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Berkele.t' Los Angeles Lotulott

THE

PR

AC

TICE

OF'

E,V

ER

YD

AY

LIFE

Michel de C

erteau

Tianslated by Steven Rendall

It_

l

rarrer ls arready at work. Thus it is exem

prary that D6tienne and vernant

should have made them

selves the storytlllers of this ,,labyrinthine

intel-ligence" ("inrelligen('e en elddales"),

as Frangoise Frontisi so well term

slr.J?:discursive

practice of the story (l,histoire) is both its arr and itsA

t bottom, this is ail a very ord story. w

hen he grew ord, Aristotre,

who is not generaily consiaerea

exactly a tightrope dancer, liked to rosehim

self in the most rabyrinthine

and subtle of discourses. H

e had thenarrived at the age of nt?tis: "Th.,.m

ore solitary and isolated I become,

the more I conre to like stories.,,r5

He h;;;;p1^ined the reason adm

ir_ably: as in the order Freud, it w

as a connoisseur,s adm

iration for the tactthat com

posed harmonies and for its art of doing it by surprise:

..The

f]|:Jr: Tyth is in a sense a lover of w

isdom, for m

yth is composed of

Part III

Spatial Practices

Chapter VII

Walkirg in the C

ity

EE

ING

Manhattan from the llO

th floor of the world

-l-radecenter. B

eneath the haz-e stirred up by the winds, the urban

'\-, island, a sea in the m

iddle of the sea, lifts up the skyscrapers overw

all Street, sinks dow

n at Greenw

ich, then rises again to the crests ofM

idtown, quietly passes over C

entral Park and finally undulates off intothe distance beyond H

arlem. A

w

ave of verticals. Its agitation ism

omentarily arrested by vision. The gigantic m

ass is imm

obilized beforethe eyes. lt is transform

ed into a texturology in which extrem

escoincide-extrem

es of ambition and degradation, brutar oppositions of

races and styles, contrasts between yesterday's buildings, already trans_

formed into trash cans, and today's urban irruptions that block out its

space. unlike Rom

e, New

york has never learned the art of growing old

by playing on all its pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour,

in the act of throwing aw

ay its previous accomplishm

ehts and challenging

the future' A city com

posed of paroxysmal places in m

onumental reliefs.

The spectator can read in it a universe that is constantly exploding. In it

are inscribed the architectural figures of the coinc,iclario opltr,t.sirsrunrform

erly drawn in m

iniatures and mysticar textures. on this stage of

concrete, steel and glass, cut out between tw

o oceans (the Atlantic and

the Am

erican) by a frigid body of water, the tallest letters in the w

orldcom

pose a gigantic rhetoric of excess in both expenditure and pro_duction.r

9l

92W

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E CITY

IvA

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TH E C

ITI,93

V ct.yt g11 v.v o r w

a I k e r'

To w

hat erotics of knowledge does the ecstasy of reading such a

cosmos belong? Having taken a voluptuous pleasure in it, I w

onder whatis the source of this pleasure of "seeing the w

hole," of looking down on,

totaliz-ing the most im

moderate of hum

an texts.To be lifted to the sum

mit of the W

orld Trade Center is to be lifted

out of the city's grasp. One's body is no longer clasped by the streets

th;i iuil'and

return it according ro an anonymous larv; nor is it pos-

sessed, whether as player or played, by the rumble of so m

any differencesand by the nervousness of N

ew Y

ork traffic. When one goes up there, he

leaves behind the mass that carries off and m

ixes up in itself any identityof authors or spectators. An lcarus flying above these w

aters, he canignore the devices of D

aedalus in mobile and endless labyrinths far

below. H

is elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. lt puts him

at adistance. It transform

s the bewitching w

orld by which one w

as "pos-seised" into a text that lies before one's eyes. It allow

s one to read it, tobe a solar E

ye, looking down like a god. T

he exaltation of a scopic andgnostic drive: the fiction o[ know

ledge is related to this lust to be aview

point and noining more.

Must one finally fall back into the dark space w

here crowds m

oveback and forth, crow

ds that, though visible from on high, are them

selvesunable to see dow

n below? An lcarian fall. O

n the ltOth floor, a poster,

sphinx-like, addresses an enigmatic message to the pedestrian who is for

an instant transformed into a visionarv: It's hard to be dow

,n when

.l,ou're up.The desire to see the city preceded the m

eans of satisfying it. Medieval

or Renaissance painters represented the city as seen in a perspective that

no eye had yet enjoyed.2 This fiction already made the m

edieval spec-tator into a celestial eye. lt created gods. H

ave things changed sincetechnical procedures have organiz-ed an "all-seeing pow

er"?l The totaliz-ing eye im

agined by the painters of earlier times lives on in our achieve-

ments. The sam

e scopic drive haunts users of architectural productionsby m

aterializing today the utopia that yesterday was only painted. The1370 foot high tow

er that serves as a prow for M

arfhattan continues toconstruct the fiction that creates readers, m

akes the complexity of the

city readable, ind imm

obiliz-es its opaque mobility in a transparent text.

Is the imm

ense texturology spread out before one's eyes anythingm

ore than a representation, an optical artifact? lt is the analogue of't.he facsim

ile nrorl'-'ced throrrgh a. projection that is a way of keeping

aloof, by the space planner urbanist, city planner or cartographer. Thepanoram

a-city is a "theoretical" (that is, visual) simulacrum

, in shoit apicture, whose condition of possibility is an oblivion and a m

isunder-t""dltr_9{_prag!i9es. The voyeur-god created by this fiction, w

ho, likeS

chreber's God, knows only cadavers.u must disentangle him

self fromthe m

urky intertwining daily behaviors and m

ake himself alien to them

.The ordinary practitioners of the city live "dow

n below," below

thethresholds at w

hich visibility begins. They walk-an

elementary form

ofthis experience of the city: they are w

alkers. ll/andersrniinner, whosebodies follow

the thicks and thins of an urban "text" they write rvithout

being able to rtudlt- fitese practitioners make use of spaces that cannotbe seen; their know

ledge of them is as blind as that of lovers in each

other's arms. The paths that correspond in this intertw

ining. unrecog-nized poem

s in which each body is an elem

ent signed by many others.

