INTRODUCTION TO A
CRITIQUE OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY

Of all the affairs we participate in, with or without interest, the 
groping search for a new way of life is the only aspect still 
impassioning. Aesthetic and other disciplines have proved blatantly 
inadequate in this regard and merit the greatest detachment. We should 
therefore delineate some provisional terrains of observation, including 
the observation of certain processes of chance and predictability in the 
streets. 

The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general 
term for the phenomena a few of us were investigating around the summer 
of 1953, is not too inappropriate. It does not contradict the 
materialist perspective of the conditioning of life and thought by 
objective nature. Geography, for example, deals with the determinant 
action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic 
conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the 
corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world. 
Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and 
specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized 
or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The adjective 
psychogeographical, retaining a rather pleasing vagueness, can thus be 
applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to 
their influence on human feelings, and even more generally to any 
situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same s pirit of discovery. 

It has long been said that the desert is monotheistic. Is it illogical 
or devoid of interest to observe that the district in Paris between 
Place de la Contrescarpe and Rue de l'Arbalete conduces rather to 
atheism, to oblivion and to the disorientation of habitual reflexes? 

The notion of utilitariness should be situated historically. The concern 
to have open spaces allowing for the rapid circulation of troops and the 
use of artillery against insurrections was at the origin of the urban 
renewal plan adopted by the Second Empire. But from any standpoint other 
than that of police control, Haussmann's Paris is a city built by an 
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Today urbanism's main 
problem is ensuring the smooth circulation of a rapidly increasing 
quantity of motor vehicles. We might be justified in thinking that a 
future urbanism will also apply itself to no less utilitarian projects 
that will give the greatest consideration to psychogeographical 
possibilities.

This present abundance of private cars is nothing but the result of the 
constant propaganda by which capitalist production persuades the 
masses--and this case is one of its most astonishing successes--that the 
possession of a car is one of the privileges our society reserves for 
its privileged members. (At the same time, anarchical progress negates 
itself: one can thus savor the spectacle of a prefect of police urging 
Parisian car owners to use public transportation.) 

We know with what blind fury so many unprivileged people are ready to 
defend their mediocre advantages. Such pathetic illusions of privilege 
are linked to a general idea of happiness prevalent among the 
bourgeoisie and maintained by a system of publicity that includes 
Malraux's aesthetics as well as the imperatives of Coca-Cola--an idea of 
happiness whose crisis must be provoked on every occasion by every means. 

The first of these means are undoubtedly the systematic provocative 
dissemination of a host of proposals tending to turn the whole of life 
into an exciting game, and the continual depreciation of all current 
diversions--to the extent, of course, that they cannot be detourned to 
serve in constructions of more interesting ambiances. The greatest 
difficulty in such an undertaking is to convey through these apparently 
delirious proposals a sufficient degree of serious seduction. To 
accomplish this we can imagine an adroit use of currently popular means 
of communication. But a disruptive sort of abstention, or manifestations 
designed to radically frustrate the fans of these means of 
communication, could also promote at little expense an atmosphere of 
uneasiness extremely favorable for the introduction of a few new 
notions of pleasure. 

This idea, that the realization of a chosen emotional situation depends 
only on the thorough understanding and calculated application of a 
certain number of concrete techniques, inspired this "Psychogeographical 
Game of the Week" published, not without a certain humor, in Potlatch #1: 

"In accordance with what you are seeking, choose a country, a more or 
less populated city, a more or less busy street. Build a house. Furnish 
it. Use decorations and surroundings to the best advantage. Choose the 
season and the time of day. Bring together the most suitable people, 
with appropriate records and drinks. The lighting and the conversation 
should obviously be suited to the occasion, as should be the weather or 
your memories. 

"If there has been no error in your calculations, the result should 
satisfy you." 

We need to work toward flooding the market--even if for the moment 
merely the intellectual market--with a mass of desires whose realization 
is not beyond the capacity of man's present means of action on the 
material world, but only beyond the capacity of the old social 
organization. It is thus not without political interest to publicly 
counterpose such desires to the elementary desires that are endlessly 
rehashed by the film industry and in psychological novels like those of 
that old hack Mauriac. ("In a society based on poverty, the poorest 
products are inevitably used by the greatest number," Marx explained to 
poor Proudhon.) 

