|
Ecology, Psychogeography and the
Transformation of the Urban Environment (1959)
by Guy Debord
I
Psychogeography
is sharing in the game of contemporary urbanism.
Through this playful apprehension of the urban environment we will
develop perspectives for the uninterrupted construction of the
future. Psychogeography is, if you will, a kind of "science
fiction," but science fiction is of a piece with immediate life,
whereas we intend that all its propositions will have a practical
application. We therefore hope that science fiction undertakings of
this nature will question all aspects of life, place them in an
experimental field (unlike literary science fiction or the
pseudo-philosophical chatter it has inspired – which is a leap,
simply imaginary, religious, into a future so inaccessible that it
is as detached from our own world as much as the notion of paradise
could have been. I don’t envisage here the positive sides of science
fiction, that, for example, testify to a world in ultra-rapid
movement.)
II
How can we distinguish psychogeography from those kindred,
inseparable notions in
the ludic-serious
situationst whole? That is to say the notions of
psychogeography, unitary urbanism, and drift (dérive)?
Let's say that unitary urbanism is a theory – in formation – of the
construction extended settings (décors). Unitary urbanism
therefore has a precise existence, as a relatively true or false
theoretical hypothesis (that is to say one that will be judged by a
praxis.)
The drift is a form of experimental behaviour. It also has a precise
existence as such, since experiments in drifting have actually taken
place, and have been the predominant lifestyle of some individuals
for several weeks or months. In fact, it is the experience of
drifting that introduced, formed, the term psychogeography. We can
say that the minimum reality of the word psychogeographic
would be a qualifier – arbitrary in a technical vocabulary, of a
group slang
– to designate those aspects of life which belong specifically to
drifting, date-specific and historically explicable.
The reality of psychogeography itself, its correspondence with
practical truth, is more uncertain. It is one viewpoint on reality
(precisely of the new realities of life in urban civilization). But
we have passed the era of interpretative points of view? Can
psychogeography constitute itself as a scientific discipline? Or
more likely as an objective method of observation-transformation of
the urban environment? Until psychogeography is superceded by a more
complex experimental attitude – and better adapted – we must count
on the formulation of this hypothesis which holds a necessary place
in the setting-behaviour dialectic (which tends to be a point of
methodical interference between unitary urbanism and its use).
III
Psychogeography, considered as a provisional method that we
will make use of, will therefore be first of all
the recognition of a specific domain for reflection and
action, the recognition of a collection of problems; then the study
of these conditions, the laws of this whole; ending finally in
operational strategies for changing it.
These generalities also apply, for example, to human ecology whose
"ensemble of problems" – the behaviour of a community in its social
space – is in direct contact with the problems of psychogeography.
We therefore consider the differences, the points of their
distinction.
IV
Ecology, which is concerned with habitat, wants to make room
in an urban context for a social space for leisure (or sometimes,
more restrictively, for an urbanist-symbolic space expressing and
making visible the fixed structure of a society.) But ecology never
enters into considerations of leisure, their renewal and their
meaning. Ecology considers leisure as heterogeneous in relation to
urbanism. We think, on the contrary, that urbanism also dominates
leisure; is the very object of leisure. We link urbanism to a new
idea of leisure as in a more general way
we envisage the unity of all
the problems of transforming the world; we recognize revolution only
in its totality.
V
Ecology divides the urban fabric into small units that are
partly units of practical life (housing, commerce) and partly units
of ambience. But ecology always proceeds from the point of view of
the population fixed in its neighbourhood – from which it can leave
for work or for leisure – but where it remains based, rooted.
This leads to a particular deformed vision of the given
neighbourhood, of the neighbourhoods that delimit it and of the
major part of the urban whole which is literally "terra incognita"
(c.f. Chombart de Lauwe's
charts: [1]
on the movements of a young girl from the 16th Arrondissement; [2]
on the relationships of a working-class family from the 13th
Arrondissement).
Psychogeography takes the point of view of transience. Its field is
the entire agglomeration. Its observer-observed is the passer-by (in
the final analysis the subject who systematically drifts). Thus, the
divisions of the urban fabric sometimes coincide in psychogeography
and in ecology (case of major barriers: factories, railways, etc.)
and sometimes oppose each other (mainly on the question of lines of
communication, relations of one zone to another). Psychogeography,
on the margin of utilitarian relations, studies relations by
attraction of ambiences.
