[jean-francois augoyard] step by step everyday wa(bookos.org)

Step by Step

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University of Minnesota PressMinneapolis

London

Step by StepEveryday Walks in a French Urban Housing Project

JEAN-FRANÇOIS AUGOYARD

Foreword by Françoise Choay

Translated and with an Afterword by David Ames Curtis

The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges the generosity of the French Ministry of Culture, which contributed fi nancial assistance to the publication of this book. Ouvrage publié avec l’aide du Ministère français chargé de la Culture—Centre national du livre.

The University of Minnesota Press acknowledges the work of Edward Dimendberg, editorial consultant, on this project.

Photographs of the Arlequin neighborhood in Grenoble, France, were taken by Yves Bardin and Babette Mathieu. The map in Appendix B was created by Holger Sauer.

Lines from “Walking and Falling” and “Big Science,” from the album Big Science by Laurie Anderson, quoted as an epigraph to the Afterword and in a note, are reprinted here courtesy of Laurie Anderson.

Originally published in French as Pas à pas. Essai sur le cheminement quotidien en milieu urbain by Éditions du Seuil in 1979 as part of the Espacements series edited by Françoise Choay. Copyright 1979 Éditions du Seuil.

Copyright 2007 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520http://www.upress.umn.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataAugoyard, Jean-François, 1941– [Pas à pas. English] Step by step : everyday walks in a French urban housing project / Jean-François Augoyard ; foreword by Françoise Choay ; translated and with an afterword by David Ames Curtis. p. cm.Translation of: Pas à pas.Includes bibliographical references and index.isbn: 978-0-8166-4590-9 (hc: alk. paper) 978-0-8166-4591-6 (pb: alk. paper)isbn-10: 0-8166-4590-6 (hc : alk. paper) 0-8166-4591-4 (pb : alk. paper) 1. City and town life—France. 2. Sociology, Urban—France. 3. Urbanization—France. 4. City planning—France. I. Title.ht135.a8813 2007

307.760944--dc22 2007026439

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

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http://www.upress.umn.edu

Contents

Foreword Françoise Choay vii

STEP BY STEP

Itinerary 3

1. Arteries, Impasses, Side Streets 7

2. An Inhabitant Rhetoric: Figures of Walking 23

3. An Inhabitant Rhetoric: The Code of Appropriation 77

4. The Body of Inhabitant Expression 115

5. On the Imaginary Ground of Inhabitant Expression 135

Conclusion: A Cosmogenetic Point 165

Appendix A: Synoptic Table 179

Appendix B: Map and Toponymic Lexicon of the Arlequin Neighborhood 189

Afterword: Walking Together, Three Decades Later David Ames Curtis 193

Notes 221 Bibliography 249 Index 255

vii

Foreword

FRANÇOISE CHOAY

To republish or—what amounts to the same—to translate a book, written a quarter century ago in reaction to a precisely dated and lim-ited context, presupposes that the document in question would either present some clear historical value or had been, from the outset, polyse-mous in character, the bearer of multiple readings. Both these hypoth-eses apply to Step by Step.

This work by Jean-François Augoyard, which arose from his aca-demic dissertation, was, to borrow a term familiar to him, inscribed within the technocratic climate of intense urbanization that, in France, had witnessed the transition from “high-density housing complexes”1to “new towns.” Never had urban planners and architects in our country had comparable fi repower at their disposal. And yet, neither had the young discipline of urban sociology had such a time denouncing the disparities between the product (the built environment) being offered to consumers (inhabitants) and the expectations of the latter. Augoyard’s Pas à pas arrived on the scene as the perfect opposite of the fashionable socio-politico-economic analyses and the ruling ideology. All along the both unassuming and meticulous investigation he conducted in the en-closed area of everydayness and people’s ordinary behaviors, Augoyard quietly introduced the twin teachings of Martin Heidegger on dwelling and of Herbert Marcuse on technology. All the issues of the day, present between the lines, were questioned and mastered with a modesty and a simplicity that seemed almost ridiculous.

Some people were not fooled: Michel de Certeau always recog-nized the debt he has incurred vis-à-vis Pas à pas in his analysis of the “everyday.”2 On the other hand, among technocrats, practitioners, and

F O R E W O R D

viii

sociologists concerned with what Augoyard subsumes under the terms construction and lodging (as opposed to building and inhabiting), Pas à pas had hardly any impact at all. Today, this book testifi es in a nearly unique way to a consciousness of the fundamental questions raised by urbanization as it stood at the threshold of the yet-to-be-named electro-telematic revolution.

But does not Pas à pas, at the present hour, offer another dimension besides the merely documentary one? I confess that I have asked myself the question. Exactly twenty-fi ve years after I enthusiastically welcomed Augoyard into the series I was editing at Seuil publishing house, I re-read his book “step by step” (or, rather, word by word), carried along, this time, by historical curiosity: with globalization as my horizon as I made my way through the book, the questions asked and the observa-tions made by Augoyard seemed to me not merely premonitory but fully in step with our own times. In twenty-fi ve years, Pas à pas has attained global signifi cance. The collusion between technology and capital had become ever more radical in the interim, as conditioning by technology came to apply no longer just to urban lived experience in our globalized societies but also to their social practices as a whole. Today, the “reduc-tion” process detected and revealed by Augoyard has become general-ized, and it is “inhabitant expression” itself—this “power,” grounded in the imaginary, to struggle “against the real as conceived, to orient other-wise the edifi ed world”3—that is threatened with extinction.

It is not my role here to substitute myself for the present-day reader and to project in detail Augoyard’s contributions on the backdrop of the electronic era, our era of globalization. I shall therefore limit myself to two points. First is his unveiling of the role the body plays (through the apparently trivial and insignifi cant activity of deambulation)4 in the semanticization of our spatial and social environment. Next is the key analysis (still to be pursued) of the ways in which temporalized spatial fi gures recapitulate, via the mediation of the body, the symbolization inherent to speech. This is a lesson to be pondered at a time when the human body, reifi ed by the media and supplanted by ever more effi cient technological prostheses,5 fi nds itself, in everyday life, condemned to exile: indeed, the body’s exclusion by architecture and planning schools

F O R E W O R D

ix

as well as by professionals in those fi elds, obsessed as they now are by computer-assisted design, goes to ensure this very exile.

Of course, a close reading of Augoyard’s book might lead one to re-gret that which its heroical minimalism deprives it of. For that option erects the very sparseness of its approach into a method and confi nes itself to the fi eld of the ordinary and the individual, apart from the po-lemical and the political. Thus, for example, would not the use of the term city6 elicit some reservations? Why reduce “the social unit of ev-eryday life [to an] aggregate”7 and consider “advocacy planning” to be nothing but a failure?8 How can one justify the absence of two words, identity and difference, which give their status to the articulation of the body and of space by integrating therein the properly political dimen-sion, in Aristotle’s strong and original sense of the term?

These are but vain questions and sterile regrets inasmuch as Pas à pas draws its full force from the minimalist option Augoyard adopted and from the way in which he succeeds in standing at the very threshold where meaning emerges from nonmeaning. These questions and regrets remain vain and sterile, especially in light of the fact that, as he takes his fi nal steps in his last pages,9 the key word is let loose: cosmogenesis;for it is also (as Augoyard makes clear in detail) only through the body that space becomes a world. This precise specifi cation is of precious value. Indeed, it concerns at present all humans identically, for what is this cosmogenesis if not the innermost calling of our species, henceforth threatened with eclipse, anthropogenesis?

Step by Step

3

Itinerary

This work takes the step as its point of departure under a variety of headings.

It is dedicated, fi rst of all, to a small number of inhabitants in a town that looks like many others. Their daily strolls, which we have “joined in mid-march,” have taken us, little by little, along many detours and into the fl urry of particular details of ordinary life. To the point of ram-bling. We wanted to learn how these inhabitants live their relationship to the spaces of their habitat. But their approaches have come to take over our own and have obliterated the abstract itinerary we had pro-jected to follow. We wanted to make them say something, likening their spatial practices to one or another of the major routes that structure present-day familiarity with the city. Yet step by step, confi dence in our own scientifi c knowledge has slackened. At the rhythm with which time itself is lived, our reductionist techniques have fallen by the wayside.

We shall simply attempt to state in the pages of the present volume, and with the hope of not betraying them too much, what the inhabi-tants are expressing by themselves, every day, in their most unremark-able forms of conduct. We thank them for this salutary change of scen-ery [dépaysement] which invites us to make three somewhat unusual steps in the fi eld of scientifi c knowledge about the city: a side step, a step forward, perchance to take a plunge [un pas à sauter].

First, a side step in urban studies.The “quality of life” theme is “in” today. After several decades of

urban planning that were characterized by an increasing mastery of space in quantitative terms, the inhabitants have suddenly become an object of concern. It is asked how the “user” can come to live within

I T I N E R A R Y

4

these new urban arrangements. One seeks to improve the living con-ditions of the “consumer” or the “constituent” [l’“administré”]. New techniques have been invented to soften the edges of planned spaces—for example, by promoting sociocultural activities and entertainments.

Yet the everyday problems intensive urban development generates are still being dealt with in one of two ways. Either such treatment is considered after the development and construction have been com-pleted, and then one searches for remedies, or it is contemplated beforethe urbanization program is carried out, and then hypothetical data are taken into account via preconceived ways of using the urban space.

For both these approaches, it seems, the instantiated principle [in-stance] of the inhabitant or “user” can be dealt with only in the form of a content that “fi lls in,” after the fact, an already laid-out and developed space. In its operational mode, urban planning in reality merely manip-ulates representations of use. Everyday time—which cannot enter into a construction parameter—becomes secondary, accidental, incidental.

But is not this omission itself of signifi cance? Is there not a qualita-tive gap between lived practices and representations of these practices? Is everyday life to be reduced to a reproduction? Is its fate to go on re-peating, blindly, the urgent imperatives dictated by the economic order and the ideological order? Or does it really have a productive and ex-pressive capacity of its own?

The question could at least be posed for once. And, were it only for the time of the present volume, it might merit a side step, or an attempt to follow lived time as closely as possible, to look into what its own powers and abilities are, and to cast, from this point of view, a different glance upon the urban world.

Such an approach is in no way an easy one. It necessitates a step for-ward in the methods of qualitative sociology.

For a few years now, there has been a marked interest in qualitative analyses of urban life. What one now considers classical sociology—which was based on statistical data that allow one to offer an overall diagnosis before it is too late and to reveal the most general causes of a growing urban malaise—has perhaps even been criticized too rashly. Today, people talk a lot about a new sociology that would free itself from the quantum. A qualitative methodology is nevertheless still taking

I T I N E R A R Y

5

its fi rst steps, taking pains to distance itself from a search for necessary causes or from ethnological methods that abandon the exotic in order to return to the “endotic.” Others, inspired by a more poetic model, at-tempt to describe, in fi rst-person terms, the quality of lived space.

A step would be taken, were it granted that, on the one hand, ev-eryday life is a fabric of ways of being (before being a set of second-order effects) and that, on the other, the modalities of lived experience belonging to each inhabitant do indeed participate in a community of meaning. Beyond the I, there is undoubtedly a we, which expresses it-self in everydayness. Is a method of modal analysis possible in the case of urban sociology?

The present volume presents the concrete experiment we have un-dertaken. Because of this, however, the writing is infl ected in two un-usual ways. For, grasped in its lived quality, everyday life does not yield states of affairs, behaviors whose typological structure could be fi xed in place. It gives us movements, conducts. The account we shall offer re-spects its evolutive or “fl eeting” character. Following the approach we have taken over several years, each moment—and here each chapter—outstrips the previous one, correcting its errancies and adjusting its ex-trapolations. True, this makes the reading of the book all the more dif-fi cult. But this option, it has seemed to us, considerably reduces the gap [l’écart] between everyday life and our observational experience of it.

Moreover, does not every statement about everyday life that would fail to enter into its concrete particularities and singularities risk setting it too quickly and rigidly in the realm of the represented and, in this sense, also risk reduplicating the reductions currently imposed upon it via the production of planned space? Also, our study will hardly ever depart from a quite specifi c urban neighborhood that serves as an ex-ample. Step by step, it weaves together what we hope will be close ties between ambulatory practices unfolding in a concrete space-time and our analytic approach. May the reader therefore excuse us for our slow goings, procrastinations, and repetitions. The primary task of a modal analysis undoubtedly is to take into account such constant to-and-fro movements between the scattered pluralities of lived experience and the minimum unity required by speech.

The itinerary we are proposing will no doubt appear off-track and

I T I N E R A R Y

6

puzzling [déroutant]. What interest could there possibly be in account-ing for practices so unremarkable and familiar that they would seem to us to border on the innocuous, the insignifi cant? What contribution can such a sidelong approach—one that, from the outset, fails to take into account the certainties of today’s scientifi c knowledge—make that would deepen our familiarity with urban life?

