarn and the Heavy Seas Review – Rich in Personal Psychogeography’ (2014). If Coverley thought ‘the game was up’ following Self’s articles in The Independent, I wonder what this says about psychogeography today? Even though it could be easy to be cynical about its current populist and mutable use, this is not a particularly constructive approach to take towards psychogeography. Rather than seeing it as a co-opting of the term, or an aligning of some individuals to something ‘trendy’ that we feel they have little connection to, we might see this as a compliment.

In the introduction to Walking Inside Out I mentioned how Iain Sinclair has often been placed in the position of defender of the field of psychogeography. Psychogeography has plenty of detractors and, while this could be seen as a negative reflection of it, I prefer to see it as promoting valuable discussion. It also enables an academic engagement with critics who are often outside academia. While I do not see myself as the current ‘union rep’ of psychogeography, I would like to look at some of the comments by some critics and work through the issues they have raised, since they are a reflection of what individuals think about psychogeography in Britain today and are, therefore, part of the project at hand.

Sinclair has expressed his own concerns about the term, however these are often decontextualized by others into snappy quotes ripe for media comment and at times represent a specific strand of psychogeography that he may be commenting on, or even based on another period of time in its development. For instance his references to it being a ‘franchise’ in the The Fortean Times are referring to an aspect of 1990s psychogeography: “There was a kind of strategy to this rebranding, I was quite happy to run with it as a franchise, as a way of talking about doing the things I'd always done and providing a useful description that could be discussed in public. It became a bit of a monster on the back of that” (Pilkington and Baker 2002, 3). I am not sure if this reflects the practice as it is in the 'noughties', at least not for the practitioners themselves and certainly not for the contributors included here. Nevertheless, the term 'franchise' alludes to the co-opting of it, such as its capitalisation as a 'product', which is a valid issue. While I believe the benefits of psychogeography far outweigh its negative effects, attempting to prevent its co-optation are difficult and ongoing, perhaps impossible (but this goes for culture in general - hence, the 'culture industry'). In postmodernity everything is potentially 'up for grabs' by consumer society.

In February 2014, on his blog The Great Wen: A London Blog, Peter Watts uploaded the post ‘New London Writing, or What the Fuck is Psychogeography Anyway?’. The title of the post implies that this is simply going to be a completely negative critique of the practice, where actually it is not unsympathetic and raises an important issue about property developers: “By my experience, then, psychogeography is used as much to shift property as it is to expand and combine the frontiers of space and mind, which is perhaps inevitable in London, where any amount of folklore and fauna only has any value if it can be seen to have a positive effect on land price” (Watts 2014). This, however, is a criticism levelled at the selling and procurement of real estate, and not one directed at psychogeographers or the work they do. Some of the potential problems in regards to capitalising on psychogeography include: unethical organisations aligning themselves with psychogeographers under the guise of appearing to address community-living issues, businesses adding it to their profile in the same way they do with corporate social responsibility, and the hijacking of it by capital by applying it to consumer products in order to exploit its commercial potential. However, I think it is still not popular enough for it to be re-appropriated to any real degree at this time. Also its, sometimes, political and/or often activist association might repel many (although this did not deter capital from co-opting the potential commerciality of punk). Alastair Bonnett says: “A much broader group of people are now interested and involved in psychogeography, many of whom have no interest in the Situationists. It may be argued that this is a form of depolitization of that psychogeography has outgrown the limited and exclusionary world of the revolutionary avant-garde” (2013).

While the elusiveness of the categorisation of psychogeography lends it to being a useful tool for the urban walker, this might also work against its co-opting within neoliberal discourse because it is so difficult to qualify (although the opposite might also be the case, its vagueness makes it pliable and, hence, appropriable). It is also possible that a 'bandwagon' of spurious psychogeographers could lead to the de-valuing of the term 'psychogeography', although this does go against the basic principles of the critique of the spectacle (as it would have been for the Situationists). However, none of these scenarios would be difficult to critically evaluate in a given setting providing you understand the political implications and marketing potential of media-hyped trends...

Please click here for part 2.

Related Links:
Iain Sinclair
Schizocartography
STEPZ: Psychogeography Zine

Bibliography:
Bonnett, Alastair. "Psychogeography." In Oxford Bibliographies Online: Geography, 2013.
Pilkington, Mark and Phil Baker. "City Brain." Fortean Times, 2002.
Watts, Peter. "New London Writing, or What the Fuck Is Psychogeography Anyway?": The Great Wen, 2014.

The Anti-University

While looking up the situationist Alexander Trocchi online, I came across the above super poster on Peter Watts blog I noticed the anti-psychiatry franchise are on the list (Berke, Cooper and Laing), along with some radical writers and artists of the time. What a great poster it is, not especially for its artistic aesthetic, but because it represents a moment-in-time which is connected to a place - a truly historical document which pinpoints people in space, while attributing them to a specific revolutionary action.

As Peter Watts states on his blog: "The London Anti-University was formed after participants at 1967′s Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation at the Roundhouse decided they wanted to continue to explore some of the themes and conversations that had started there (sample debates: The Future of Capitalism; Black Power; Imperialism and Revolution in America)." I love the titles of these classes. They are pretty much standard university modules in Cultural Studies nowadays, even if the titles then were much more polemic than the contemporary ones. Today we like to seduce our students with 'Postcolonial Theory' and 'Capital and Critique', in order that they don't get too scared and sign up for something more innocuous - and less revolutionary - instead.

The London Anti-University seemed like a great idea (check out the excellent film on Peter's blog at the above link). I especially like the hotch-potch of donated chairs for the students.

Links:
Notes on institutions, anti-institutions and self-institutions
Revolutionary educational practice