elud_g legib_ility. It is as though the practices organizing a bustling cityw

ere characterized by their blindness.' The networks of these m

oving,r1te11gcting

writings com

pose a manifold story that has neither author

nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of

spaces: in relation to representations. it remains daily and indefinitely

other.E

scaping the imaginary totalizations produced by the eye. the everyday

hai a iertalnTtrari-fe-ni:si itrat does not surface, or whose surface is only

its upper limit, outlining itself against the visible. W

ithin this ensemble, I

shall try to locate the practices that are foreign to the "geometrical" or

"geographical" space of visual, panoptic, or theoretical constructions.These practicbs-6f space refer to a specific form

of operariorrs ("ways of

operating"), to "another spatiality"u (un "anthropological." poetic andm

ythic experience of space), and to an opaque and blind nrobility char-acteristic of the bustling,city, A nrigrational, or m

etaphorical. city thusslips into the clear text of the planned and readable city.

l. Front the concept of the citt' to urban pra(tircs

The World Trade C

enter is only the most m

onumental figure of W

esternurban developm

ent. The atopiq-utopia of optical knowledge has long

had the ambition of surm

ounting and articulating the contradictionsarising from

urban agglomeration, lt is a question of m

anaging a growth

of human agglom

eration or accumulation. "The city is a huge m

onas-ter!,." said E

rasmus. Perspective

vision and prospective vision constitute

9594

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CITY

surface that can be dealt with. They inaugurate (in the sixteenth cen-

tury?) the transformation of the urban .fact into the concepr of a city.

Long before the concept itself gives rise to a particular figure of history.it assum

es that this fact can be dealt with as a unity determ

ined by anurballstrc- ry1io. Linking the city to the concept iievei rnakts-themidentical, but it plays on their progressive sym

biosis: to plan a city isboth to think the very plurality of the real and to m

ake that way of

tlrinking the plural e.ffective; it is to know how

to articulate it and beable to do it.

An operational concept?

The "city" founded by utopian and urbanistic discourset is defined bythe possibility of a threefold operation:

l. The production of its own space (un espace propre): rational

organization must thus repress all the physical, m

ental and politicalpollutions that w

ould comprom

ise it;2. the substitution or a iibw

hen, oi of a synchronic system, for the

indeterminable and stubborn resistances offered by traditions; univocal

scientific strategies, made possible by the flattening out of all the data ina plane projection, m

ust replace the tactics of users who take advantageof "opportunities" and w

ho, through these trap-events, these lapses invisibility, reproduce the opacities of history everyw

here;3. finally, the creation of a universal and anonym

ous subiecl which isthe city itself: it gradually becom

es possible to attribute to it, as to itspolitical m

odel, Hobbes'S

tate, all the functions and predicates that were

previously scattered and assigned to many different real subjects-

, groups, associations, or individuals. "The city," like a proper nam

e, thus' provides a w

ay of conceiving and constructing space on the basis of afinite num

ber of stable, isolatable, and interconnected properties.A

dministration is com

bined with a process of elim

ination in this placeorganized by "speculative" and classificatory operations.t O

n the onehand, there is a differentiation and redistribution of the parts and func-tions of the city, as a result of inversions, displacem

ents, accumulations,

etc.; on the other there is a rejection of everything that is not capable ofbeing dealt w

ith in this way and so constitutes the "w

aste products" of afunctionalist adm

inistration (abnormality, deviance, illness, death, etc.).

To G s;re,-progi6ss attow

s anincreasing number of these waste pioau.tt

WA

LKIN

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CITY

to be reintroduced into administrative circuits and transform

s evendeficiencies (in health, security, etc.) into w

ays of making the netw

orksof order denser. But in reality, it repeatedly produces effects contrary rothose at w

hich it aims: the profit system

generates a loss which, in rhe

multiple form

s of wretchedness and poverty outside the system

and ofw

aste inside it, constantly turns production into "expenditure." More-

over, the rationalization of the city leads to its rnythification in strategicdiscourses, which are calculations based on the hypothesis or the neces-sity of its destruction in order to arrive at a final decision.e Finally, thefunctionalist organization, by privileging progress (i.e.. tim

e), causes thecondition of its ow

n possibility-space itself-to be forgotten. space

thus becomes the blind spot in a scientific and political technology. This

is the way in w

hich the Concept-city functions; a place of transform

a-tions and appropriations, the object of various kinds of interference butalso a subject that is constantly enriched by new

attributes, it is simul-

taneously,the machinery and the hero of modernity.

Today, whatever the avatars of this concept m

ay have been, we have

to acknowledge that if in discourse the city serves as a totalizing and

almost m

ythical landmark for socioeconom

ic and political strategies,urban life increasingly perm

its the re-emergence of the elem

ent that theurbanistic project excluded. The language of pow

er is in itself "urbaniz-ing," but the city is left prey to contradictory m

ovements that counter-

balance and combine them

selves outside the reach of panoptic power.

The city becomes the dom

inant theme in political legends, but it is no

longer a field of programm

ed and regulated operations. Beneath thediscourses that ideologize the city, the ruses and com

binations of powers

that have no readable identity proliferate: without points where one can

take hold of them, w

ithout rational transparency. they are impossible to

administer.

The return of practices

Tlg Qgl.gpj:gilY

is decaying. Does that m

ean that the illness afflictingboth the rationality ttrai founded it and its professionals afflicts theurban populations as w

ell? Perhaps cities are deteriorating along w

iththe procedures that organized them

. But w

e must be careful here. T[e

ministers of know

ledge have always assum

ed that the whole universe

96W

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was threatened by the very changes that affected their ideologies and

their positions. They transmute the m

isfortune of their theories intotheories of m

isfortune. When they transform

their bewilderm

ent into"catastrophes," when.they seek to enclose the people in the "panic" oftheir discourses, are they once m

ore necessarily right?R

ather than remaining w

ithin the field of a discourse that upholds itsprivilege by inverting its content (speaking of catastrophe and no longerof progress), one can try another path: one can try another path: onecan analyze the m

icrobe-like, singular and plural practices which anurbanistic system

was supposed to adm

inister or suppress, but which

have outlived its decay; one can follow the sw

arming activity of these

procedures that, far from being regulated or elim

inated by panopticadm

inistration, have reinforced themselves in a proliferating illegitim

acy,developed and insinuated them

selves into the networks of surveillance,

and combined in accord w

ith unreadable but stable tactics to the pointof constituting everyday regulations and surreptitious creativities thatare m

erely concealed by the frantic mechanism

s and discourses of theobservational organization.