Such an invitation to vagabondage might be able to alter our mental attitude about urban phenomena. It prods us to take a plunge, to think everyday life through its own logic, to settle ourselves straightaway into the insignifi cant, the plural, the patchy. Ought not a philosophy of ev-eryday life begin by making this deliberate leap [écart]?

A philosophy of the remainder is unlikely to be possible except through a break in the hierarchy of epistemological values. Such a phi-losophy implies that modality would not be merely an instrument of causality—that is to say, that the way in which one does things might appear as signifi cant as the result of the action taken—and that one’s style of expressing oneself might carry as much weight as what is signi-fi ed (what is called “the signifi ed”) or what is expressed (what will be called “the expressed”). The urban world has reduced everyday life to a series of functional operations; that world conditions its needs and gives the code of its usages. In this world, everyday life retains possession only of its expressive or rhetorical dimension. And so as not to reduce this last power and ability of the urban dweller even further, must not our investigation summon up all its patience and must not our scientifi c knowledge give proof of a great fl exibility, perhaps even accepting the overthrow of a few of its certainties?

7

1

Arteries, Impasses, Side Streets

The paths, the cuts that run invisibly along the route

Are our only route, for we who speak in order to live, who

Sleep, without growing drowsy, by the wayside.

—René Char

Arteries

Who has not, one day or another, had the distinct impression that he has been pretty much banished from, dispossessed of, the city he inhab-its? And who has not, upon the accidental irruption of such an impres-sion, glimpsed that everyday habits get lost in the details and, indeed, that these habits seem to repeat this banishment and this dispossession, which thereby become embedded, digging in their heels?

The city is a furtive object, it seems, one that conceals itself. Far from dominating their city, the inhabitants seem to lose themselves further and further within it. The production of urban space today hardly offers the inhabitant any respite, now that it even goes so far as to reduplicate this loss of self and of “home” in the city by closing off all prospects through the shrinking of cityscapes, economic pressure, social division, overpricing of “small” property lots, and the concentration of slum ar-eas.1 Whence the following simple question: In the collective space that is the city, what part is frequented, appropriated, and effectively inhab-ited (in the active sense) by each inhabitant? Probably a quite small part: a few neighborhoods or broken sections of neighborhoods scattered at the will of the fragmented activities that are our lot (work, domicile, leisure, consumption), sometimes one’s lodging all by itself, sometimes even less than one’s full lodging. Again, quantitative evaluation is hardly

A R T E R I E S , I M PA S S E S , S I D E S T R E E T S

8

of any signifi cance. Qualitatively speaking, we have no foothold upon the city as a totality.

But what is this urban totality? Experienced daily through func-tional constraints and operational imperatives, it may be the “city” unit, the “neighborhood” unit, or the “high-density housing complex” unit. These “units” establish a descending series of interlocking member-ships. And they take on a life of their own as given, preexisting totalitiesto which one must necessarily refer qua citizen, worker, social insurance contributor, consumer, or inhabitant.

Older urban zones or “aging” mixed neighborhoods exhibit a unity that has been built up little by little. Historical and symbolic commu-nal memory still maintains the illusion that the city dweller has taken part in this development. But the new forms of urban living, such as the “high-density housing complex,” are created straightaway as simulta-neous totalities.

Whether it be in the overall organization of usages or the mode of production of urban space itself, an increasingly necessitarian rational-ity seems now to reign over the city. With schematic diagrams, plans, long-term and medium-term forecasts, and timing of urban programs, the urban habitat as given appears as a conceptual space laid out and developed according to the rules of the whole and its parts. And some-times the parts are so well integrated into the whole, and in such an in-terdependent way, that

all that is needed is a breakdown of a few power stations or strikes by public transport employees or by garbage collectors for one of the world’s most ex-traordinary powers, such as its great metropolitan areas, to be rendered, in a few hours’ time, literally helpless.2

The production and organization of the built and developed world have privileged a kind of manipulation of space that is based on a logic of repetition as well as on the following fundamental principle: produce fi rst the urban habitat so as to hand it over then for use. Everything takes place according to a relation of container to contained. In its form, the container implies all the signs of the system that has modeled it (real-estate market, economic “imperatives,” organizational logic, political conditions, strategies for domination, etc.). The inhabitant who comes


9

to “fi ll in” this or that form of habitat is hardly able to discover either the signifi cations assigned to it or its organic relationship to the totality. “Housed” rather than “inhabiting,” his daily life seems to unfold in a cramped living space, and he fi nds himself captive of an overly complex network of functional operations.

What kind of fate has befallen the city? Why do the inhabitants have no mastery over the relation of the whole to its parts? Why, in short, is there an inhabitant malaise?

This question is not a new one. Since the early sixties, it has set off numerous attempts at a response. Thus, the works of certain theorists, which at the present time constitute a veritable corpus of issues and criticisms, if not of scientifi c knowledge, have elicited responses from urbanists, architects, and even a portion of the public.3

Rather than trying to enumerate, in a necessarily incomplete—and, here, tedious—fashion, the entire set of interpretations that constitute the fi eld of the urban question, we prefer to limit ourselves to designat-ing the main arteries within which the present currents of thought cir-culate. In any case, they go from the most specialized kinds of research to the most trivial doxa. Here, then, in an undoubtedly approximative way that nevertheless corresponds to our own recollection of the words and writings of urbanists or researchers or inhabitants themselves, are fi ve royal roads for the analysis of urban life, fi ve main ways of fi nding general and basic causes that explain inhabitant malaise.

1. It is the fulfillment of a development plan that introduces too many changes into the initial projectCertain developmental and architectural projects ought to allow for a “social life” that is, if not idyllic, at least decent—that is to say, one in which appropriations of space might be able to succeed without expe-riencing too many constraints and in which the neighborhood would be considered to be something like an extension of one’s own “home.” Now, as it turns out, once the project is fulfi lled and built, nothing hap-pens as planned. Life is dreary and fragmented. The space is too hostile or impervious to collective habitation. Individuals feel they are being driven back into their lodgings. Who is responsible? Neither the in-habitants nor the authors of the project. Instead, an inevitable series


10

of constraints and dysfunctions occur in the production process, which warps the project.

Often suggested by urbanists and architects, this answer does not go so far as to challenge the project itself or its general mode of pro-duction. Rather, it takes note of the ups and downs of the project in terms of technical analysis. Organizational and construction technolo-gies, as well as those pertaining to economic and political strategies, have their weaknesses. The remedy would thus be an increase in techni-cal applications.

2. Disfigured or ill educated, the inhabitant no longer knows how to inhabit his spaceThis surprising response occurs more frequently among architects than one might think. It may symbolize a vague and never theorized state of mind that is nevertheless apparent in the ideology of urban production, properly speaking.4

Formulated in the passive voice, this statement avoids identifying too clearly the origins of this inhabitant malaise. Is it civilization, is it culture, or is it “life today” that is the cause? Whatever the reason, peo-ple no longer know how to inhabit the city. The remedy? Relearn how to inhabit, learn how to read the new urban and architectural forms. What is needed, it is thought, is a pedagogy of architecture. And to pre-vent bad things from happening, whereas their cause remains unclear. Yet a new style of real-estate sales has already anticipated this diagnosis; it now delivers an instruction manual for a “new art of living” along with the keys to the apartment.

3. The inhabitant fails to intervene in the production processAfter the fi rst massive wave of urbanization, a sort of “user” aware-ness was awakened. Some city-planning professionals started to become sensitive to the idea that the inhabitants could intervene in the produc-tion of their habitat. This intervention, which could even be done on a recurring basis, would appreciably alter the physiognomy of the build-ing product, with just a little bit of power on the part of those interven-ing being suffi cient. Numerous efforts were made in this direction. The failures of such “advocacy planning” raise, however, the issue of how to delegate speech.5 Indeed, the inhabitants have to be represented by


11

someone who can make himself heard, and these “representatives” ma-nipulate the prevailing representations and the ruling code in the sphere of urban production. Now, “operational” constraints are different from the inhabitants’ requirements; the former are posited in terms of strat-egy, geometric and economic quantifi cation, as well as overall “objec-tives.” Between the inhabitant speaking for others and the designer, a twofold distortion therefore slips in, and this renders any hope of effec-tive intervention quite hypothetical. The cause of the malaise of which we have spoken would thus come under the heading of a communica-tion problem. To an urban practitioner, the words uttered by an inhab-itant just “do not sound right.” Despite the best intentions in the world, the antagonists cannot communicate in a constructive manner. At the crucial moment (generally, when decisions are to be made), the produc-tion code blots out the user code.

4. Critique of urban political economyThe fourth type of explanation for inhabitant malaise has been formu-lated many times over since the mid-sixties. Well-argued analyses de-velop a critique of urban political economy.6 The primary cause relates to the ruling economic power, which has transformed the old craftsman-based organization of the construction process,7 subjugated building production to the system of commerce, and given birth to a technology-based rationality of urban development. Under cover of a second-order effect that is ideological in nature, the same cause turns housing into one consumer object among others. The inhabitant thus fi nds himself “conditioned,” handed over to a de facto situation, and besieged by an ideology he cannot help but reproduce.

5. The inhabitant never totally succeeds in adjusting his desire to realityThis type of response to the question of inhabitant malaise takes as es-sential, if not suffi cient, an explanation that would start from the indi-vidual histories of residential “subjects.” Briefl y put, the study of one’s lived relationship to inhabited space is insignifi cant unless it is centered on an analytic deciphering of a phantasmatic space (psychoanalytic in-terpretation of interviews, of tests, and of daydreams). Reference must therefore be made to the initial childhood experience of space, which is


12

always tied to the parental imago. The structuration of one’s own body depends on this, and it is on this basis that everyday space will later be lived. The “pregnancy” of archaic space would thus be an essential or formal cause of people’s inability to appropriate the space of their habi-tat or of the ever possible confl icts between the spatial archetype and the lived experience of the various lodgings a user occupies in the course of his existence.

Starting from this explanatory core, psychosociology has attempted to shed some light on the problem of the inhabitant’s relationship to his habitat. In the most nuanced studies,8 economic and historical fac-tors are also taken into account. It is granted, moreover, that such fac-tors have had a signifi cant impact on the initial childhood experience of space in a specifi c home setting, within this or that family, at such and such a time. These factors condition the “subjects” that are observed today. Also, psychosociological interpretation wavers between two sys-tems of causality. For psychosociology, the concrete observational ob-ject is the individual; the inferences it advances concern a “social prac-tice” or a “social change” to which, in other respects, the individual is referred. In all, inhabitant malaise would be explained by a deep-seated cause that is psychological in nature and that is incorporated into an ef-fi cient or circumstantial cause tied to economic and social status.

Impasses

Theoretical or Methodological Impasses

This chart of the main lanes of explanation of inhabitant malaise is ob-viously quite cursory. It places on the same level a quite diverse set of discourses, mixing form and content. Each of the arguments is of ex-tremely unequal consistency. Indeed, it will not be lost on the reader that the stated causes of this inhabitant malaise seem to be highly varied. The nature of the causality in question is sometimes instrumental (the func-tions of the system of production), sometimes psychological, sometimes sociological, sometimes economic.

In the fi eld of scientifi c knowledge that investigates the urban world,


13

two theoretical routes have been particularly well developed. The fi rst, which takes note of the prevailing mechanisms of economic production and social reproduction, offers an essential key to understanding that the socioeconomic setting defi nes our “conditioning.” The second inti-mates that individual factors enter into the equation. Should not one be interested as much in the overall situation as in the singularities belong-ing to each individual?

Now, it turns out that these two paths are not complementary. They do not happen to intersect. The fi rst, which argues along the lines of economic and social determinants, necessarily privileges a macroscopic reading of urban life. Figures at the ready, it seeks overall coherencies. It will pick up, for example, similarly occurring housing practices within a given class. The investigation will bear on statistical sets of data and on questions posed to residents in questionnaires and interviews. But this will be a “directed” reading. And the grid of analysis will not be able to take into account the microcosmic level of everyday practices, which are often complex and contradictory. For, well-argued explanatory for-mulations—whose goal is to obtain a restricted number of deep-seated causes—cannot linger over mere singularities. Scattering out the causes in that way would remove all coherency from one’s approach to the problem. One would no longer know “why . . . ?” One would overlook the causal nature of the question. And the investigator would fi nd no unity in the system of explanation, whose existence he had nevertheless assumed at the outset of his undertaking.

