Disintegration highway

Towards a psychogeography of planetary urban breakdown

Bibliographic Data

ID20153475
AuthorsJaphy Wilson (0000-0002-2053-8022, School of Environmental and Natural Sciences Bangor University Bangor UK, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume46
Issue1
Pages138-156
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSingapore Journal of Tropical Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0129-7619 • E-ISSN: 1467-9493
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/sjtg.12565
OpenAlexW4402927011
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited62

This paper develops a psychogeographical approach to our apocalyptic urban present, based on a journey down a highway on the outskirts of the city of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon. The intensity of psychogeographical method brings out elements of the senselessness and violence of planetary urbanization imperceptible at more abstract levels of analysis, while the subjective impact of this spatial unravelling demands a surrealist psychogeography less attuned to the oneiric and marvellous than the chaotic and absurd. These conceptual reflections are interspersed with depictions of my walk along the highway, as fragments of a psychogeography of planetary urban breakdown. Instead of seeking to explain the political ecology of the road, I aim to contribute to an aesthetic of accelerating collapse that can undermine the normalizing ideological function of our sense‐making mechanisms

Economic geography · Geography · Environmental Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions

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