Page 127 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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112 Then
from the recognition that cities ‘have a psychogeographical relief
with running currents, stable points, and whirlpools that make
entering and exiting certain zones very uncomfortable’ that act
‘directly on the affective deportment of individuals’ (McDonough
2004: 301).

The dérive

Debord believed that urban development was producing a homog-
enized cityscape whose essential interchangeability paralleled that of
the commodity form. The organic flows of the city were being
subordinated to the dictates of central planning, functioning as the
handmaiden of capital. In keeping with principles of the Situationist
International, psychogeography as theory implied its own particular
form of praxis, namely the dérive. This described a sort of spontane-
ous drift through the cityscape that rejected the logical order of the
city, in order to discover its secret singularities of space and
atmosphere. The dérive was thus a means of reclaiming the streets,
and accessing the hidden city that lay beneath its regulated exterior.
Recalling Benjamin’s belief in the emancipatory potential of the
sensory education involved in adapting to the technological reality of
the metropolis, the dérive involved an ambulatory derangement of
the senses, in order to create new forms of space. The dérive is thus
a foray into another way of being – the non-alienated life that exists
beyond the commodity.

The situation

The situation builds upon the recognition that culture in late
capitalism is no longer confined to the boundaries of the artwork.
Life itself has become mediated, and it must be disrupted if people
are to awake from the spell of commodity culture. The concept of
the situation constitutes a generalized and refined form of the dérive,
it is not only urban space that is to be reclaimed but the passage of
life itself. This is achieved by the construction of situations, moments
in which the alienated script of commodified life can be rewritten.
The situation is the generation of ‘an integrated ensemble of
behaviour in time’, ‘a temporary field of activity’ (Jorn, cited in
Knab 1981: 43) in which unalienated desire can find forms of
expression. The aim of such situations is to provide an intimation of
a life beyond the dictates of the spectacle.

The détournement

The détournement can be seen as an extension of the dérive, in which
the elements that make up the mediascape are themselves over-

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