Psychogeography and Feminist Methodology

This paper will suggest how a psychogeographical methodology can be developed as a new method for feminist psychologists, in the study of urban and rural environments. One of the limitations of situationist psychogeography is its grounding in the male gaze. In addition, men have had privileged access to and time to participate in such activities. Drawing on Feminist geography, Queer theory and Gay/Lesbian writing, core concepts such as embodied subjectivity and heteronormativity can be used to develop the theoretical base of a feminist psychogeographical methodology. In this paper I will outline how feminist psychogeographical research might be conducted; the ‘situationist‘ approach of using bodies as research ‘instruments’ means that innovative data may be gathered through the experience of walking and seeing the world through the situationist lens. Finally, the implications of this work for personal and political social transformation will be addressed

Visualising Manchester: Exploring new ways to study urban environments with reference to situationist theory, the dérive and qualitative research

This paper will outline how mobile methods and documentary strategies (diaries, cameras and maps) can be used to document and reflect on the research process and to consider the political implications of urbanism and gentrification. I draw particular inspiration from the work of the Situationist International and their use of detournement and the dérive. I will refer to a long term project in Manchester city where I have used a situationist qualitative methodology. I will discuss the usefulness of the situationist tactics of the dérive and detournement for qualitative research in psychology. The wider aims of conducting this research are: to extend qualitative methods in psychology; to further politicise qualitative methods, to consider the implications of the gentrification of environments; to reflect on the social roles of the researcher as academic, activist and artist and to consider what changes are possible as a result of doing this sort of research

Sex on the move: Gender, subjectivity and differential inclusion

Heterosexuality and patriarchal social arrangements built within immigration regulations signal the undiminished urgency of feminist engagement to rethink migration through the perspective of sexuality and gender. At the same time, feminist analysis of contemporary migration remains bound to the analytical framework centred on control, and approaches borders and immigration regulations primarily in terms of exclusion. Yet, the contemporary transformations of state borders, labour relations and citizenship question the currency and adequacy of the exclusion-based interpretative model. This article brings together feminist and queer migration studies with literature on the transformation of borders, sovereignty and citizenship as developed in critical political theory with the aim of broadening the interpretative scope and political relevance of feminist and queer migration scholarship. The stakes are both theoretical and political in that such a reading allows for a more nuanced account of the changing forms of governing as well as of emerging political subjectivity

Metropolitan Strategies, Psychogeographic Investigations

The ideas and practices of the Situationist International (SI) and the Italian autonomists of the 1960s and 1970s continue to provide inspiration for developing strategies for contesting capitalism. This essay proposes to bring together concepts from these traditions, working between the Situationist concept of psychogeography and the dérive, with autonomist writings on the shaping of the metropolis. Drawing on the autonomist concepts of class composition analysis and conducting a workers’ inquiry, it will be suggested that they can be usefully combined with psychogeographic investigations and methods to understand the shifting terrain of surplus value production within the metropolis based on an analysis of these transformations to develop new forms of political action and ways to sabotage the accumulation process. </jats:p

'Theories are made only to die in the war of time': Guy Debord and the Situationist International as strategic thinkers

The Situationist International (SI) has been one of the main reference points during the past 40 or more years within social movement organizing, cultural studies, social theory and philosophy. While the SI has been understood in many ways as inheritors and elaborators of an unorthodox Marxist politics drawing heavily from the history of the avant-garde, relatively little attention has been paid to the specifically strategic dimension of their thought and practice. This is surprising, especially in Debord's case, given how much his work also draws from the history of military strategy. This paper will particularly examine the strategic aspects of Debord and the SI's thought and politics and how they rethink the nature of strategy through collective forms of aesthetic-political practice. © 2013 Taylor & Francis