Psychogeography has been gentrified into middle-class colonial exploration
Evidence
‘I think a lot of what is called psychogeography now is just middle-class men acting like colonial explorers, showing us their discoveries and guarding their plot. I have spent the last twenty years walking around London and living here in a precarious fashion, I’ve had about fifty addresses. I think my understanding and negotiation of the city is very different to theirs.’ — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 482
Categorization
- XREF: Parallels the critique of the flâneur as a privileged posture; also evokes the earlier ‘structural marginalisation persists even when a sidelined artist shares the mainstream stage’ idea. — connects to: Control over space is simultaneously control over time and the past — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 467; Colonial identity functions as a style shaping reality language and thought
- SEED: Essay angle on who is allowed to claim the city — the politics of walking as knowledge production, precarious dwelling versus detached observation.