This pathway could be inscribed as a consequence, but also as the

reciprocal, of .Foucault's analysis of the structures of power. H

. moved

it in the direction of mechanism

s and technical procedures, "minor

instrumentalities" capable, m

erely by their organization of "details," oftransform

ing a human m

ultiplicity into a "disciplinary" society and ofm

anaging, differentiating, classifying, and hierarchizing all deviancesconcerning apprenticeship, health, justice, the arm

y, or work.to "T

heseI often m

iniscule ruses of discipline," these "minor but flaw

less" mecha-

nisms, draw

their efficacy from a relationship betw

een procedures andthe space that they redistribute in order to m

ake an "operator"out of it.B

ut what spatial prat'tices correspond, in the area w

here discipline ism

anipulated, to these apparatuses that produce a disciplinary space? Inthe present conjuncture, which is m

arked by a contradiction between the

collective mode of adm

inistration and an individual mode of reappro-

priation, this question is no less important, if one adm

its that spatialpractices in fact secretly structure the determ

ining conditions of sociallife. I w

ould like to follow out a few

of these multiform

. resistance.tricky and stubborn procedures that elude discipline without being out-side the field in w

hich it is exercised, and which should lead us to a

i theory o[ everyday practices, of lived space, of the disquieting familiarity

' of the citv.

WA

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2. The chorus of idle.footsteps

"The goddess can be recognized by her step"V

irgil, Aeneid,l, 405

Their story begins on ground level, with footsteps. They are myriad, but

do not compose a series. They cannot be counted because each unit has

a qualitative character: a style of tactile apprehension and kinestheticappropriation. Their sw

arming m

ass is an innumerable collection of

singularities. Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They

weave places together. In that respect. pedestrian movem

ents form one'

of these "real systems whose existence in fact m

akes up the city."" Tl't.yaii

not toiaiized; it is rather they that spatialize. They are no more

inserted within a container than those Chinese characters speakers sketch

out on their hands with their fingettips.

It is true that the operations of walking on can be traced on city m

apsin such a w

ay as to transcribe their paths (here well-trodden, there very

faint) and their trajectories (going this way and not that). B

ut these thickor thin curves only'refer, like w

ords, to the absence of what has'passed

by. Surveys of routes m

iss what w

as: the act itself of passing by. Theoperation of w

alking, wandering, or "w

indow shopping." that is. the

activity of passers-by, is transformed into points that draw

a totalizingand reversible line on the m

ap. They allow us to grasp only a relic set in

the nowhen of a surface of projection. ltself visible, it has the effect of

making invisible the operation that m

ade it possible. These fixationsconstitute procedures for forgetting, The trace left behind is substitutedfor the practice. [t exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographicalsystem

has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing

so it causes a way of being in the w

orld to be forgotten.

Pedestrian speech acts

A com

parison with the speech act will allow

us to go furtherr2 and notlim

it ourselves to the critique of graphic representations alone, lookingfrom

the shores of legibility toward an inaccessible beyond. The act of

walking is to the urban system

what the speech act is to language or tothe statem

ents uttered.13 At the most elem

entary level, it has a ffiiple"enunciative" function: it is a process of appropriation of the topo-graphical system

on the part of the pedestrian (ust as the speaker

91

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appropriates and takes on the language); it is a spatial acting-out of theplace fiust as the speech act is an acousticiC

iinfonTitT iarigu@); and it

implies relations am

ong differentiated positions, that is, among prag-

matic "contracts" in the form

of movem

ents (ust as verbal enunciationis an "allocution," "posits another opposite" the speaker and puts con-tracts betw

een interlocutors into action).ro It thus seems possible to give

a preliminary definition of w

alking as a space of enunciation.W

e could moreover extend this problem

atic to the relations between

the act of writing and the w

ritten text, and even transpose it to therelitionships betw

een the "hand'; lthe touch and the tale of the paint-brush lte er la ge.ste A;"i;";raul)

and the finished painting (forms,

colors, etc.). At first isolated in the area-of vG

ibil-comiirtiriibation, the

speech act turns out to find only one of its applications there, and its lin-guistic m

odality is merely the first determ

ination of a much m

ore general,

distinction between the form

s used in a system and itre w

ayJ of using'I"',

this system (i.e., rules), that is, betw

een two "different w

orlds," since"the sam

e things" are considered from tw

o opposite formal view

points.C

onsidered from this angle, the pedestrian speech act has three char-

acteristics which distinguish it at the outset from the spatial Eystem

: thepresent, the discrete, the "phatic."

First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possi-

bilities (e.g., by a place in which one can m

ove) and interdictions (e.g.,by a w

all that prevents one from going further), then the w

ii[er actual-

izes some of these possibilities. ln that w

ay, he makes them

exist as well

as emerge. B

ut he also moves them

about and he invents others, sincethe crossing, drifting aw

ay, or improvisation of w

alking privilege, trans-form

or abandon spatial elements. Thus C

harlie Chaplin m

ritlipiies thepossibilities of his cane: he does other things w

ith the same thing and he

goes beyond the limits that the determ

inants of the object set on itsutilization. In the sam

e way, the lvafkel 1g1s[orm

s each spatial signifierinto som

ething else. And if on the one hand he actualizes only a few of

the possibilities fixed by the constructed order (he goes only here andnot there), on the other he increases the num

ber of possibilities (forexam

ple, by creating shortcuts and detours) and prohibitions (for ex-am

ple, he forbids himself to take paths generally considered accessible

I or euen obligatory). He thus m

akes a selection. "The user of a city picksi out certain fragm

ents of the statement in order to actualize them

inise

cret."l5

.. , ..

