During the 1990s a literary and cultural phenomenon gained momentum that reacts to the major transformations effected by Thatcherist policies in the urban fabric of London. Against the gentrification and the changes that made London into a global city and a major centre of global capital, psychogeography tries to reclaim territories that are about to be destroyed or to be forgotten. Harking back to the revolutionary theories and spatial practices of the 1950s and ‘60s neo-avant-gardist situationists around Guy Debord, London psychogeography drifts through the city at random in order to discover hidden places and histories, establish unofficial geographical links and dividing lines and tap into the occult energies of the place. The gravitational centre of psychogeographical London is therefore the East End haunted by its memories of Jack the Ripper and its transhistorical, mysterious violence.
The seminar aims at elucidating the different strands and manifestations of London psychogeography. They not only span very different aesthetic and political positions, but also range from poetry (Iain Sinclair and Allen Fisher) to fictionalizing essays (Iain Sinclair), from novels (Peter Ackroyd and Will Self) to the films of Patrick Keiller or the hugely subversive hoax-manifestos of Stuart Home. While paying particular attention to notions of human geography and post-modern approaches to space as practiced space, the seminar will also look at such crucial precursors as William Blake, Thomas de Quincey or Alfred Watkins with his esoteric theory of ley lines.
For any questions about registration to the course, please send an e-mail to: andre.otto@hu-berlin.de. |