The revolutionary transformation of the world, of all aspects of the 
world, will confirm all the dreams of abundance. The sudden change of 
ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident 
division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path 
of least resistance which is automatically followed in aimless strolls 
(and which has no relation to the physical contour of the ground); the 
appealing or repelling character of certain places--all this seems to be 
neglected. In any case it is never envisaged as depending on causes that 
can be uncovered by careful analysis turned to account. People are quite 
aware that some neighborhoods are sad and others pleasant. But they 
generally simply assume elegant streets cause a feeling of satisfaction 
and that poor street are depressing, and let it go at that. In fact, the 
variety of possible combinations of ambiances, analogous to the blending 
of pure chemicals  in an infinite number of mixtures, gives rise to 
feelings as differentiated and complex as any other form of spectacle 
can evoke. The slightest demystified investigation reveals that the 
qualitatively or quantitatively different influences of diverse urban 
decors cannot be determined solely on the basis of the era or 
architectural style, much less on the basis of housing conditions.

The research that we are thus led to undertake on the arrangement of the 
elements of the urban setting, in close relation with the sensations 
they provoke, entails bold hypotheses that must constantly corrected in 
the light of experience, by critique and self-critique. 

Certain of Chirico's paintings, which are clearly provoked by 
architecturally originated sensations, exert in turn an effect on their 
objective base to the point of transforming it: they tend themselves to 
become blueprints or models. Disquieting neighborhoods of arcades could 
one day carry on and fulfill the allure of these works. 

I scarcely know of anything but those two harbors at dusk painted by 
Claude Lorrain--which are at the Louvre and which juxtapose t extremely 
dissimilar urban ambiances--that can rival in beauty the Paris metro 
maps. It will be understood that in speaking here of beauty I don't have 
in mind plastic beauty--the new beauty can only be beauty of 
situation--but simply the particularly moving presentation, in both 
cases, of a sum of possibilities. 

Among various more difficult means of intervention, a renovated 
cartography seems appropriate for immediate utilization. 

The production of psychogeographic maps, or even the introduction of 
alterations such as more or less arbitrarily transposing maps of two 
different regions, can contribute to clarifying certain wanderings that 
express not subordination to randomness but complete insubordination to 
habitual influences (influences generally categorized as tourism that 
popular drug as repugnant as sports or buying on credit). A friend 
recently told me that he had just wandered through the Harz region of 
Germany while blindly following the directions of a map of London This 
sort of game is obviously only a mediocre beginning in comparison to the 
complete construction of architecture and urbanism that will someday be 
within the power of everyone. Meanwhile we can distinguish several 
stages of partial, less difficult realizations, beginning with the mere 
displacement of elements of decoration from the locations where we are 
used to seeing them. 

For example, in the preceding issue of this journal Marien proposed that 
when global resources have ceased to be squandered on the irrational 
enterprises that are imposed on us today, all the equestrian statues of 
all the cities of the world be assembled in a single desert . This would 
offer to the passersby--the future belongs to them--the spectacle of an 
artificial cavalry charge, which could even be dedicated to the memory of 
the greatest massacrers of history, from Tamerlane to Ridgway. Here we 
see reappear one of the main demands of this generation: educative value.  

In fact, there is nothing to be expected until the masses in action 
awaken to the conditions that are imposed on them in all domains of 
life, and to the practical means of changing them. 

"The imaginary is that which tends to become real," wrote an author 
whose name, on account of his notorious intellectual degradation, I have 
since forgotten. The involuntary restrictiveness of such a statement 
could serve as a touchstone exposing various farcical literary 
revolutions: That which tends to remain unreal is empty babble. 

Life, for which we are responsible, encounters, at the same time as 
great motives for discouragement, innumerable more or less vulgar 
diversions and compensations. A year doesn't go by when people we loved 
haven't succumbed, for lack of having clearly grasped the present 
possibilities, to some glaring capitulation. But the enemy camp 
objectively condemns people to imbecility and already numbers millions 
of imbeciles; the addition of a few more makes no difference. The first 
moral deficiency remains indulgence, in all its forms.

 
GUY DEBORD


               From Les Levres Nues #6, September 1955