i.H

e thus creates a discreteness, w

hether by making choices am

ong the

WA

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signifiers 9f .t_h.. spatial "language" or by displacing them

through the usehe m

akes of them. H

e condemns certain places to inertia or disappear-

ance and composes *itt't others spatial "turns of phrase" that are "rare,"

"accidental" or illegitimate. But that already leads into a rhetoric of

walking.-Iii Th-e fram

ework of enunciation, the w

alker constitutes. in relation tohis position, both a near and a far, a here and a there. To the fact thatthe adverbs here and ihere are the indicators of the locutionary seat inverbal com

munication'u-a coincidence that reinforces the parallelism

between linguistic and pedestrian enunciation-w

e must add that this

location (here-there) (necessarily implied by walking and indicative of

a present appropriation of space by an "l") also has the function ofintroducing an other in relation to this "1" and of thus establishing aconjunctive and disjunctive articulation of places. I w

ould stress particu-larly the "phatic-" aspect, by w

hich I mean the function, isolated by

Malinow

ski and Jakobson, of terms that initiate, m

aintain, or interruptcontact, such as "hello," "w

ell, well." etc.lt W

alking. which alternately

foitows a path and has follow

ers, creates a mobile organicity in the

environment, a sequence of phatic toysoi. And if it is true that the phatic

function, whichli an effort to ensure com

munication. is already charac-

teristic of the language of talking birds, just as it constitutes the "firstverbal function acquired by children," it is not surprising that it alsogam

bols, goes on, all fours, dances. and walks about, w

ith a light orheavy step, like a series of "hellos" in an echoing labyrinth, anterior orparallel touip{o.rm

ative speech.

The moiialities of pedestrian enunciation which a plane representatiott

on a map brings out could be analyzed. They include the kinds of

relationship this enunciation entertains with particular paths (or "state-m

ents") by according them a truth value ("alethic" m

odalities of thenecessary,

the impossible, the'possible, or the contingent), an epistem

o-logical value ("epistem

ic" modalities of the certain, the excluded. the

flausible, or the questionable) or finally an ethical or legal value ("de-ontic" m

odalities of the obligatory, the forbidden, the permitted, or the

optional).'t Walking affirm

s, suspects, tries out, transgresses, respects.

etc., the trajdctciiies ii "speaks." All the m

odalities sing a part in thisE

hriius, changing from step to step, stepping in through proportions.

sequences, .,nd intensities which vary according to the time, the path

taken and the walker. These enunciatory operations are of an unlim

iteddiversity. They therefore cannot be reduced to their graphic trail.

9899

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Walking rhetorics

FThe w

alking of passers-by offers a series of turns (tours) and detoursthat can be com

pared to "turns of phrase" or "stylistic figures." There isa rhetoric of w

alking. The art of "turning" phrases finds an equivalent inan art of com

posing a path (tourner un parcours). Like ordinary lan-guage,'e this art im

plies and combines styles and uses._t4-p.cifies

"alinguistic structure that m

anifests on the symbolic level . . . an individ-

ual's fundamental w

ay of being in the world";zo it connotes a singular.

Use defines the social phenom

enon through which a system

of com-

fiiinication m

anifests itself in actual fact; it refers to a norm. S

tyle anduse both have to do w

ith a "way of operating" (of speaking, walking,

etc.), but style involves a peculiar processing of the symbolic, while use

refers to elements of a code. They intersect to form

a style of use, a way

of being and a way of operating.2r

In introducing the notion of a "residing rhetoric" ("rhetorique habi-tante"\, the fertile pathw

ay opened up by n. Meciain22

and systematized

by S. O

strowetrky" and J.-F. A

ugoyard,2' we assume that the "tropes"

catalogued by rhetoric furnish models and hypotheses for the analysis of

ways of appropriating places. Tw

o postulates seem to m

e to underlie thevalidity of this application: l) it is assum

ed that practices of space alsocorrespond to m

anipulations of the basic elements of a constructed order;

2) it is assumed that they are, like the tropes in rhetoric, deviations

relative to a sort of "literal meaning" defined by the urbanistic system

.There w

ould thus be a homology betw

een verbal figures and the figuresof w

alking (a stylized selection among the latter is already found in the

figures of dancing) insofar as both consist in "treatments" or operations

bearing on isolatable units,25 and in "ambiguous dispositions" that divert

and displace meaning in the direction of equivocalness26

in the way a

tremulous im

age confuses and multiplies the photographed object. In

these two m

odes, the analogy can be accepted. I would add that the

geometrical space of urbanists and architects seem

s to have the status ofthe "proper m

eaning" constructed by gramm

arians and linguists in orderto have a norm

al and normative level to w

hich they can compare the

drifting of "figurative" languagb. In reality, this faceless "proper" mean-

ing (c'e "propre" sans.figure\ cannot be found in current use, whetherverbal or pedestrian, it is m

erely the fiction produced by a use that isalso particular, the m

eialinguistic use of sciefice

that distinguishes itself

by that very distinction.2T

WA

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The long p_oem

of walking m

anipulates spatial organizations, nom

atter how panoptic they m

ay be: it is neither foreign to them (it can

take place only within them

) nor in conformity w

ith them (it does not

receive its idintity from them

). It creates shadows and am

biguities withinthem

. It inserts its multitudinous references and citations into them

(social models, cultural m

ores, personal factors). Within them

it is itselfthe effect of successive

encounters and occasions that constantly alter itand m

ake it the other's blazon: in other rvords. it is like ^ -d.8aiei.'

,carrying som

ething surprising, transverse or attractive compared w

iththe usual choice. These diverse aspects provide the basis of a rhetoric.They can even be said to define it.