For its part, psychosociological thought fi nds its coherency in a set of psychological categories. In other words, the reality around which the interpretation turns is the instantiated principle of the individual. In a fi rst stage, what is interpreted holds only for each subject taken sepa-rately. Subsequent comparisons and classifi cations are based on a list-ing of common factors (factor analysis). Inferences from the individual to the collective remain hypothetical.9 In such a reading of urban life, the best guarantee of coherency and universality (what would hold for a collection of “subjects” would hold for the collectivity) is the sys-tem of causal interpretation. Among inhabitants, the mediations are not concrete but, rather, theoretical.

Thus, while the most well-argued applied research papers endeavor-


14

ing to explain urban malaise offer valuable systems of causal explana-tion, they fail to provide an account of either the concrete aspect of people’s everyday existence or the lived mediations by means of which the inhabitants of an urban space form a collectivity. In order to satisfy a scientifi c method that often confuses “rigor” and “exactitude,” they neglect the intermediate and the singular.

There is always a “remainder” in analytic operations that involve di-vision. Indeed, daily life examined in this way must verify or invalidate hypotheses that emanate from an already constituted fi eld of scientifi c knowledge. From what it expresses, one extracts a signifi ed that will be subjected to “content analysis.” The containers or the signifi ers (words, drawings, and gestures of the inhabitants under questioning) have a purely instrumental and, under this heading, negligible value.

It would seem that the expression of inhabitant malaise would al-ways have to confi rm either the state of the system of economic produc-tion and social reproduction or the theories that are considered authori-tative in the human and social sciences. Might not inhabitant expression have anything to say on its own?

Through these theoretical and methodological impasses, the lived practices of the inhabitant are not apparent. This is for the simple rea-son that the modalities of questioning involved do not allow them to appear.

Yet what is this “remainder,” this surplus that cannot be retrieved by the machinery of production and that is situated outside the scientifi c categories currently in force? And how can it take on meaning, if not via an investigation that takes form outside the universe of totalizing repre-sentation, outside the sphere of necessary causes and “why” questions?

An Exemplary Impasse

Beside or between the arteries of knowledge about the city, we must fi nd some side roads or connecting streets. Before doing that, we want to offer, as an example, a type of approach to everyday life that we have attempted under the heading of a counterdemonstration.

Let us consider the everyday practice of walking around and through


15

a neighborhood. The problem is to fi nd the signifi cation of this practice, to evaluate how a laid-out and developed space can be frequented, and to be able to appreciate its value as a social indicator. Let us question a bunch of inhabitants. They recount to us their routes, which we can thus trace on a background map. Topographical space offers the follow-ing apparent advantage, that it provides a common frame of reference for individual practices.

Now, in this attempt to grasp their paths, their walks, several diffi cul-ties became apparent to us. First, what graphic code are we to choose? Dotted lines will indicate an occasional trip; an unbroken line, frequent trips. But all that remains quite approximative. How are we to trace one and the same trip that, for one day, merited ten minutes of detailed nar-rative and, for the next day, only a few seconds?

One can superimpose maps of the trips sketched on transparent trac-ing paper in a such way as to assess the rate at which various pedestrian pathways are frequented. Yet, when faced with the liveliness of the oral narrative and with its thousand qualitative details, such a topographical summary no longer made a great deal of sense. Either one treated the narrated lived experience with disdain, thereby sacrifi cing time to topo-graphical spatiality, or one really recognized how limited graphic repre-sentation is when it comes to everyday expression.

A topographical translation, like any interpretation based on conti-nuities and contiguities, thus seemed to us an improper way of account-ing for spatial practices as they are lived day to day. We were in an im-passe. Let us mention several forms of this aporia.10

1. LimitsUnexpectedly, limits display other forms than boundary markings. There certainly are some represented limits that do not vary at all and divide up the space in question. There are other ones that owe nothing to geo-metric representation of the space but exist, rather, within a mobile spa-tial practice; they have meaning only to the extent that the inhabitant makes reference to the possibility of transgression. These limits can be perceived very well in all movements of avoidance recounted by the in-habitant. In its graphic representation, the trip appears as a continuous trace that, at a certain moment, crosses some boundaries; everything is


16

continuous and contiguous; at the same time, it clears a path through the space and is homogeneous in its extension. Nevertheless, the trace of the steps manifests a movement that varies depending on whether the space is empty or full, with curious “limits” liable to appear and disap-pear, to emerge alongside and parallel to the direction of one’s walk, and to exist at one hour of the day but not at another. The supposed fl at-ness of inhabited space dissolves into a heterogeneity that is connected, momentarily and fragmentarily, only by the succession of steps. The intactness [La totalité pleine] developers of the laid-out space had pro-posed now disappears. Some inhabitants who, spatially speaking, travel throughout the neighborhood nevertheless feel everywhere that they are outsiders. What has become of the totality? How has it faded away?

2. Beyond the appropriated and the unappropriated: something appropriableThe demarcation between the appropriated space and the unappropri-ated space pertains to a synchronic representation of limits. In narrative accounts of everyday walks, the initial consistency of these two antago-nistic designations of a laid-out and developed space collapses. In lived time, one fi nds no appropriation or counterappropriation that would have a defi nitive meaning or that would be established once and for all. They are but marks momentarily affi xed upon a space that has been the fi eld of favorable or unfavorable movements of appropriation. How-ever long lasting they might be—and there are always a certain num-ber of inappropriate or unappropriable spaces—these marks do not ac-count for the “how” of appropriation. How is it that one inhabitant, who strides through and knows perfectly well the zone into which he is venturing, remains an outsider; how is it that another, who takes in-frequent walks but avoids nothing, also is an outsider, if it is not by the absence of something appropriable? The fi rst person walks through the space in saturation mode; the second in the mode of emptiness, vacancy. There is no more place for the appropriable, or nothing glimpsed that could be appropriated. Inhabited space then becomes homogeneous; it offers one no foothold. For the inhabitant, it has no more of an every-day meaning than some geometric diagram.

In fact, the qualifi cation of appropriation depends neither on the


17

quantity of the space traveled through nor on the constancy of terri-torial limits but, rather, on the degree of possibilities it includes. The “trace” of a route signals an action and the way in which it unfolds in everyday time. Another totality then seems to sketch itself out on the horizon of what is to come. In what way can such a totality, which moves from the absent to the projected, and from the projected to the imaginary, be equivalent to the one planning produces for us?

3. For a daily stroll, what is more metaphorical than a map [un plan]?To the extent that one seeks not to evaluate the way in which a space conceived as a container can be fi lled in by some inhabitant content but, rather, how the act of progressively inhabiting a built-up space is constituted through the patient rhythm of one’s walks, a logic of serial articulation comes to substitute itself for that of distinction and terri-torial boundaries. The totality—which is the necessary referent of the planned parts—gives way to the “globality” of the world of everyday activity, which is always present in each step, but which is also always in the course of development, in the course of an enacted process that renders things explicit.

Thus, none of the narratives of the inhabitants’ trips ever omits the presence of the collective dimension. This presence is not necessarily personalized. Very often imagined or the object of a presentiment on the basis of spatial markers, it insists and persists in a silent and diffuse way. Let us cite another example. One’s trip to work is not equivalent to the use of pedestrian spaces that mark out little by little the abandonment of one’s domicile and the appearance of the public sphere. On the contrary, the sense of preoccupation and the feelings of constraint that are quite characteristic of this kind of activity accompany from the start, like an atmosphere, one’s fi rst morning steps. The referent for one’s walks is not the simultaneity of a planned spatial whole but, rather, at each moment of the stroll, the coexistence of the different instantiated principles in-volved in everyday life. The explication, the development in movement of this coexistence, resembles a sort of creation, and through this cre-ation the space into which one has gone takes on this or that quality, de-pending on the occasion, but no longer has any permanency of its own (except in representation and on maps).


18

In summary, whether one sketches it on a map or sets it within the framework of a causal system, the practice of inhabiting as it is lived al-ways escapes. Does one want to make it say something? It loses all con-sistency and fades away. It is apparent only in the extreme complexity of its ways of being, and it disappears in the face of all the “why” questions that are all too prompt to fi nd causes for it.

Perhaps what is then needed is to settle into the immediacy of the plurality of modes of inhabiting and to stay [séjourner] there for a suffi -ciently long time without knowing in advance if these modes are causes, effects, or something else. And one must choose the paths that would be likely to make inhabitant expression appear, that would grant it the time to recite its singularities, its minuscule day-to-day variations, its detours, and its delays. It would be necessary, in short, to postpone for some time the repetition of our “why” questions and to give free rein to the “how”—that is to say, to substitute a modal type of interpretation for a causal type of explanation.

Side Streets

Intermediate Practices

The side street or connecting route leads “to a place to which the main road does not lead.”11 In the main lanes of analysis of urban life, one’s interest lies in clearly locatable objects. The study inclines toward some portion of the space—the housing stock, the neighborhood—or one aspect of city operations—traffi c, businesses, public services, etc.—or some defi nite practice—work, domestic life, consumption, leisure, and so on. The judicious circumscribing of the fi eld of investigation seems to be an essential condition for the rigor of one’s argument (not to mention the ease with which one then uses statistical data that have cohesion only to the extent that they concern a single object).

Now, there are other practices that elude such approaches, and “the main road does not lead” to them. Highly polymorphic, mixing together, in the course of lived experience, what the scientifi c outlook distinguishes, these are what we may call intermediate practices. Daily


19

strolls, it seems to us, belong to that class of overlooked practices that apparently cannot be co-opted by the commercial economy and that are, in the view of scientifi c knowledge, insignifi cant. Defying func-tional classifi cations, these walks of course link one’s place of domicile to workplaces and to various leisure and consumer sites. The important thing, however, is that these spatial mediations are ordered according to the properties of lived time. The time of walking is the time of the prom-enade, of “going out on the town,” but also that of hustle and bustle and fuss. Activities that have been classifi ed in functional sequences now come alive and rediscover their lived unity. One and the same trip can summon up the private and the public, the individual and the collective, the necessary and the gratuitous.

Finally, because the act of walking is an intermediate practice, it seems unremarkable and hardly of any interest. The inhabitant does not, so to speak, talk about it, and no causal explanation has yet come to apply to it any reductionist fi lter. This practice therefore ought to be valuable to us because, barely occulted by abstract representations, it still allows one to see how the life of the inhabitant is steeped in quite immediate sensations and impromptu actions.

Indications about the Method of Approach

So as not to delay the presentation of these walking practices, we shall simply indicate our methodological options.12

A methodological approach that has chosen the path of modal anal-ysis (one oriented by the “how” rather than by the “why”) collides right away against a major diffi culty. Everyday practice is necessarily forget-ful. It expresses itself through walks that speech struggles to tell over again. Nevertheless, better than topographical observation, oral expres-sion has appeared to us to mimic quite closely the act of strolling. Like the latter, it is fl uid, prone to digressions, capable of forgetting what is apparently essential and of lingering over details. Is it not another ex-pression of an identical way of being?

Yet how is one to reawaken this experience of the everyday, which is often highly immediate in character and is forgotten as soon as it is


20

enacted? In other words, what form of question was it necessary to pose to the inhabitants?

Let us imagine that the question would be as follows: “How do you walk through your neighborhood; what trips do you take?” The inter-viewee will respond in the style of the question, that is to say, in a gen-eral mode. Collecting his memories, he will produce an abstract collage. He will respond, “In general, I go by here.” All lived qualities will disap-pear. In one time, he will have summed up his walking past.

Now, in everyday life, one does not appeal only to a memory of the past. There is also a memory enacted in the present—“protentional” memory, we would say, rather than retentional—the kind by which we organize our perceptions according to what will be memorable. In other words, one would have to take memory not only when it is no longer anything but a memory but still at the moment when it is constituted, at the very instant when it organizes the expression of a way of being to which it will be able to relate later on. In the present, memory is the “tomorrow” of currently lived experience.

It becomes possible at this point to understand both how a lived ex-perience is constituted and how it is expressible. For, nothing of every-day life is communicable if what is perceived is not memorable, that is to say, eventually narratable, and if it is not, from the very start, constituted as an expression. Several practical consequences follow therefrom:

1. The investigation of a “how” of everyday inhabiting has no mean-ing except apropos of a specifi ed (here and now) lived experience. Thus, such modalities can be apprehended only through individual narratives.

2. So as not to weaken too much the fragile ties that connect an ex-pressible lived experience to a living experience that is effectively in-expressible in itself, one must limit as much as possible both abstract representations and general value judgments that the customary way of conducting interviews tends to induce, if not to incite. Whence the appeal to an enacted and protentional memory, which favors observa-tion of the most unremarkable of feelings and actions.

