Errant Paths

The Poetics and Politics of Walking

Bibliographic Data

ID4475243
AuthorsDavid Pinder (0009-0002-5078-001X, Queen Mary University of London, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume29
Issue4
Pages672-692
Publication date2011-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/d10808
OpenAlexW2022971116
LanguageEN
Citations received58
References cited28

Walking has moved into increasing visibility in social, cultural, and geographical studies as well as art and cultural practice in recent times. Walking practices are often mobilised as a means for sensing and learning about spaces, for enabling reflection on the mutual constitution of bodies and landscapes, and for finding meaning within and potentially re-enchanting environments. Through the influence of Michel de Certeau in particular, the idea that walking 'encunciates' spaces and is a creative, elusive, and resistive everyday practice, counterpoised to the 'solar eye', has become commonplace. This paper focuses on projects by the artist Francis Alÿs that are based on walking in London and other cities, to consider their engagements with the politics of urban space. Attention is paid to walking as his method of unfolding stories, and to its potential to unsettle and bring into question current realities, especially in the context of the regulated, fortified, and surveilled zones of London. Addressing the poetics and politics of his spatial practices, however, reveals the inadequacy of undifferentiated models of creative resistance, nomadism, and subversion beloved of much recent theory, and often endorsed through a partial reading of Certeau. Instead, the openness and ambivalence of these practices suggest a need for a more nuanced approach to the multiple rhythms, trajectories, and narratives that constitute urban spaces as well as to their contested (in)visibilities

Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Literature · Meaning (existential · Media studies · Narrative · Poetics · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Subversion · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Psychology · Public Spaces through Art · Social Psychology · Spatial and Cultural Studies