By analyzing this "m

odern art of everyday expression" as it appears inaccounts of spatial practices,t* J.-F. A

ugoyard discerns in it trvo espe-cially fundam

ental stylistic figures: synecdoche and asyndeton. The pre-dom

inance of these two figures seem

s to me to indicate. in relation to

two com

plementary poles, a form

al structure of these practices. S.t'ner'-doche consists in "using a w

ord in a sense which is part of anotherm

eaning of the same w

ord."2e In essence. it names a part instead of the

whole w

hich includes it. Thus "sail" is taken for "ship" in the expression"a flbet of fifty sails"; in the sam

e way, a brick shelter or a hill is taken

for the park in the narration of a trajectory. As.t'ndeton is the suppres-sion of linking w

ords such as conjunctions and adverbs, either within a

sentence or between sentences. In the sam

e way, in walking it selects and

fragments the space traversed; it skips over links and w

hole parts that itom

its. From this point of view

, every walk constantly leaps, or skips likea child, hopping on one foot. It practices the ellipsis of conjunctive /oci.

In reality, these two pedestrian figures are related. S

ynecdoche ex-pands a spatial elem

ent in order to make it play the role of a "m

ore" (atotality) and take its place (the bicycle or the piece of furniture in a storew

indow stands for a w

hole street or neighborhood). Asyndeton, byelision, creates a "less," opens gaps in the spatial continuum

, and retainsonly selected parts of it that am

ount almost to relics. S

ynecdoche re-places totalities by fragm

ents (a /ess in the place of a ntore); asyndetondisconnects them

by eliminating the conjunctive or the consecutive

(nothing in place of something). Synecdoche makes m

ore dense: it am-

plifies the detail and miniaturizes the w

hole. Asyndeton cuts out: it

undoes continuity and undercuts its plausibility. A space treated in thisw

ay and shaped by practices is transformed into enlarged singulari-

ties and separate islands.s0 Through these swellings, shrinkings, and

l0l

t02IY

ALK

ING

IN TH

E C

ITY

fragmentations, that is, through these rhetorical operations a spatial

phrasing of an analogical (composed of juxtaposed citationsl anaiitiptical

(made of gaps, iipses, and allusions) type is created. For the technil

logical system of a coherent and totalizing space that is "linked" and

simultaneous, the figures of pedestrian rhetoric substitute trajectories'

that have a mythical structure, at least if one understands by 'lm

yth" adiscourse relative to the place/ now

here (or origin) of concrete existence,a story jerry-built out of elem

ents taken from com

mon sayings, an allu-

sive and fragmentary story w

hose gaps mesh w

ith the social practices itsym

bolizes.Flg-greq are the acts of this stylistic m

etamorphosis of space. Or rather,

as Rilke puts it, they are m

oving "trees of gestures." They move even the

rigid and contrived territories of the medico-pedagogical institute in

which retarded children find a place to play and dance their "spatial

stories."3r These "trees of gestures" are in movem

ent everywhere. Their

forests walk through the streets. They transform

the scene, but theycannot be fixed in a certain place by im

ages. lf in spite of that an illus-tration w

ere required, we could m

ention the fleeting images, yellow

ish-green and m

etallic blue calligraphies that howl w

ithout raising theirvoices and em

blaz-on themselves on the subterranean passages of the

city, "embroideries" com

posed of letters and numbers, perfect gestures

of violence painted with a pistol, S

hivas made of w

ritten characters,dancing graphics w

hose fleeting apparitions are accompanied by the

rumble of subw

ay trains: New

York graffiti.

If it is true that .fore.st'i- of-lrsrures ^r. manifest in the streets, their

movem

ent cannot be captured in a picture, nor can the meaning of their

movem

ents be circumscribed in a text. Their rhetorical transplantation

carries away and displaces the analytical, coherent proper m

eanings ofurbanism

; it constitutes a "wandering of the sem

antic"r2 produced bym

asses that make som

e parts of the city disappear and exaggerate others,, distorting it, fragm

enting it, and diverting it from its im

mobile order.

3. Myths: w

hat "mokes lhings go"

The figures of these movem

ents (synecdoches, ellipses, etc.) characterize

both a "symbolic order of the unconscious" and "certain typical processes

of subjectivity manifested in discourse."rr The sim

ilarity between "dis-

,, course"so and dream

sls has to do with theiiuse-oittt.

simL "itylistic

---*..*proi.au.es"; it therefore includes pedestrian praitices as w

ell. The "an-,

cient .uiiiog of i;;;;;;'

that fiom Freud to B

enveniste has furnished an

appropriate inventory for the rhetoric of the first trvo registers of expres-sion is equally valid for the third. lf there is a parallelism

, it is not onlybecause enunciation is dom

inant in these three areas, but also becauseits discursive (verbalized, dream

ed. or walked) developm

ent is organizedas a relation betw

een the place from w

hich it proceeds (an origin) andthe now

here it produces (a way of "going by").

From

this point of view, after having com

pared pedestrian processesto linguistic form

ations, we can bring them back dow

n in the directionof oneiric figuration, or at least discover on that other side w

hat, in aspatial practice, is inseparable from

the dreamed place. To w

alk is tolack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search ofa proper.-T

he moving about that the city m

ultiplies and concentratesm

akei the city itself an imm

ense social experience of lacking a place-anexperienoe that is,-io b. ,ur., broken up into countless tiny deportations(displacem

ents and walks), com

pensated for by the relationships andintersections of these exoduses that intertw

ine and create an urbanfabric, and placed under the sign of w

hat ought to be, ultimately. the

place but is only a name, the C

ity. The identity furnished by this place is

all the more sym

bolic (named) because. in spite of the inequality of its

citizens' positions and profits. there is only a pullulation of passer-by, a

network of residences

temporarily appropriated by pedestrian traffic, a

shuffling among pretenses of the proper. a universe of rented spaces

haunted by a nowhere or by dream

ed-of places.

