Theory of the Dérive

You may have noticed that the distances walked on the 20th of February and the 2nd of March were the same. That's because, apart from the last kilometre or two, the route I took into and back from town was the same. What's more, the route I followed in town - from the Bridge of Remembrance to Mondo for lunch and then on to Ticketek at the Town Hall - was also identical. The centre of Christchurch is not particularly interesting (it's completely flat and for the most part the streets run either north-south or east-west), but I'm often surprised at the number of times I find myself walking the exact same routes between the exact same places.

Back in July 2007 I noted how it's possible to find yourself in parts of your own city, a city that you may have lived in your entire life, that are completely unfamiliar to you. I commented how during a walk in North New Brighton Keiko and I "both felt as though we could have been in some completely different city, in some completely different country. Strange how you can live virtually your entire life in some place and still not really know it."

In his oft-quoted 1952 study Paris et l’agglomération parisienne, Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe plotted the movements made in the space of one year by a student living in the 16th Arrondissement to illustrate what he described as "the narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives . . . within a geographical area whose radius is extremely small". Most of the chosen student's movements fell within a small triangle, the three apexes of which were her school, her home, and the home of her piano teacher.

Writing in the inaugural issue of the journal Internationale Situationniste, Guy Debord expressed "outrage at the fact that anyone's life can be so pathetically limited". In his essay Theory of the Dérive, he outlined a technique for overcoming this.

One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive [literally: "drifting"], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.

As Debord himself makes clear, the dérive is different from the kind of carefree walking I referred to in yesterday's post, the benefits of which include offering "a vehicle for much-needed solitude and private thought". For a start, dérives are clearly politically motivated. But they are also best practiced in groups.

One can dérive alone, but all indications are that the most fruitful numerical arrangement consists of several small groups of two or three people who have reached the same level of awareness, since cross-checking these different groups' impressions makes it possible to arrive at more objective conclusions.

Interestingly, a colleague of Debord's compared the dérive to psychoanalysis. Ivan Chtcheglov also pointed out that the dérive brought with it similar risks to those of psychoanalysis. "Just as analysis unaccompanied with anything else is almost always contraindicated," he wrote, "so continual dériving is dangerous to the extent that the individual, having gone too far (not without bases, but...) without defenses, is threatened with explosion, dissolution, dissociation, disintegration." He suggested a week was a good average length for a dérive, adding, "In 1953-1954 we dérived for three or four months straight. That’s the extreme limit. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill us."

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 76.9km
Days left until departure: 72