VI
For ecology, centres of attraction are defined simply by
utilitarian needs (shops) or by the exercise of dominant leisure
activities (cinemas, stadiums, etc.) The specific centres of
attraction in psychogeography are subconscious realities that appear
in urbanism itself. It is from this experience that we must
consciously build the attractions of unitary urbanism.
VII
The enquiry procedures of popular ecology, as soon as they
move in the direction of ambience, get lost in the shifting sands of
inadequate language. This is because the surveyed population, which
is obscurely aware of influences of this kind, has no way of
expressing them. Ecologists are of no help to them because they do
not offer any intellectual tools to shed light on this terrain where
they have no scientific grasp. And people obviously don't have the
means for literary description, which would be highly distorting
(despite the existence of furtive glimpses of this question in
modern writing).
A striking example was provided by French television in January
1959. In a programme (À la découverte des Français) which on
that occasion was devoted to looking at living conditions in the
Mouffetard district, several local residents and an ecologist sat
round a table and all agreed that the area was an
insalubrious island of dreadful slums and at the same time that it
was a sort of privileged place to live. All of them were unable to
define the charm of this insalubrious island, all of them refused
its destruction that had officially been decided by the City of
Paris, and were equally unable to propose the slightest prospect for
resolving these contradictions.
In this area, we need the emergence of a new type of
theoretician-practitioners who would be the first to know how to
talk about the influences of urbanism and how to change them.
VIII
By dissociating the habitat – in today's restricted sense –
from the environment in general, psychogeography introduces the
notion of uninhabitable ambiences (for play, for transience, for the
contrasts needed in an exciting urban complex, in other words
dissociating architectural atmospheres from the notion of
habitat-housing). Ecology is rigorously imprisoned by the home and
the world of work (in other words, by the urbanism described in the
conference at the Academie voor Bouwkunst as “an organisation of
buildings and spaces according to aesthetic and utilitarian
principles.”) Believing that it also grasps free life in leisure,
ecology in fact only grasps the pseudo-freedom of leisure, which is
the necessary by-product of the world of work.
IX
This domination of the social time of work reduces the hourly
variations of ecology to very little (essentially, to the moments of
mass movement of workers and the intervals between these moments).
For psychogeography, on the contrary, each unity of ambience must be
seen as a function of its variations of the total daily timetable
and even in its climatic variations (season, storms, etc.)
Psychogeography must take into account changes in lighting (natural
and artificial), and also changes in population over time –
even if in certain divisions of the twenty-four-hour day the layers
of population involved are relatively very small.
X
Ecology neglects, and psychogeography emphasizes the
juxtapositions of diverse populations in a single area. For it can
be a part of the population, infinitely the smallest, which
dominates the human ambience of the area. To take the example of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés around 1950, which was architecturally,
ecologically and socially, perfectly bourgeois and petty bourgeois
(and the religious population was at its maximum), the presence of
fifty to a hundred individuals on the street – and a few
cafes – wiped out entirely, as far as the ambience and the way of
life were concerned, the "true" district, the population in the
houses had no contact with the street. And the fact was so objective
that it constituted an international tourist attraction. This
underlines the partial, one-sided character of an effort to
understand an urban area through the exclusive study of its
inhabitants. It is more interesting to know what attracts people
who live elsewhere.
XI
Ecology proposes the study of today's urban reality, and
deduces from it some reforms necessary to harmonize the social
environment that we know. Psychogeography, which only makes sense as
a detail of an undertaking of overthrowing all the values of
present life, is the area of the radical transformation of the
environment. Its study of a "psychogeographic urban reality" is only
a starting point for constructions more worthy of us.
Translated by Alan Dent & Howard Slater
Written at the bottom of the manuscript, which has remained
unpublished: “Notes sent to Constant [Nieuwenhuijs]
probably
around spring 59.”
This translation was based on the digital version at
https://debordiana.noblogs.org/2011/07/ecologie-psychogeographie-et-transformation-du-milieu-humain-21-mars-1959/
For a scan of the original document see
https://www.editions-allia.com/files/pdf_86_file.pdf
|