Nam

es and symbols

An indication of the relationship that spatial practices entertain with

that alsglrg is furnished precisely by their manipulations of and w

ith"proper" nam

es. The relationships between the direction of a w

alk (/esens de Ia ntarche) and ,the m

eaning of words (_le sens c!1 lno1l situate

twJiorti

of uppurently contrary movem

ents. one extrovert (to walk is to

go outside), the other introvert (a mobility under the stability of the

signifier). Walking is in fact determ

ined by semantic tropism

s; it isattracted and repelled by nom

inations wltose m

eaning is not clear,w

hereas the city, for its part, is transformed for m

any people into a"desert" in w

hich the meaningless, indeed the terrifying, no longer takes

the form of shadow

s but becomes, as in G

enet's plays, an implacable

light that produces this urban text without obscurities, which is created

by a technocratic power everyw

here and which puts the city-dw

ellerunder control (under the control of w

hat? No one know

s): "The city

WA

LKIN

G IN

THE

CITI'

r03

r)-r

r05t04

VV

A I.K

ING

IN TH

E CITY

'

keeps us under its gaze, which one cannot bear w

ithout feeling dizzy,"says a resident of R

ouen.'o In the spaces brutally lit by an alien reason,proper nam

es carve out pockets of hidden and familiar m

eanings. They"m

aGT

erise"; in oiher words, they are the im

petus of movem

ents, likevocations and calls that turn or divert an itinerary by giving it a m

eaning'(or a direction) (.ren.r)

that was previously unforeseen. These nam

es createa now

here in places; they change them into passages.

A friend w

ho lives in the city of Sdvres drifts, w

hen he is in Paris,

toward the rue des S

aints-Pire.r and the rue de S

?r'res, even though he isgoing to see his m

other in another part of town: these nam

es articulate asentence that his steps com

pose without his know

ing it. Num

beredstreets and street num

bers (ll2th St., or 9 rue S

aint-Charles)

orient them

agnetic field of trajectories just as they can haunt dreams. Another

friend unconsciously represses the streets which have nam

es and, by thisfact, transm

it her-orders or identities in the same w

ay as summ

onsesand classification.s;

she goes instead along paths that have no name or

signature. But her walking is thus still controlled negatively by proper

names.

What is it then that they spell out? D

isposed in constellations that

hierarchiz-e and semantically order the surface of the city, operating

chronological arrangements and historical justifications, these w

ords(B

orrdgc.t, Ilotzari.r, Bougaint,ille... ) slowly lose, like w

orn coins, they3!9 _ery11ygd on th9m

, but their ability to signify outlives its first defi-nitiorr. S

rrin/.1'- P

ire:;, Corentin Celton, R

ecl Square... these names make

\ themselves available to the diverse m

eanings given them by passerr-by:

', they detach themselves from

the places they were supposed to define and

\i sert'e as lmaglnary m

eeting-points on itineraries which, as metaphors,

i they determine for reasons that are foreign to their origin'al value brjt

I rnoy be recogniz-ed or not by passers-by. A strange toponymy that is

detached from actual places and flies high over the city like a foggy

geography of "meanings" held in suspension, directing the physical

deambulations below

: Pla<'e de l'E

toile, Conc'orde, P

oissonniire . . .These constellations of nam

es provide traffic patterns: they are starsair-.cti;g ifineraries. "The

Place de la C

oncorde does not exist,"M

alaparte said, "it is an idea."lt lt is much m

ore than an "idea." Aw

hole series of comparisons w

ould be necessary to account for theI m

agical powers proper nam

es enjoy. They seem to be carried as em

blems

: by the travellers they direct and simultaneously

decorate.

WA

LKIN

G IN

THE

CITI'

Linking acts and footsteps, opening meanings and directions, these l

words operate in the nam

e of an emptying-out and w

earing-away of i

their primary role. T

hey become liberated spaces that can be occupied.

A rich indeterm

ination gives them. by m

earrs of a semantic rarefaction,

the function of articulating a second. poetic geography on top of thegeography of the literal, forbidden or perm

itted meaning. They insinuateother routes into the functionalist and historical order of m

ovetnent.W

alking follows them

: "l fill this great enrpty space with a beautiful

name."38 People are put in m

otion by the rernaining relics of mean- i

ing, and sometim

es by their waste products, the inverted rem

ainders iof great am

bitions.'n Things that amount to nothing. or alm

ost nothing, ;sym

-bolize and orient walkers'steps:

nanles that have ceased precisely tobe "proper."

In these symbolizing kernels three distinct (but connected) functions

of the relations between spatial and signifying practices are indicated

(and perhaps founded): the heliet'ahle. the nrerttorahle, and the prirrritile.T

hey designate what "authorizes" (or nrakes possible or credible) spatialappropriations. what is repeated in them

(or is recalled in them) from

asilent and w

ithdrawn m

emory. and w

hat is structured in them and con-

tinues to be signed by an in-fantile (in-lan.r) origin. These three symbolic

mechanism

s organize the topoi of a discourse on/of the city.(!qgq*..nory, "nd dream

) in a way that also eludes urbanistic system

aticity.Tfri!-f irn

atrei.f-6e recognized in the functions of proper names: they

make habitable or believable the place that they clothe w

ith a rvord (byem

ptying themselves of their classifying pow

er, they acqtrirc that of"perm

itting" something else); they recall or suggest phantonrs (the dead

who a're supposed to have disappeared)

that still nrove about. concealedin gestures and in bodies in m

otion; and. by namirrg. that is. by irrtposing

an injunction proceeding from the other (a story) arrd by altering func-

tionalist identity by detaching themselves fronr it. they create in the

place itsetf that erosion or nowhere that the law

of the other carves out

within it.

Credible things and m

emorable things: habitability

By a paradox that is only apparent, the discourse that m

akes peoplebelieve is the one that takes aw

ay what it urges them

to believe in. or

never delivers what it promises. Far from

expressing a void or describing

a

r06W

A LK

ING

IN TH

E CITY

a lack, it creates such. It makes room

for a void. In that way, it opens up

clearings; it "allows" a certain pray w

ithin a system of defined places. It

"authorizes" the production of an area of free play (spielraum\ on a

checkerboard that analyzes and classifies identities. It makes places

habitable. On these grounds, I call such discourse a "local authoritv." Itis a crack in the system

that saturates places witt--srgnificitlon anO

indeed so reduces them to this signification that it is "im

possible tobreathe in them

." It is a symptom

atic tendency of functionalist totali-tarianism

(including its programm

ing of games and celebrations) that it

seeks precisely to eliminate these local authorities, because they com

-prom

ise the univocity of the system. Totalitarianism

attacks what it

quite correctly calls .superstitions: supererogatory sem

antic overlays thatinsert them

selves "over and above" and "in excess,"oo and annex to a

past or poetic realm a part of the land the prom

oters of technicalrationalities and financial profitabilities had reserved for them

