Assembling the Assemblage: Developing Schizocartography in Support of an Urban Semiology

• Main Author: Tina Richardson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-07-01
• Series: Humanities
• Subjects: psychogeography; schizocartography; semiology; Situationist International; place-making; postmodern geography; subjectivity; aesthetics; desire
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/6/3/47

Abstracts: This article looks at the formulation of a methodology that incorporates a walking-based practice and borrows from a variety of theories in order to create a flexible tool that is able to critique and express the multiplicities of experiences produced by moving about the built environment. Inherent in postmodernism is the availability of a multitude of objects (or texts) available for reuse, reinterpretation, and appropriation under the umbrella of bricolage. The author discusses her development of schizocartography (the conflation of a phrase belonging to Félix Guattari) and how she has incorporated elements from Situationist psychogeography, Marxist geography, and poststructural theory and placed them alongside theories that examine subjectivity. This toolbox enables multiple possibilities for interpretation which reflect the actual heterogeneity of place and also mirror the complexities that are integral in challenging the totalizing perspective of space that capitalism encourages.