3. The conduct of the narrative13 is recognized and accepted for what by nature it is: an oral relationship with social constraints (the memo-


21

rable and the narratable are always commanded by the other per-son’s eventual question). With such recognition and acceptance comes a reintroduction of the affective level between questioner and respondent, as against the hypothetical and illusory position of the abstract observer. And perhaps this presence of the affective within the narration of lived experience guarantees (as more faithful to the originary climate surrounding the conduct of the narrative) greater rigor than that of observational neutrality. Thus, the interviewing method is completely “directive,” in the sense that a duty to recount is established, yet at the same time nondirective, in that the only ob-ligation is to recount. One allows the narrative of the inhabitant’s lived experience to appear as its mood suggests and at its own pace. It seems that the categories of “directedness” and “nondirectedness” are not relevant in this case, either because they unjustifi ably bracket the necessarily social and constraining relationship of the interview situation or because they promote a “content” that is already for-matted by the hidden inclusion of categories within the questions.

The question posed to the inhabitants was the following: “Will you re-count in a few weeks the walks you have made from today onward?” The fi rst interview was therefore always brief, since it aimed only at clarifying in common language the duty of self-observation that was to be accomplished. During the second interview, the inhabitant recounted his trips. A third interview seemed necessary when the inhabitants had developed a taste for going back over the unremarkable particularities of their existence and wanted to add to their initial narrative.

Final Note: A Last Word about the Terrain Chosen

Any contemporary urban setting could have served as a fi eld of inves-tigation. Was one going to take an entire city? The number of inhabi-tants one would have had to question for a minimum of overlap was incompatible with the bounds of this work. One cannot be satisfi ed with surveys or brief questionnaires when it comes to everyday life. The narrative of a single urban voyager who travels all over the city with a fl oating but curiosity-fi lled attention and who recounts the city while


22

recounting himself brings a richer and more coherent “givenness” than any account of the responses to a hundred “questionnaires” about lived experience.

We chose a smaller grouping of residential units. Such a grouping, we felt, was more appropriate, both as a well-delimited space common to the individuals being questioned and as a site for a coherent expres-sion of their differences.

Finally, it was important that the residential complex chosen be con-ceived as a totality and that it be made the object of explicit research into its qualities. Conceived as a totality, it would be the paradigm for an increasingly common type of laid-out and developed space: the high-density housing complex, the production of which is taking place before our very eyes. Indeed, such a complex cannot be taken as going without saying, for it raises many problems. And it would include a social pro-gram aimed at ameliorating the existence of the city dweller, if not at promoting a better social life.

The “Arlequin” (Harlequin) neighborhood in Grenoble, France, seemed to us to satisfy this set of conditions, and in particular the last one.14

23

2

An Inhabitant RhetoricFIGURES OF WALKING

O draperies of words, assemblages of the literary art, O

massifs, O plurals, fl ower beds of colored vowels, settings

of lines, shadows of the silent letter, lovely curls of conso-

nants, architectures, ornamentations of periods and brief

signs, to my rescue! To the rescue of the man who no lon-

ger knows how to dance, who no longer knows the secret

of gestures, and who no longer has either the courage or

the erudition of direct expression through movements.

—Francis Ponge, La promenade dans nos serres

Take an urban space. What happens in the trifl ing everyday details of those who inhabit this complex, this lot, this neighborhood? Nothing at all. Or almost nothing.

Nothing of weight and nothing assessable for the managers of this space whose action bears on general operations, who take the inhabi-tant to be a universal and abstract subject, and who will at best form a representation of one typical neighborhood practice. Nothing very interesting for investigators, preoccupied as they are with the major characteristics of “social life.” Managers, like investigators, have ac-customed us to such transparencies, to these reductionist alignments, to the abstract Essence that casts its spell upon scientifi c knowledge. Plural and equivocal, the details, the singularities, the quirks, and the tics of our everyday unremarkable existences hardly have any meaning at all within the rational coherency of an urbanistic discourse. Our gestures? Purely instrumental. Our attitudes? They were a system of codes. And in these ruling representations, our movements are emptied out and our acts lose all qualities of their own.

A N I N H A B I TA N T R H E T O R I C : F I G U R E S O F WA L K I N G

24

So, nothing. Or almost nothing?Lingering over the details, casting a bit of doubt upon the systems

of knowledge for producing our cities, it seems that “day-to-day” com-monplaces say a bit more than nothing. A tenuous difference, to be sure, for the inhabited space one travels through is the one the designers and builders have produced. Altering a partition, placing a fl ower pot on the window sill, or daubing some paint on a facade does not broach the geometric massiveness of the habitat-object. And yet these rare blisters and swellings, these secretive transformations, these sporadic scratches manifest, in an almost derisory way, a force that is perhaps more insis-tent than it might at fi rst appear; this is a force neglected by our scientifi c knowledge because it is not of a stable nature, thetic, “essential,” but rather a capacity for alteration, a mode, a way of doing.

Let us develop an interest in the modalities of everyday life. Let us have the patience to follow the detours on which they send us. It will be seen that, in accordance with lived time, not only do spatial incursions never cover the totality of the built architectural unit, but also that the latter exists only in the particular form of a walking that turns it into metonymy, here accentuating and there derealizing, sometimes pursu-ing, sometimes avoiding—that, in a word, orients it.

The almost-nothing, the inconsequential dross of life could very well become the opposite of a nothing-at-all. But allowing singularities to arise with their ingenuousness and enunciating these everyday ways of being without betraying their nature, that would sidetrack [déroute]you. We lack the tools. It is diffi cult to overturn our mental attitudes. What sort of aid are we to call to the rescue? What kind of guides are to be found?

First, may the analysis at its best preserve the lived plurality and par-ticularity of cases. We have labored over narratives of everyday walks gathered on a specifi ed and dated site.1 Yet, considering the multiplicity of individual paths, could one deduce therefrom a collection of mutu-ally divergent orientations, of which nothing more could be said, except that so-and-so inhabits in such and such a manner? Is there no commu-nity of meaning among these neighboring existences? Might these sin-gular ways of walking perhaps be classifi ed typologically? Thus would hybrid gradations appear—from the most copycat kind of walking to


25

the most inventive, or from the sort most based on use-value to the sort most favoring misuse-value, or else again, from the most individualistic and differentiating mode to the mode most repetitive of identities be-longing to the social group. Yet none of all that corresponds in any way to what is actually lived. Although a given space is perhaps never lived again exactly in the same way, as it depends on different moments and the diversity of inhabitants, at the same time what one sees produced therein are both perceptions and movements that are, if not identical, at least similar in kind.

Here we have, then, a relation of “spatial practices” to practiced space whose complexity sidetracks any sort of explanation that would claim to be clearly causal in nature and would proceed by exclusive dis-junction. It is not “either this or that” but, rather, conjointly and accord-ing to the moment that the represented and the lived, the reproduced and the produced, the necessary and the playful, the useful and the po-etic, the individual and the collective compenetrate.

Two indices come to our aid.Nonexclusive disjunction, the mixing together of things rational

order would distinguish, the fl owering of words taken for themselves—these are the characteristics of the poetic. They are those that Francis Ponge calls to the rescue of our ailing practices: indeed, they are pre-cisely those ones that disregard the knowledge for producing a profi t-able space.

And then there is the following noteworthy constant in these walk-ing narratives: there always is at once a minimum degree of submission and of action, whatever may be the prevailing tenor of each particular trip. The analogy with graphic expression is unendingly striking. Just as a book is read in company with a motionless (re)writing and is written at the same time that it is read for oneself and for others, walking resembles a reading-writing. Sometimes rather more following an existing path, sometimes rather more hewing a new one, one moves within a space that never tolerates the absolute exclusion of the one or the other.

Do certain trips and certain stays take place in an absentminded sort of way? Yet the succession of steps effectively rewrites the space that opens before the walker, even when done in the slightest of action modes.


26

Through the practice of one’s walks, everyday life seems to take on the look of a language. The steps taken would expound spatiotemporal actions whose overall confi guration would have a style. This analogy is to be pursued so long as it does not betray the lived quality that is of interest to us and so long as it does not reduce the traces of pedestrian activity to a prosaic linguistic system.

Let us speak, rather, of a walking rhetoric. It would be the transla-tion of both the organization of the styles proper to each inhabitant and the correlations among these styles within a shared space.

If daily walks are a form of expression—and only rhetorical analysis can confi rm this—one must patiently note down the fi gures of this rhet-oric and the kinds of combination of which they are composed.

This is the type of reading that has been attempted here. The reader will fi nd this path again in the chapters that follow. Many other read-ings no doubt remain possible for these inhabitants’ gripping, varied, and rich narratives. We have simply allowed ourselves to head toward the least reasonable, the least known, the most modal, the most scien-tifi cally negligible one: draperies, massifs, fl ower beds of steps, plurals, lovely curls, ornamentations of movements in space. Direct expression.

These fi gures that are liable to enumeration and illustration on the basis of the concrete case chosen—the Arlequin neighborhood—appear more or less clearly, depending on whether they are set in particular chosen spots, in the building complex under consideration, or whether they are repeated in proliferating and hybrid varieties, the propagation of which borders on infi nity. As a result, the account will aim more at exemplariness than at any sort of illusory exhaustiveness. In any case, one never makes a complete tour around the everyday as it is lived.

Here is another point about the nature of these walking fi gures. Analyzed in the narratives related by the inhabitants, these fi gures are never to be reduced to mere extrapolations, to what is commonly called “stylistic devices” [fi gures de style]. They would then be only the pro-jection of a discourse onto an illusorily metamorphosed spatial prac-tice. Not only can the fi gures these walks write be observed directly, but also a number of mixed forms found in the interviews indicate the convergence of language and of walking in one and the same expressive style. Thus, it is a collection of fi gures of spatiotemporal expression that


27

will appear straightaway in the present chapter, fi gures observed and recounted by the inhabitants, fi gures that manifest, instead, the way in which walking is articulated, or rather the way in which it varies and proceeds via substitutions and alternations.

The names for each of these fi gures are borrowed either from the terms of classical rhetoric or from the vocabulary of logic. Some fi gures have called for the creation of neologisms, for which we apologize in advance. In all these cases, it is a matter of designating, as clearly as pos-sible, objects that are constituted by an expression developed in space and in time.2

For the convenience of the reader, we shall begin by presenting the most lexical expressions (the paradigmatic axis of linguistics). Follow-ing thereafter will be the most composite modes of confi guration, those that lie closest to the complexity of lived experience (combinations that are analogous to those of the syntagmatic axis of linguistics). But such a methodological choice must not make one forget that the elementary and the combinatory instantiated principles operate at the same time and that it will be necessary to look for the foundation of this concomi-tance. Whence the following three moments: elementary fi gures, combi-natory fi gures, and fundamental fi gures.

Elementary Figures

Our project of effecting a progressive change in scenery cannot rid itself, in a single stroke, of the most common modes of thinking. Instead, it attempts, little by little, to get a feel for them. Also, the sites that bolster these fragmentary forms of writing will be well circumscribed and easily identifi able (they can be illustrated by photographs).

Appearing to the inhabitant on his walks is a spatial whole that in itself, and before his steps organize it, is nothing other than a “muddle of disparate, unconnected things.”3 A selection is to be made in a set of possibilities. There is competition among a variety of sites. Each time one walks, such a selection comes into play; and, as in language, most often it occurs without the knowledge of the expressive actor.

As a whole, the interviews we have gathered present us with some


28

noteworthy and exemplary fi gures. In the absence of a complete or ex-haustive enumeration, which would be impossible, they allow us to comprehend how a walk is constituted at the elementary stage.

Exclusion

A “fi gure” of exclusion? Is this fi rst term pertinent? The narratives as a whole allow us to see that entire zones of the neighborhood are aban-doned. Only the trained eye of the planner can evaluate these deser-tions—that is, the gaze of someone who would see everything from above. Yet, ignorant of spatial totalities, the inhabitant can exclude without refusing. This is the exclusion of an unrecounted, unlived terri-tory, which is equivalent to a pure absence.

The same does not hold for the exclusions the inhabitants mention, which are forms of absolute avoidance within their spatial practice. What, in an active way, is excluded from a walk applies to a very di-verse and quite variable number of sites, depending on the inhabitant. Most often cited are the ends of the pedestrian gallery, the mezzanines, the cove of the silos, the gallery at night. Still, one talks about them, usu-ally in the present tense: this is a masked or latent form of absence.

Thus, exclusion seems to be less than a fi gure and more than a fi g-ure. Indeed, either it is fi ctively sketched out in the representation of a static territoriality or it leads to an avoidance in the course of the lived experience of a trip, that is to say, in the course of other effectively en-acted fi gures. Exclusion thus denotes the “degree zero” of this writing that is walking.4 A sort of negative or repellant force never appears ex-cept through its inscription upon something else. Its overall form bor-ders on ellipsis, a fi gure that, as one knows, always refers to a context wherein the excluded object or term is bypassed.