selves.ultim

ately, since proper names are already ..local authorities" or

"superstitions," they are replaced by numbers: on the telephone, one no

longer dials Opera, but 073. The sam

e is true of the stories and legendsthat haunt urban space like superfluous or additional inhabitants. Theyare the object of a w

itch-hunt, by the very logic of the techno-structure.B

ut their extermination (like the exterm

ination of trees, forests, andhidden places in w

hich such legends live)ar makes the city a..suspendedsym

bolic order."ot The habitable city is thereby annulled. Thus, as a

wom

an from R

ouen put it, no, here "there isn't any place special, exceptfor m

y own hom

e, that's all. . . . There isn't anything." Nothing.'special":

nothing that is marked, opened up by a m

emory or a story, signed by

something or som

eone else. Only the cave of the hom

e remains believ-

able, still open for a certain time to legends, still full of shadow

s. Exceptfor that, according to another city-dw

eller, there are only ..places inw

hich one can no longer believe in anything."o'It is through the opportunity they offer to store up rich silences and

wordless stories, or rather through their capacity to create cellars and

garrets everywhere, that local legends (legenda: what \s to be read, but

also what tan be read) perm

it exits, ways of going out and_gom

ing back

in, and thus habitable spaces. Certainly walking about and traveling

substitute for exits, for going away and com

ing back, which w

ere for-m

erly made available by a body of legends that places now

adays lack.P

hysical moving about has the itinerant function of yesterday's or today's

"superstitions." Travel_.(like walking) is a substitute for the legends that

WA

LKIN

G IN

THE

CITY

lt.djg 9E

l__up*spag9-to- .somethlng different. W

hat does travel ulti-m

ateTt produce if it is not, by a sort ol reversal, "an exploration of thedeserted places of m

y mem

ory," the return to nearby exoticism by w

ayof a detour through distant places, and the "discovery" of relics andlegends: "fleeting visions of the French countryside." "fragm

ents of music

and poetry,"oo in short, something like an "uprooting in one's origins

(Heidegger)? What this w

alking exile produces is precisely the body oflegends that is currently lacking in one's orvn vicinity: it is a fiction,w

hich moreover has the double characteristic,

like dreams or pedestrian

rhetoric, of being the effect of displacements and condensations.ot

As a

corollary, one can measure the im

portance of these signifying practices(to tell oneself legends) as practices that invent spaces.

. From

this point of view, their contents rem

ain revelatory, and stillm

ore so is the principle that organizes them. S

tories about places arem

akeshift things. They dre composed with the w

orld;s debris. Even if theliterary form

and the actantial schema'of "superstitions"tott.rpond to

stable models w

hose sttuctures and combinations have often been ana-

lyzed over the past thirty years, the materials (all the rhetorical details of

their "manifestation") are furnished by the leftovers from

nominations,

taxonomies, heroic or com

ic predicates, etc., that is, by fragments of

scattered semantic places. These heterogeneous and even contrary ele-

ments fill the hom

ogeneous form of the story. Things extra and other

(details and excesses coming from

elsewhere) insert them

selves into theaccepted fram

ework, the im

posed order. One thus has the very relation-

ship between spatial practices and the constructed order. The surface of

this order is everywhere punched and torn open by ellipses, drifts, and

leaks of meaning: it is a tfidui-ota.t.

The verbal relics of which the story is com

posed, being tied to loststories and opaque acts, are juxtaposed in a collage where their relationsare not thought, and for this reason they form

a symbolic w

hole.ou Theyare articulated by lacunae. W

ithin the structured space of the text, theythus produce anti-texts, effects of dissim

ulation and escape, possibilitiesof m

oving into other landscapes, like cellars and bushes: "d ntassif's, 6

pluriels."ot Because of the process of dissemination that they open up,

stories differ from .lum

ors in that the latter are always injunctions,

initiators and results of a levelling of space, creators of comm

on move-

ments that reinforce an order by adding an activity of m

aking people. believe things to that of m

aking people do things. Stories diversify,

rumors totalize. If there is still a certain oscillation betw

een them, it

t07

IiI

i;,,IIIirtl,i,lrlI

.trlll;lII

rlilil!'ll't:ttl'iii)

l

lf,i

l0ttW

ALK

ING

IN TH

E C

ITY

seems that today there is rather a stratification: stories are becom

ingprivate and sink into the secluded places in neighborhoods,

families, or

individuals, while the rumors propagated by the m

edia cover everythingand, gathered under the figure of the C

ity, the masterw

oici oT an anony- .m

ous law, the substitute for all proper nam

es, they wipe out or com

batany superstitions guilty of still resisting the figure

The dispersion of stories points to the dispersion of the m

emorable as

well. A

nd in fact mem

ory is a sort of anti-museum

: it is not localizable.Fragm

ents of it come out in legends. Objects and w

ords aiiij fiave hollowplaces in w

hich a past sleeps, as in the everyday acts of walking, eating,

going to bed, in which ancient revolutions slum

ber. A mem

ory is only aP

rince Charm

ing who stays just long enough to aw

aken the Sleeping

Bcauties of our w

ordless stories. "_!!_t.f-u, there used to be a bakery."

"That'.r w

here old lady Dupuis used to live." It is striking here that the

places people live in are like the presences of diverse absences.

What can

be seen designates what is no longer there: "you see, here there used tobe . . . ," but it can no longer be seen. D

emonstratives indicate the in-

visible identities of the visible: it is the very definition of a place, in fact,that it is com

posed by these series of displacements and effects am

ongthe fragm

ented strata that form it and that it plays on these m

ovingIaye rs.