In short, exclusion is at once the near side of an expression and the elsewhere of a rhetoric, its margin. Nothing more is expressed at this inchoative or inceptive stage. The citation of this pseudofi gure of ex-clusion simply marks the beginning of the elementary fi gures properly speaking and tells us from what unexpressed realm they arise.


29

Paratopisms, Peritopisms: Elementary Figures of Avoidance

ParatopismParatopism is the form of ambulatory movement that proceeds via sub-stitution of one path for another. That which is substituted for can be the subject either of systematic exclusion or of alternation: it can be avoided on account of a momentary obstacle that is physical (repair work, other inconveniences) or social in nature. Whatever the case may be, it is al-ways a matter of a site avoided by the person walking. The trip actually taken unfolds therefore in the place of another one, by divergence.

Given the highly pedestrian texture of the design plan, the most fre-quent cases of “paratopic” substitution relate to variations around these charted paths (some of which the developer even hoped would be oblig-atory). The cases of avoidance therefore bear in large part on the gal-lery as a whole and the laid-out and developed paths. Depending on the context, it is by a repulsive effect or by a change of direction that people more or less voluntarily avoid them.

At the elementary level, some “wild paths” [chemins sauvages] thus appear, to borrow one female inhabitant’s expression. These pathways leave no traces. The ground does not allow it or the substitution is a sin-gular act that does not mark the terrain. Thus, people “cut across the grass,” pass “through the massifs” of plantings, or “through the park-ing lots,” or they even, without further specifi cation, just “go around.”

By way of contrast, what these narratives contribute can be compared with the traces other substitutions have imprinted upon the loose ground in certain spots: it could be said that here we have “semi-wild paths” that are cleared little by little through collective repetition. Some exist only for the initiated, like the “tunnel” made by children in the bushes of the North Cove that escapes the notice of the adults. Others are visible, and photographs show that they can sketch out shortcuts that avoid an ob-stacle or connect two laid-out and developed paths. (See Figures 1 and 2.) And yet the “shortcut” in question is often highly symbolic.

Others parallel or sometimes lengthen the trip. They may not offer any apparent meaning, like the radial fi gure, a set of trails that seem to lead nowhere and then die out. (See Figures 3 and 4.)

Figure 1

Figure 2


31

The meaning of the extreme multiplication of such paths, which footprints manifest in a detailed way, is to be found even in the narra-tives of some of the inhabitants who refuse to take trails that have been packed down through repeated deviant usage. Thus, one person “pre-fers to go completely outside on the grass.” Or, as another inhabitant says:

I don’t always follow the small paths. Last time, I didn’t have it in mind to tell you, but I really love to walk on the grass. Even if there is the path and the grass next to each other, well, I take the grass; it’s nicer.

A shortcut over a segment of terrain can subsequently lengthen the path. Thus, cutting “through a hedge” provokes, later on, an obligatory by-pass movement. Is there a gratuitous playfulness at work here?

The proliferation of wild or semi-wild paths is often the doing of children who are seen crisscrossing the space in all directions, wher-ever their play takes them. For this set of deviant paths, and especially for those that, when all is said and done, do not shorten one’s way, is it then a matter of particular forms of appropriation? Is there only play involved in these topical pranks?

In any case, substitutions exhibiting an indifferent attitude are quite rare. The inhabitant does not qualify them thus, except through some after-the-fact statement: there is a certain way of reducing to a spatio-geometric form of behavior the obscure and unrefl ected aspect of one’s prior conduct. The thread of such a narrative leads us to the right; there is a halt, a few hesitations, and then, “perhaps it’s a driving habit.”

A change in tone, a difference in expression, a leap toward a more abstract and reassuring signifi cation. For, paratopic fi gures have never had a very clear gait. To state it better, some sort of cunning conduct is always inserted therein.

Let us follow three examples of a noteworthy and richly indicative variety of paratopism that heads in this direction:

c.: I go by way of the paved path. Right away, there’s the bar. I look right away to see if there are people inside. . . . Then . . . [thirty-second digression].

interviewer: Right, getting on with the story. . . . The bar . . . We were there. . . .

Figure 3

Figure 4


33

c.: So, I look in, but I never stop there! [Laughter]

Apropos of the “Bar-bu, at number 30”:5

One night, there was a fi ght. Everything was broken! I was listening! . . . [an-other comment about some other fracases]. Now, one no longer goes there.

A ten-year-old child:

interviewer: Do you go beyond number 170?

isa.: No, not very much. . . . Except when I do a short errand on foot to the supermarket. . . . Behind, there’s a vacant lot. I often look when there are cara-vans, or Gypsies. . . . It’s amusing. . . . But I don’t go there.

These three examples illustrate a sort of false avoidance, a deviation apropos of a site spoken about quickly or about which one is not quick with the details. That is what the breaks in the narrative and the sus-pension points reveal. In rhetoric, we would call this fi gure paralipsis.It is a matter neither of a clear substitution of one path for another nor of a genuine bypassing. Rather, it is a swerving [un écart], often with a change in rhythm that responds either to an event-induced break—the place might have been frequented in former times—or to a distancing from a site one has to walk alongside, and whose avoidance is hinted at, but which is fascinating at the same time. The swerving movement at-tempts both to place it at a distance and to see it from a distance.

These paralipses in space correspond to mixed elementary fi gures that are to be found again in many other sites: the entrance to the junior high school and fragments of the gallery. Mixing a slight bifurcation with a hint of avoidance, they lead us to discover another group of fi g-ures of avoidance in which the walker does not diverge from his path by turning his back but seeks to vary rather than to avoid.

PeritopismPeritopism is how the fi gure of walking that proceeds by variation may be designated. It proceeds like an instance of periphrasis (circumlocu-tion) used in the place of a word or like a relation of synonymy. Here, opposition hardly fi nds any place. Thus do peritopisms distinguish themselves from paratopisms.


34

A certain number of “shortcuts” do not proceed through opposi-tion. Under this heading, they enter into a second group of fi gures of avoidance: avoidances by variation. Only contextual analysis can sort out the different forms of shortcutting: in order to go more quickly, in order to avoid congestion in or frequentation of the gallery, or else in order to vary one’s repetition of the same trips—one can then take one’s time and the shortcut is no more than a form of spatial play. Would the visual (and geometric) order here be replacing the instanti-ated principles of play and motor activity? Path segments taken prior and subsequent to the shortcut allow an evaluation of this: such an analysis pertains to the syntactic and no longer to the elementary level. In fact, rather than a walked fi gure, would not the shortcut be a con-cept whose geometric origin is beyond doubt? The inhabitants fi rst say, “I cut through . . .”; then, they may subsequently designate the action by contracting it into the term shortcut. Does the geometricality really stem from one’s actual spatial conduct—or from the representation one gives of it? The descriptive phrases contained in the narrative do not use the concept, even when the statement would call for the sub-stantive. For example:

c.: When I go home, I cut through.

interviewer: You have to go under the barrier, then. . . .

c.: Yes, there is a barrier under which one can pass. Oh! . . . But there are paths6 that cut through there, paths made by pedestrians.

The shortcut is a complex fi gure. It is a fi gure quite symptomatic of the ambiguities of everyday life. The reality it designates is split between paratopism and peritopism. As to the gap in the relation between this reality and its substantive designation, it refers us back, beyond even the apprehension of some combinatory process, to the subsequent confron-tation between the lived and the represented.

The other peritopisms resemble more clearly the procedures of pe-riphrasis and digression.

Qua elementary fi gure, bypassing occurs each time a site that is not an absolute obstacle presents a diffi culty of variable (physical or social, permanent or accidental, real or imaginary) nature. It is then easier to


35

bypass the obstacle than to go through it. But at the same time, this by-passing underscores the site bypassed, which becomes a notable point along the trip, even though the walk did not pass through there. In re-counting his trip, the inhabitant will say, “I passed in front of the ju-nior high school.” But in fact, there was a bypass: “with all those kids who hang out underneath, who are coming out, who talk unbelievably badly.” Another one will talk about this zone “of silos,” which he fre-quents by necessity, but in which “you’re suffocated . . . , you’re crushed by the concrete.” The mode of walking then bypasses this spatial com-plex through a symbolic absence: “it’s automatic,” or “in general, it’s the same old thing.” Several inhabitants bypass the entrance to the bar/tobacco stand by cutting across the marketplace; the café was then seen from the back (actually, the café entrance is from the market side). Yet, conversely, during the summer months, they avoid the part of the mar-ketplace occupied by the outdoor café tables, this time passing by way of the gallery.

From this last example, one can see that bypasses are closely tied to the intervention of events. The narratives offer us quite numerous cases that vary over time, with the occurrence of accidents, and in rela-tion to the unforeseen: the temporary appearance of repair work, unex-pected dropping of refuse on the fl oor of the gallery, social events that have marked a formerly familiar site, or more simply avoidance of sites wherein one senses a not very pleasant atmosphere at the moment the trip is being taken. On the one hand, bypassing often occurs following an event; on the other hand, it creates at the same time an event in rela-tion to one’s usual trips. Here we have a quite characteristic example.

In the neighborhood, there exists a peculiar spatial form that fos-ters brief bypass sequences. We are talking about some triangular holes made in the walls that run alongside the elevator entrances, or that lighten a load-bearing wall, under the gallery. The developer planned to put in some glass panes, but only a few have been installed. The photo-graph (Figure 5) allows one to see that the level of the sill or threshold of these “holes” involves a change in the continuity of one’s ambulatory movement. These are crossing areas of choice for children, but also for a good number of adults. At rush hour, we have counted at least one or two passages every minute through the holes located near the center of

Figure 5


37

the gallery. As for the quality of this frequency, it becomes fully clear in the liveliness of the narrative accounts:

OK, well, to go to the garage there’s no problem; instead of taking the passage-way . . . where it’s fl at, and well, I pass through the hole in the wall!

Then . . . there’s something there . . . [laughter], I really like to pass through the hole, the hole in the wall at the exit to the gymnasium. Other than that, it’s the same. [ . . . ]

[ . . . ] I always pass to the left when going toward number 60. Otherwise, you have to pass through the hole, toward number 60. I’ve passed through fi ve or six times—for example, when there are too many people.

The hole near the gymnasium . . . that shortens things and . . . a few times, I fi nd myself in front of it and I pass through.

(Here, the shortcut is entirely fi ctive, since the real shortcut would cut the whole area surrounding number 70 in order to approach the gallery straight on, without obstacles.)

In fact, with each clearing of the hole, something other than a choice imposed by a rational geometricality occurs: an alteration of motor function is brought into play. The variation in the vertical dimension, and the leap it induces, evoke a spatiotemporal conduct from which di-gression is not absent.

As another elementary fi gure in which avoidance takes place more through variation than via radical substitution, digression in the previ-ous example, as well as in the one that will follow, takes on the exact meaning given to this term in rhetoric: “what in speech strays [s’écart]from the subject.”7 The process of swerving away is carried out a little bit at a time, and as if without the speaker’s knowledge when he forgets to come back. One can begin a variation in this way, but here it becomes the subject of the expression and is valid for itself: this is the case of the holes in the wall.

When an inhabitant takes a “mezzanine” (see Figure 6), this is also a form of bypassing. But the peculiar spatial form of these landings, which reduplicate the line and layout of the gallery below, fosters a pro-longation of the direction one has taken. Bypassing is then transformed into digression and can even be metamorphosed into paratopism. Here, the site one wanted simply to bypass is forgotten. Thus, one inhabitant

Figure 6


39

says, “I prefer to pass by way of the mezzanine, because one is less ac-costed by people.” Two other inhabitants take this digression in one di-rection only, on their way to some place:

It’s pleasant, when there’s some wind in the winter. But you get the feeling of being closed in.

Never do you meet anyone on this mezzanine . . . there’s no one; it’s the end of everything.

The way these expressions advance demonstrates the imperceptible passage from bypassing to paratopism or even to paralipsis. There is a false avoidance on the part of the inhabitant who is at once repelled and fascinated by the mezzanine.

The transformation from bypassing into forgotten digression is ex-pressed in the eleventh interview:

In class, there’s a lot of noise; coming home, it’s the same. So, you are always looking for something quiet. By the mezzanines, I believe that . . . it’s often . . . or then in my free time, I go there. . . . I sit down and I look out.

Another example of digression, this time for the very pleasure of it:

Once . . . one time, I say it so I don’t forget it, I went by after the silos and I was on foot—other times I always pass by there in my car—and there then, . . . I had a desire to do that, I had a desire to get lost over there, and I found that it was good for hiding . . . [laughter] and in order to get familiar, too, . . . there’s a garden; well, not a garden, but a space on the concrete, the school, and then after that—on the level of the mezzanines, huh?—I went up and then came back down at number 110, I think. What’s more, it was evening, so it was rather special. What I was looking for, especially, was the feeling . . . like in a labyrinth, OK? The feeling rather than . . . than the view, OK?

This entire exceptional (“one time”) lived digression involving the mezzanines and occurring after a return home in the car begins with an abrupt decision. For once, the trip varies and the succession of these dark landings that abruptly open up onto the silos and then start up again elsewhere under the shadowy cover of the gallery draws one impercep-tibly into a labyrinthine movement. The specifi cations, the unforeseen breaks, and the dizzying ramblings: are not they the very essence of digression?


40

These variations on a conduct characterized by avoidance, which are picked up in every walking narrative, tell us more than they fi rst would seem to. Various styles of inhabiting begin to express themselves in their similarities and their differences. Tell me what you avoid, and I shall tell you what kind of inhabitant you are. Would not one’s refusals and rejections be just as indicative of the essence of the everyday as any fi llings in, fi llings up, or retentions? The urbanist seeks to know what spaces are willingly frequented. Would it not be necessary to observe, fi rst, how some sites are avoided?

There is another perplexity, another surprise than that provoked by examination of this fi rst group of fi gures: between the opposite poles of paratopism and peritopism we fi nd theoretical distinctions everyday pedestrian statements mischievously like to mix in and confuse together through a series of imperceptible shifts. The very order of our presenta-tion has attempted to follow this succession of nestings in which fi gures deliberately envelop and overlap with one another more often than they appear in their pure state.

It is through the material of an expression walked-recounted by the same inhabitant over a short lapse of time amounting to a dozen days that one can see how the same sites can be walked in different ways from one day to the next. On the scale of a group of inhabitants, the problem becomes still more complex. Here appears an equivocality in space and in time that increasingly calls into question cartographic representation and calls for a refi nement of the study of elementary fi gures. Now, the inhabitants we have questioned have related to us certain ambulatory practices that carry some latent signifi cations between the lines. They walk in such and such a place and in this or that manner. Yet, in doing so, they confi gure either some complementary sites or some other mo-dalities of meaning, which they mention and which render architectural forms and spatial conducts ambiguous.

Polysemous Figures

The group of fi gures thus designated offers some varieties of a funda-mental element of this reading-writing that walks seem to us to be. The


41

term polysemy describes it well. One and the same object takes on sev-eral meanings. For the inhabitants questioned, a given site can be walked through in several ways at the same time or one time after another.

AmbivalenceAs one knows, in everyday life the developed architectural design plan loses its monumental and functional monosemes. The variety of usages ruins its beautiful clarity as a fi nished product. Now, in the narratives, the terms of ambivalence are not cited at the same time and with analo-gous expressions. One of the “valences” is designated, the other sur-mised, more or less vaguely.

This is the case with the ceiling of the gallery,8 which serves as the fi rmament of the universe through which, most often, the inhabitants travel. Hardly ever perceived—people always have a hard time naming the colors of this painted ceiling—it is strongly sensed, a veritable “ele-ment” that envelops and accompanies one’s walk. It crops up in the nar-ratives by its accidental irregularities [accidents], a break in its fl atness. Thus, we have someone saying:

I fi nd it hideous; there’s nothing about . . . nothing studied about . . . I think that there’s nothing nice about it; I don’t know how I feel about it. . . . First of all . . . , fi rst of all, you go down there . . . and for me, as for me, I prefer . . . Going down, it should already be pleasant for me; there, you get the impres-sion of going into a hole . . . a hole like . . . because there are buildings right away . . . , a hole! And then, in addition, it’s somber, and the ceiling is maybe lower?

It will be noted that the essential element defi ning the climate of this walk arose only at the end of the narrative. In fact, the gallery does not go down; it is just that one sees only the prospect of a descent that occurs after the end of the gallery. It is the ceiling that has gone down; and this accidental irregularity in the inhabitant’s path makes her sud-denly feel its heaviness. The sky has darkened and becomes a basement for the buildings. Other inhabitants offer equivalent expressions, say-ing that under the gallery “it’s somber.” We have even heard the fol-lowing truism, which appears to be so only when taken too quickly: “Under the gallery, it’s darker than on the Market Place.” The Market Place is an open-air market. In fact, not being perceived in a clear way,


42

the gallery’s ceiling is always taken as the celestial vault. Simply, the sky is lower.

Conversely, this same ceiling can be genuinely perceived, distin-guished, and its function can be recognized. But then it is heavy only to the gaze that evaluates it from outside the gallery: a “feeling of being overwhelmed,” someone says—which, curiously, is not felt underneath the gallery, “even if there are stacks of apartments above!”

Seen from the outside, the gallery’s ceiling does indeed seem like the raised basement supporting the residential buildings. Thus, it is at once a top and a bottom, a ceiling and a fl oor. These two meanings for one and the same spatial element that accompanies one’s walk place two instantiated principles, of different natures, into competition: recogni-tion and vague feeling. Only one inhabitant recognized the permanent double meaning of this “ceiling.” Others make indirect reference to it through connotations of quite distinct values:

Underneath the gallery, you feel right at home; there’s no longer any danger.

It’s nice to pass underneath.

[ . . . ] You’re underneath a gallery all the time; for my part, I really like it.

These are so many expressions that are centered on the action of walk-ing rather than on recognition of this ceiling-roof spatial element. Other expressions, however, refer to the order of the visual. The gallery is per-ceived or has been perceived from the outside, and then one fi nds the connotations of “somberness,” of “being crushed,” of an absence of the “real” sky: “Oh! I practically never see the sky on my trips!”

Apropos of one and the same spatial element—either this gallery ceiling, or the “ramp” at number 150, or else the “passageways”9—the walking narratives reveal only one or the other of the two meanings. It is therefore a matter of a concealed ambivalence that manifests itself only by accident or by reference to the context (“outside the gallery”).

Staggered PolysemyAnother spatial element, an essential commonplace both of people’s walks and of everyday discussions in the Arlequin complex, offers an interesting example of staggered polysemy. Here, various possible mean-


43

ings are set in nonexclusive disjunctive relation, the manifestation of one calling for reference to the other. This is how people experience their passages in the elevators at the beginning and end of their walks. Such passages take on the following signifi cations:

1. Site of fear, anxiety, technological aggression—which, by necessity, people are obliged to frequent

2. Site of physical and social constraint (with the possibility of overt confl ict)

3. Site where a stationary posture and minimal verbal exchanges are obligatory

4. Site of complicity among the communal victims of (possible) abuses by a machine that is much maligned, and apropos of which conver-sations are possible

In a paradoxical way, the elevator, of which it is said so often that it has nothing of a tool of communication about it, becomes, when pushed to the height of discomfort, a commonplace topic of conversations and, in this sense, a “lever” for verbal communication. At the same time, it encloses within its cab a maximum amount of tension that pours out fi rst through sighs, then with words or exclamations of fear and anger. At this point, three outcomes remain possible: a return to silence upon exiting; discussions involving complaints, quibblings, or protests; the third outcome is suspected or assumed: physical aggression against the machine itself.

Of the four meanings we have cited—four ways of passing time in the elevator—each always can actually call out for the others in the course of one and the same descent or ascent. Above all, each assumes the others. Thus, the following expressions show these staggered con-nections in their order of appearance:

As for me, I take it only to go up. [ . . . ] As far as I’m concerned, and I’m speaking from professional experience, there are some defects; they’re ill conceived.

They’re no good, OK? . . . They work when they want to or there’s no light. You see, these elevators, you gotta change the cables, or else. . . . As for me,


44

I’ve always been afraid of elevators; I don’t know why. But I tell myself, “One of these days, I’ll be in there, huh?”

I’m always scared for the kids who go in.

If there were a fi re, who knows what would happen?

Finally, the elevator door opens. No one inside! While going down, I feel a sense of insecurity; after an infernal clanking noise announcing the arrival, the door opens on the ground fl oor [diary entry].

Oh, and then there’s the missing buttons! I don’t know if it’s due to vandal-ism; I don’t think so. But at the beginning that really gripped me; people were terribly frightened of the doors. They believed it was a vice that was going to crush them!

[To go up] you take it at the mezzanine level and it always goes down. [ . . . ] You feel like an idiot when you don’t get out at the bottom.

In the elevator [while getting out], for me, I am really out, you know? Good morning, good evening. You can’t start a conversation, huh? It’s an intermedi-ate kind of thing. I see people who say lots of stuff in the elevator. For me, no way! Well.

Finally, in order to provide the two extreme outcomes of the combi-nations among the four modes of spending time in the elevator, here are two opposite examples:

The elevator is mine, I’d say. When I see a piece of paper on the ground, I pick it up.

Listen, there’s a lady who insulted me in the elevator the other day, OK? I asked her to hold the door. She said to me, “Yes, it’s not like you’re in your country. . . .” But I told her, “I don’t attack people like you; because you’re French in any case, huh?” She insulted me! You had to see it, huh, a very young woman!

Here is the fi rst outcome: an appropriation of the space in the main-tenance mode, but this mode is favored by the less deteriorated state of some elevators, that is, small elevators or co-op elevators. And a second outcome: the confl ict arises specifi cally on the basis of a question of which code to follow (hold the door for someone/have the door held) and degenerates into social or racial confl ict (sending each back to his or her typical group). This is the case with the high-capacity elevators, especially those serving renters.


45

At the Arlequin, the elevator easily becomes a vehicle for the imagi-nary, moved by staggered and vaguely nervous feelings of ambivalence. An unremarkable form of transport, it is through the signifi cations it carries with it that it is of precious value to us. The inhabitant makes no mistake about it. The pressed button sets in motion a certain, and truly destinal, voyage that nothing will stop: toward well-oiled habits as well as catastrophic breaks. These irrepressible slippages indicate to us al-ready the load, which will have to be weighed later on, of an imaginary that turns up where one hardly expected it.

BifurcationDifferent from staggered polysemy, bifurcation may be presented as an equivocality of meanings. Such equivocality is practiced in the instant one walks, but only in an exclusive way. By way of contrast, the previ-ous fi gure had offered a simultaneity through transference of one mean-ing to the other within the same moment.

The exemplary case is that of the thick pillars planted in the middle of the pedestrian gallery, the Sphinx and Janus of high-density housing complexes. (See Figures 7 and 8.) People necessarily have to pass either on the right or on the left. They are the precise transcription, within space, of the ambivalence between two simple terms, and they are com-mutable in a rather homogeneous way. Indeed, most of the time the in-habitant chooses this or that side without noticing anything more about it. Spontaneous choice for reason of avoidance is much rarer. Here is a solitary and fi rmly deliberate example of this: “I pass to the right, if there’s a lot of people, to the left if there’s no one.”

Most often, there is something like an expression of surprise in the narrative and a touch of amusement that one has in recounting these ordinary accidental irregularities in one’s travels. The scenarios are as follows:

1. Almost always on the right; symmetrical case in both directions

ph.: Well, through the gallery . . . , there’s a pillar, there in the middle, which poses a problem [laughter]. . . . People pass on the left [laughter]. You see where this pillar is?

interviewer: Yes, after number 100.

Figure 7. The pillar at No. 100, seen from the north.

Figure 8. The pillar at No. 100, seen from the south.


47

ph.: Yes, people pass preferably on the left. And as for me, well, it’s always on the right [laughter]!

interviewer: When coming back . . .

ph.: Ah, well, I think that I pass on the same side. Well . . . it’s a thorny point in one’s travels, huh? Then, it depends on the time, whether there are people there or not. But . . . basically . . . basically, I pass maybe on the right in both directions. It’s not systematic; I maybe do it like that, but it’s without paying attention.

2. Always on the same side of the pillar, local univocality, asymmetry of directions for coming and going

Ah, I never do it on the . . . I never pass behind! I fi nd that there’s less of a path, OK! [Laughter.] And, . . . there’s less wind, I think. It seems to me that people pass preferably on this side, I think. [The context and the pencil sketches this young inhabitant draws while talking show that she passes to the west.]

3. Mixed figure, which clarifies the hesitations of the first example

So, at number 100, in order to go to number 90, uh, . . . there’s a pillar and there’s a little thing there. . . . I pass all the time on the right—in the direction of number 90—, . . . except to go get my car. . . . My car is in the garage, there, so I pass to the left when I go out.

Recalling the purposes of one’s trips helps this last inhabitant who spoke to specify the forms of bifurcation she carries out. On the other hand, the inhabitant in the fi rst example tries to invoke, beyond any particularities, the habitual patterns likely to shed light on his return trip. But the pillar becomes an ironic object and creates perplexity: it is “a thorny point.”