"Mem

ories tie us to that place. . . . It's personal, not interesting toanyone else, but after all that's w

hat gives a neighborhood its char-acter."48 There is no place that is not haunted by m

any different spiritshidden there in silence, spirits one can "invoke" or not. H

aunted placesare the only ones people can live in-and

this inverts the schema of the

Panopti<'on. But like the gothic sculptures of kings and queens that once

adorned Notre-D

ame and have been buried for tw

o centuries in thebasem

ent of ^ building in the rue de la Chauss6e-d'A

ntin,a' these"spirits," them

selves broken into pieces in like manner, do not speak any

more than they .ree. This is a sort of know

ledge that remains silent. O

nlyhints of w

hat is known but unrevealed are passed on 'Just betw

een youand m

e."P

laces are fragmentary and inw

ard-turning histories, pasts that othersuri n"t ullow

ed to read. accumulated tim

es that can be unfolded but likestories held in reserve, rem

aining in an enigmatic state, sym

bolizationsencysted in the pain or pleasure of the body. ':l feel good hiie"'ro thew

ell-being under-expressed in the language it appears in like a fleetingglim

mer is a spatial practice.

I+'ALK

ING

IN TH

E C

ITI'

Childhood and m

etaphors of placesMetaphor consists in giving the thing

a nanre that belongs to something

else.I

: A

ristotle. poerics 1457b

Tlgg:gggbl_. tS

tha! which can be drearned about a place. In this

place that is a palimpsest, subjectivity is already linked to the absence

that structures it ut-.*iri.nce and makes it "be there," L)aseirt. But as w

ehave seen, this being-t!9re acts only in spatial practices. that is, in x,a.l,.tof nroving inro tornrt'iiirig'dffirent (ntanibres cle passet. d l'aule). Itm

tiit-uitimately be seen as the repetition, in diverse rnetaphors. of a

decisive and originary experience, that of the child's differentiation from

the mothA

'S-bbdir. lt is through that experience that the possibility of

space-A;a-of a localization (a "not everything") of the subject is in-

augurated. We need not return to the fanrous analysis F19ud nrade of

this matrix-experience by follow

ing the game played by his eighteen-

month-old grandson, who threw

a reel away fronr him

self, crying oh-oh-oh in pleasure,

.fortl. (i.e., "over there." "gone," or "no nrore") and thenpulled it back w

ith the piece of string attached to it rvith a delighreddat (i.e., "here," "back again");51 it suffices here to rem

ember tliis

(perilous and satisfied) process of detachment frorn indifferenriarion in

the mother's body, w

hose substitute is the spool: this departure of them

other (sometim

es she disappears by herself, sometim

es the child nrakesher disappear) constitutes localization and exteriority against the back-ground of an absence. There is a joyful m

anipulation that can make the

rnaternal object "go away" and m

ake oneself' disappear (insofar as oneconsiders ofieself identical with that object). m

aking it possible to bethere (because) v'ithout the other but in a necessary relation to w

liat hasdisappeared;

this manipulation is an "original spatial structure."

No doubt one could trace this differentiation further back. as f-ar as

the naming that separates the foetus identified as m

asculine from his

mother-but how

about the female foetus. who is from

this very mom

entintroduced into another relationship to space'l ln the initiatory gam

e,just as in the "joyful activity" of the child w

ho, standing before a mirror,

sees itself as one (it is slre or he, seen as a whole) but onorher (rhat,-A

nim

age with which the child identifies itself;.s2

what counts is the process

of this "spatial captation" that inscribes the passage toward the other as

r09

III

t,l,l'lII;\

,rr\

il0the law of being and the law

of.y

the joyful and silent experienceond to m

ove toward the other.

IYA

LKIN

G IN

THE

CITY

place. To practice space is thus to repeatof childhooO

; it is, in a place;o 6e otheri

-- l

.' .r \

T\

'1

LT

'-'

,'K

ailway l\avlgauon

Thus begins the walk that Freud com

pares to the trampling underfoot

of the mother-land.53 This relationship of oneself to oneself governs the

internal alterations of the place (the relations among its strata) or the

pedestrian unfolding of the stories accumulated in a place (m

oving aboutt6e city ind

travelling). The childhood experience that determines spatial

practices later develops its effects, proliferates, floods private and publicspaces, undoes their readable surfaces, and creates within the plannedcity a "m

etaphorical" or mobile city, like the one K

andinsky dreamed of:

"a great city built according to all the rules of architecture and thensuddenly shaken by a force that defies all calculation."5a

Chapter VIII

and Incarceration

TR

AV

ELLIN

G

INC

AR

CE

RA

TIon-.

Imnrobile inside tlie train. seeing

imm

obile things slip by. What is happerring?

Nothing is nroving

inside or outside the train.T

he unchanging traveller is pigeonholed. numbered. and regulated in

the grid of the railway car, w

hich is a perfect actualizatiorr ol'the rational

utopia. Control and food m

ove from pigeonhole to pigeorrhole: "Tickets,

please . . . " "sandwiches? Beer'? Coffee'? . . . "' O

nly the restrooms of'fer

an escape from the closed system

. They are a lovers' phantarsm. a w

llyout for the ill, an escapade for children ("W

ee-wee!")-a little space of

irrationality, like love affairs and sewers irr the Lltctpias of earlier tinres.

Except for this lapse given over to excesses.

everything has its place in a igridw

ork. Only a rationalized cell travels. A bubble of panoptic and r

classifying power, a m

odule of inrprisonnrent that makes possible the '

production of an order, a closed and autononrous insularity-that is iw

hat can traverse space and make itself independent of local roots.

Inside, there is the imm

obility of an order. Here rest and dreanrs reign

supreme. There is notfilng to do, one is in the stote of reason. Everythirrg

is in its place, as in Hegel's Philosoph.t'ct.l'

Right. E

very being is placedthere like a piece of printer's type on a page arranged in m

ilitary order.This order, an organizational system

, the quietude of a certatin reason, isthe condition of both a railw

ay car's and a text's movem

ent from one

place to another.O

utside, there is another imm

obility, that of things. towering m

oun-tains, stretches of green field and forest. arrested villages, colonnades ofbuildings, black urban silhouettes against the pink evening sky. thetw

inkling of nocturnal lights on a sea that precedes or succeeds ourhistories. The train generalizes Di.irer's M

elancholia, a speculative ex-perience of the w

orld: being outside of these things that stay there,detached and absolute, that leave us w

ithout having anything to do rvith