What is going on is that this fi gure of bifurcation can show us some-thing of greater interest. The pillar is ironic not only for the inhabi-tant. For, while it allows one better to understand and to illustrate the equivocalities of fi gures of walking, it also marks, as a matter of fact, an important point of bifurcation in the connotation of the fi gures we have expounded so far. Examination of these polysemous fi gures clari-fi es only too well the cases of walked variations that become spatial-ized and are fi xed in place. Spatially speaking, bifurcation represents the


48

simultaneous polysemy offered by a site; one can then attribute to this fi gure thus localized the qualifi ers of randomness and indifference as to the nature of the competing terms. A sketch would yield the last word of explanation. At the same time, the act of walking would be dissolved.

For us, bifurcation makes itself felt between the order of sight and the conduct of one’s walk. Indeed, in this specifi c example of the pillar, only one of the directions for passing by it seems obvious from afar (in com-ing from number 60, on the left; in coming from number 110, on the right). Up close—that is to say, when the bypass becomes imminent—everything does change and everything can change, for the perspective itself, beyond the fact that it is completely altered, leaves room for the more immediate conduct of one’s steps. When the inhabitant bifurcated most often as if “without noticing anything more about it,” this unno-ticed quality was not the equivalent of something “random.” Depend-ing on the walker’s mood in his actual conduct, although there is still a “game,” it is no longer played on the fi eld of some overall probability but, rather, within the competition between indetermination and an-ticipation; it plays itself out through all that the walker’s temporality can offer that is different and unforeseen within the fore-seen space to be traversed, through all that the conduct of the walk may have antici-pated, and it throws the order of perspective off its game.

The hesitations one fi nds in walking narratives are of precious value. Universal representational clarity would have led to an irreversible spa-tialization of the fi gures of walking. That this “point in one’s travels” would be “thorny” is the sign of the presence of something other than a spatial logic at work in these polysemous fi gures, namely, time.

The Metathesis of QualityThis fi gure occurs in cases where repeated traveling through one and the same site can accidentally change in quality via nothing more than the effect of a difference in one’s everyday chronological cycle. The willing-ness to use a comparative in one’s narration expresses the deferred poly-semy that affects one’s ambulatory practice. A single element changes and the whole atmosphere of the walk fi nds itself metamorphosed. The pedestrian statement is then inscribed upon a background of transitivity, of a plurality of signifi cations that vary with time.


49

Thus, the last word, the decisive step around the pillar-obstacles pre-viously encountered, pertains no longer to a purely spatial game but, rather, to a particular quality of the walk. This is the difference be-tween one’s way out and one’s return for one and the same trip, a differ-ence that is prompted by the project moving the walk and its foreseen duration.

Other examples follow. The short segment of the gallery traveled by a female inhabitant:

I really like mornings . . . the housewives who come and go; it’s calm. . . . And then at noon, it’s the opposite. There’s more of a bustle, more noise. You can feel that people are in a hurry. . . . In the afternoon, I go out very little. . . . Otherwise, it depends on the day; for example, there are days when, despite the hours being the same, it’s very different. For example, Sundays, it’s very calm. . . . The passageway is calm . . . pleasant kitchen smells in the street; it’s nice. The elevator comes right away; no one’s in the gallery. . . . People go for walks; indeed, there are but very few people around, if the weather’s good.

This sequence contains in shortened form all that we have been able to fi nd in the narratives as a whole. It notes the day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and season-to-season variations. It only was missing day and night:

Oh, then [nighttime], it’s different; I didn’t talk about that. . . . I’m scared; I’m very scared. I went out only once [ . . . ] the wind, which was blowing hard, carried away my scarf, and I didn’t go looking for it. I felt reassured only after getting in my door. [ . . . ] At night, the galleries, it’s like a labyrinth.

This extreme expression of the difference between night and day fi nds more temperate forms in other cases:

At night . . . at night, you get the impression that it’s . . . it’s smaller, narrower.

From the standpoint of climate, this same gallery, whose connota-tion is often that of a site of convenience and shelter, can take on the op-posite quality. One and the same female inhabitant will say:

I sometimes happen to go on the outside, too. . . . [ . . . ] I go outside because, fi rst of all, there’s a lot of wind currents and then because I fi nd that it’s quicker that way.

Everywhere in the gallery there are wind currents!

Coming home, I always go on the inside [because of tiring quickly].


50

It may clearly be seen, when comparing the fi rst quotation with the third, that brevity is an interchangeable assessment. It is the excesses of the climate that in fact provoke the paradoxical passage to “the outside.”

Here is another metathesis of quality: when a moment is available, the entire layout of the gallery, bifurcations included, becomes part of a game for a ten-year-old child who “passes through the whole gallery.” Likewise for a visit with friends, when what, from the standpoint of the design plan, is most “functional” becomes the most playful.10

With these examples, it appears that the metathesis of quality risks becoming the most general fi gure possible from the strictly spatial stand-point, yet the most specifi c one depending on one’s mood in the act of walking, that is to say, at the moment when one includes context, time sequence, and differential memory of one’s varying gaits. At the outer edges, it is no longer a matter of polysemy, for synchronism explodes into diachronism.11

With the extreme fi gure of polysemy, the elementary level can no longer be understood without summoning up [une convocation de] se-quencing and combination. From the site walked to walking on the scale of a trip or of complexes of trips, we reach combinatory fi gures.

Combinatory Figures

The combinatory fi gures noted on the scale of whole trips and of com-plexes of walks seemed to be divided up into two groups, centered on two notions rhetoric holds to be of capital importance: redundancy and symmetry. What relevance do they have when it comes to expressive walking?

Figures of Redundancy

By redundancy, we intend the meaning given to this term in the Art of oral and written expression: overabundance. This notion, which in rhetoric had a connotative meaning of abuse, of excess, in the wake of


51

the new Arts of thinking developed in the Cartesian era, has been re-employed by communication theory and has been introduced into lin-guistics. Redundancy henceforth appears as a fundamental mechanism in the functioning of language.12 By contrast to ellipsis, it explains and permits identifi cation of the term it takes up. Such overabundance is, in short, of precious value.

Now, in examining people’s walks, one can see that the essential fea-tures of walking activity unfold in the mode of redundancy. One needs only refer back to the examples illustrating the metathesis of quality: the difference between a day trip and the same trip at night varies one’s walking conduct, which can be very repetitive, if not exclusively identi-cal to the look of a topographical map. Little by little, these differences in one and the same trip come to explain the way in which an inhabi-tant takes his walks. Such an operation is highly variable in degree and sometimes can be extreme (see the day/night opposition), yet most often it remains on the scale of the details involved and takes place in some sort of a chromatic way.

The examples would be innumerable. The everydayness expressed in the narratives we have gathered presents itself as essentially redun-dant—and this is probably the case for all forms of everydayness. The variations, the substitutions either are exceptional or else bear on frag-ments—which does not mean that they are insignifi cant.

Nothing is settled between the same and the different. Everyday lived experience takes our representations by surprise, because it per-sists in a slow and tenuous modifi cation of properties.13 The very same inhabitants will say at the start of their narrative, “It’s always the same, huh? Always the same thing!” and will go on to recount so many differ-ent details apropos of one and the same trip, one day at a time. Redun-dancy is thus a phenomenon of composition or combination.

Four varieties of redundancy are worthy of note:

• redundancy of combination, with variation of details;

• repetition of one and the same set, in varied combinations;

• polarization of varied trips toward one and the same site; and

• amplifi ed repetition of walking one and the same site.


52

The fi rst of these four varieties is the most ordinary. It may be illus-trated by the relationship of elementary fi gures to combinatory fi gures or in the discrepancy one will be able to pick up between ordinary trips retraced on maps and fi gures of variation and substitution.

The three other fi gures of redundancy are found less often. Yet they are no less interesting.

The rarest one, the one in which redundancy bears on the repeti-tion of a fi nite set in varied combinations (ABC, BCA, CBA . . .), cor-responds to the rhetorical fi gure of metabole. A bounded spatial set is walked at one’s pleasure, according to combinations whose variety seems endless (that such variety should be reasonably fi nite is an ar-gument of the planner or surveyor). Indeed, this combinatory model is lived in a mode that has nothing to do with rational exploration. Metabole is always carried out in one’s walks with a poetic, ironic, or playful tone to it. The space walked is valued for itself. The exhaus-tiveness toward which this form of redundancy tends expresses pre-cisely the gratuitous character of the act: “to have all the time to . . .” This fi gure of composition and recomposition of leisure space is to be found especially among children and young people, either over the whole of a single “trip” or through a tendency to vary as much as possible the path from home to some goal or from some goal back home. Sometimes, adults have the time to play with this fi gure, or they take it up.

The narratives illustrating metabole offer some extreme forms. They are either three or four pages in length (we have not been able to resist quoting at least one notebook page written by a ten-year-old girl, who makes one understand how, for someone of this age, metabole is pos-sible even outside a moment of play, properly speaking; see Figure 9)14

or the expression, in a few words, of a long moment of strolling, which seemed to go without saying and which is cited in an allusive way, yet in a knowing tone. A given Saturday of a sixteen-year-old girl will offer one example of this. It is but one inordinately long trip from morning till evening (six times she returns home, yet she hardly remains there at all), a huge festive end-of-the-week metabole, the narration of which fi lls no less than fi ve handwritten pages. And yet, like a key, the whole thing can be related in a few expressions:

Figure 9


54

Saturday . . . [laughter] there were some things!

Afterward, . . . we went around the market, all the way!

When I go out, I run toward the elevator. Ten seconds . . . if the elevator isn’t there, I run and go down by foot. When I get to the bottom, I say deep down within myself, “No one can catch up with me” [laughter], it’s like that.

And I was at the Park [resuming her lively and gay voice]. Then the Park [ . . . ] went to the Mounds, ran! No shoes, ran [ . . . ] when you go up the hill, the sun’s out there. . . .

In a few sentences, everything is said: the feverish activity, tending toward exhaustiveness (“all the way”), the play, the poetics.

For adults, metabole is more accidental and is limited to a circum-scribed territory over a given time.

interviewer: You follow your dog’s rhythm?

ph.: Oh yes, yes! Quite so. Same for the path. Until . . . let’s say up to the lawn. I direct him a bit, and then afterward, he does what he does; he goes where he wants to go. He runs where he wants. If he sees another dog, I wait for him.

Thus begin the stray ramblings of the early-morning stroller: behind a dog. All combinations are possible.

Likewise in a discovery stroll, or some errant wandering:

[In the park] I stroll around in all directions; there is always . . . each time you scale the Mounds [ . . . ] there is an impression of freedom.

Once, I went all around the New Town via the passageways on the top fl oor, in all directions, in order to have a look from above.

Let us also recall the narrative of the female inhabitant who went out “to get lost,” near the silos and the mezzanines.15 On this scale, the “labyrinth” effect sought after was to summon up an exhaustive trip that would have overtaken her, one from which she would not have been able to exit.

Metabole functions all the times when one seeks, through varied repetition, to diversify a site that can be walked in a multitude of di-rections. This dispersal of means and this wasting of steps, which are inexplicable from the functional standpoint of traffi c movement, refer


55

back, specifi cally and directly, to a poetics of space that depends on an unmeasured time or a time the inhabitant refuses to measure. The meta-bolic process marks out what can be most gratuitous and irrational in the conduct of one’s walks.

In contrast to metabole, which tends toward divergence, anaphora,the third fi gure of redundancy, articulates the spatiotemporal organiza-tion of one’s routes in terms of convergence, centering. (Its logical model would be bcA, deA, . . . , yzA.)

Each time a mode of walking is organized in its entirety around some localized pole that may attract or repel, yet will always fascinate, there is anaphora, repetition of the same term in some series in which the rest varies. In the detail of the space traveled, substitutions or varia-tions (paratopisms or peritopisms) therefore appear that manage to ef-fect a delay between the departure point and the avowed or unavowed goal. These postponements are noteworthy elements in walkers’ writing. By reason of prudence or for pleasure, one gives oneself the time to ren-der explicit and explain one and the same object. It is in terms of tem-porality that anaphora is to be apprehended.

In this way, a particular inhabitant does not allow the true center of attraction of her walks to appear right away. Along the narrative of her different trips, and despite the variants she introduces, one must follow the play of meaningful effects found in her designations of landmarks. It is by comparing the semantic slippages that, little by little, come to spec-ify the object (“Arlequin,” then “gallery,” then “commercial gallery,” and fi nally “Community Center”) to the walks actually carried out at various moments that the fi gure of centering is sketched out. In fact, the dynamic center of attraction of the main portion of these walks will be stated only later on; it is “the commercial gallery—well, the commercial gallery . . . , especially the Community Center.” Now, this Community Center is not an important site of activity for the woman who is speak-ing. Simply, she “traverses it” and, in doing so, does “not have the im-pression of being ill at ease.” The true attraction can hardly be discerned here. Does not fascination then take on its full force in the promising name that goes into this space? Whence the following words: “It’s to see what is going on, to try to become integrated into the Arlequin.” The at-traction of this site is not for reasons of usage or convenience but, rather,


56

through symbolic reproduction of the function given by the designers: activity center.

All examples of anaphora go beyond the simple quest for a site. At the heart of this fi gure, one discovers a centripetal dynamic that is symbolic in nature: that is why some time is needed. However diverse they may be, the variations persist in repeating one and the same at-traction. Spatial diversity matters much less than the untiring search for additional postures of attack. In the narrative of one adolescent girl, the Junior High School/Community Center forms the center of almost all her walks; the places where she crosses barely vary. But going to the “junior high” as a schoolgirl, then to the “Community Center” to “see girlfriends,” or else “to smoke a cigarette in the library,” allows one to bring diversity to the site. There is a tendency for these gradual differ-ences to encompass it, to exhaust its various signifi cations. Moreover, one fi nds numerous occasions for pauses and stays in the areas border-ing the “Junior High School/Community Center”: this is a tempting site, but one likely to encourage dilatory detours.

Anaphora organizes one’s walks according to a postponed move-ment of contraction, of systole. The central site undergoes, as an af-tereffect, an opposite movement of diastole; it “monopolizes the sur-rounding area” and “overfl ows [déborde] its own limits,” to use Pierre Sansot’s expressions.16 An excellent example in which the rivalry of “ap-proaching” [aborder] and “going beyond” [déborder] is recounted in the following narrative:

It’s the same with the bistro, with its tables outside, but I don’t have the impres-sion of overfl ow for all that. Well . . . I’d compare it, maybe . . . for example, when people at the café, the people who are outside on the terrace, they are already at the café. Right, . . . the people who are with their baskets in front of the Gro, it’s the same thing; they are already at the Gro. Hmm . . . ! Because, if not, without that basket of items, they are neither at home nor at Gro’s, nor . . . nor at the stationery store, nor . . . uh . . . nor close by. As for me, I don’t know what to say!

The more the site throws up resistance and fascinates at the same time, the more the interested inhabitant makes it into the main locale.

Hyperbole, the fi nal fi gure of redundancy, occurs when one’s siege of a site is fi nished. The inhabitant then leaves the impression that he is


57

digesting his victory and he overloads the site that has been walked on. The writing of one’s steps produces at the same time a reading that mag-nifi es the site [une lecture amplifi catrice]. When an inhabitant speaks of “scaling the Mounds,”17 how are we to understand her expression? Rhetoric would say “exaggerated expression.”18 To adopt this under-standing of the fi gure would be to distinguish and compare two het-erogeneous instantiated principles: on the one hand, the site as it is “in reality” (these Mounds are not mountains); on the other hand, the state-ment, which will be taken to task for its excessiveness. While undertak-ing a serious and critical examination of the disparity between signifi ed and signifi er, the action has vanished and what one might have grasped of it as lived experience slips completely away.

As a fi gure of hyperbole, the “scaling of the Mounds” becomes a pertinent expression, faithful to what happened that Sunday, only if one grasps the homology between the spoken expression of hyperbole and the action being recounted: these are two forms of expression that refer to one and the same style and one and the same way of reading-writing-saying the spatiotemporal action that occurred. Was there an “escala-tion” or not? Henceforth, this question no longer has any importance. By what yardstick would one judge the truth or error or exaggeration? The Mound was mounted by a scaling operation;19 in other words, it was high, higher than at fi rst sight. The steps themselves were probably redundant, with their relentless trudging in anticipation of the “sum-mit.” Compared with all that the inhabitants imagine at the height of the Mounds, such a recounted-walked expression is not surprising. A game was being played, but a game with conviction in its very exag-geration. The retelling of this manner in the narrative again reduplicates the redundancy.

When an inhabitant talks about some emergency exit doors between passageways that “someone has smashed in,” whereas only the locks had been forced, there is a clash between a certain way of walking that clears the space on the mode of combative appropriation and a certain kind of constitution of the laid-out and developed space in which ob-stacles of this type are sensed as bogeymen with evil intention. Emer-gency exit doors “closed! In New Town! That’s just plain crazy!” she exclaims. When other inhabitants speak about the Arlequin’s “wings”


58

or about the “ornamental lake,” a monumentality is erected that neither the neighborhood’s buildings nor the lake seem to possess. The choice of one term in the place of another is no indifferent matter. Indeed, the interviews as a whole demonstrate sometimes a willingness to “embel-lish” the neighborhood, sometimes a search for the sumptuous and the ceremonial, for the calm and the pleasant. Hyperbole repeats, with a marked preference, either the sites of concern and known commotion or the sites of relaxation and leisure. The park will therefore readily be walked in this mode—but also the Community Center, for those who feel at home there as if they had literally appropriated it for themselves. Conversely, architectural devices tending toward the sumptuous and the ceremonial can be perceived as instances of hyperbole, redundancies that look exaggerated to the inhabitant who feels external to the sites in which they are fl aunted. This is the case with the junior high school’s lobby, which is deemed “fl ashy” and “extravagant.”

Of the four cases of redundancy that have been examined, one thus goes from the most intimist to the most expressionist. Beyond any dif-ferences, these “varieties”—which come in types of combinations that are all redundant—are always repetitions that render explicit and ex-plain in a more or less passive, more or less active way, and with more or less resistance, a spatial whole whose identity is sometimes imprecise, sometimes overloaded. Redundancy brings together all that, in the orga-nization of one’s walks, tends to write or to read the same things.

Figures of Symmetry

Around the notion of symmetry are grouped all the combinatory fi gures that proceed through difference and organize the orientations of one’s walks. One will already have suspected their presence when we fi nished with the elementary fi gures.

1. SymmetrySymmetry, properly speaking—in the sense of order through difference and congruency (superimposition through folding)—presides over all alternations in people’s trips. These unique fashionings of possible bi-


59

furcations and these polarizations to the left or right, depending on the direction of one’s walks, illustrate two key ways of walking a carto-graphically identical route.

In order to illustrate the fi rst form, let us recall a few examples: Don’t cross the Community Center as a walkway except on the way out; don’t take the “ramp” except to go home; don’t pass by the silos unless you are going to the stores; follow one’s dog by always going out by number 80 in order to approach the park, and return by number 110. Symmetry is produced in these cases via a one-way route in this loop trip.

All these cases offer a lot of symmetries on the scale of overall com-binations. Large portions of the complete trip are affected by them.

Symmetries via polarization are expressed especially through what they disregard. For several inhabitants, the whole or a large portion of the trip is erased and ceases, in some way, to exist. The gallery suffers this fate with the greatest frequency:

On the way out, when I go from number 60 toward the inside . . . [silent laughter]. Hmm! It’s funny. I’m looking practically to the right. At the junior high, there’s a door with some fl yers on it, right? Well, I see it on my way back.

For another inhabitant who “goes out” in the opposite direction, all the landmarks cited above are to be found on the right of her path, which reduplicates her way of taking the obligatory bifurcations.

Thus, a whole side of the space bordering the walk is but an extended “hole.” Walls, storefronts, and pillars exist only on the side where the mode of walking makes them be. The whole of the built world around the gallery has no consistency of its own. It is rewritten in an alterna-tive mode, wherein the absent always runs alongside the present. This is what symmetry really is in the most “classical” sense of the term (ar-chitectural order, order in expression): a composition of plenums and vacuums according to rules of repetition.

2. Dissymmetry Dissymmetry is produced by accident: when, after a departure from home toward a specifi c site, the return trip does not happen to occur as foreseen and another route is then taken. The two most noteworthy cases found offer an extreme form of such surprising dissymmetry; they


60

are repetitive, and the inhabitants concerned do not succeed in under-standing how the phenomenon occurs and how they are led to make a dissymmetric detour:

To come back [from the woodshop at number 60], uh . . . a stupid refl ex. I always make a detour. It’s a refl ex: I go to the right. Then it’s the hole by the passageway. I have always passed between the two round things there, and afterward I fi nish up through the end of the park until number 60.

There’s a spot there, from number 10 to number 20; I know some people there, but . . . I have never succeeded in fi nding my bearings in there. I have always gone back down by number 10, whereas I wanted to go down by number 20.In the passageways, I always get lost.

In the fi rst case, the relation of the return trip to that of the trip on the way out is equivalent to the relation of the half circle to the straight line. In the second case, the return trip is markedly lengthened, and it obliges one to pass into a corner the female inhabitant in question does not like. But in both cases, an incident involving disorientation and automatic refl exes occurs that alters the return route in an irrevers-ible way.

At the level of a “rhetorical” examination of these walkings, one can only take in the facts without understanding their nature. The quo-tations betray the touch of irritation the inhabitants feel before this ir-rational fi gure when they try to give an explanation for it or to issue a judgment about it. In their actual practice, however, they do not back-track and they allow themselves to be led by their spatial blunder. Per-haps this discrepancy will open up a path where explanation will be something other than a reasoned and reasonable irritation before an uncontrollable phenomenon.

The most ordinary cases of dissymmetry appear with striking reg-ularity in all the interviews, at least once if not several times. Return trips do not begin or end at the same spot as the trip on the way out. We are speaking especially of routes that extend beyond the neighbor-hood. Given the mood of these trips, the Arlequin fi nishes sooner than it begins.

The trip toward the “exit” is shorter than the entrance trip. At the other extremity, one sees the entrance “home” occur sooner (elevator


61

or passageway, sometimes gallery corner) than the exit (in this case, the apartment’s front door marks the “caesura,” the abrupt transition). The dissymmetric relation between one direction and another reveals the difference between one’s housing and one’s domicile. The domiciliation process can contract or expand according to the direction of one’s walk. The signifi cation of these everyday dissymmetries refers us back to the act of appropriation and the dynamic it brings into play.

3. AsymmetryQua fi gure of combination, asymmetry may be observed in all cases where a trip is affected as a whole by multiple and divergent varia-tions. Some inhabitants thus go on walks whose exact route cannot be foreseen. The overall direction retains the same basic orientation, but numerous inopportune branches are grafted onto it. Between the trip out and the return trip, there is neither symmetry nor dissymmetry but, rather, absence of symmetry. The walking style, whether uneven and jerky or feverish, is transcribed via an abundance of verbs in the nar-rative. The variations, which are almost always hyperactive, bring into play the three combined dimensions of space, as well as the rhythm and posture of the inhabitants’ steps. Let us listen to what one inhabitant has to say:

Ah, if necessary, I hop, I bend, I thread my way. I fi nd it’s very badly done, be-cause it was thought that people were going to take the gallery. They don’t do that, because they’re in a hurry, because there are barriers you bump your nose against, there are cars everywhere. Nothing is thought out. You’re obliged to lift up your feet to pass through, and to top it all off, you get tickets.

Inhabitants who are less than twenty years old are particularly in-clined to take the asymmetric approach. For two adults, their walks often display this organizational fi gure, but as the pages go by one dis-covers that it is dictated by a rational functionalism: the technical up-keep of the neighborhood. In several inhabitants’ narratives, the tone, barely contained, ill conceals a decided pleasure they take in break-ing up20 the built-up space with each step. Sometimes, there is the joy of a spatial form of irony, sometimes a willful shattering of everyday isochronisms.


62

Thus, the last fi gure for organizing one’s walks appears as a disor-ganization of the laid-out and developed space. The least coherent with regard to the functions of traffi c circulation, it tells us more than the others about how walking is practiced in a global way according to spe-cifi c styles of inhabiting the space.

From here, are we going to end up referring each way of organizing one’s walk to the style of the inhabitant producing it, this style being a particular way of using certain elementary fi gures in certain elective combinations? Would the “material” of this reading-writing of space be the sole entity shared in common and never exhausted by the ac-tual and singular usage performed by these walks? As is the case with one’s tongue, for language? Or do there exist one or two invariants that would yield a community of meaning for all the walking styles we have observed?

Two Fundamental Figures: Synecdoche and Asyndeton

From the elementary to the organized, through the progressive discov-ery of the fi gures these walks write, it seems that something else has been running alongside, surfacing here, totally absent elsewhere, the oversight of which vaguely pursues us. In its good-natured willingness to trim down and to clarify, the exposition has demonstrated, but also has taxidermized as stuffed “specimens,” a collection of elementary fi g-ures and model fi gures of organization. We have barely caught a glimpse yet of the role played by the actual way these organizations function and by the way in which the elements do or do not take their place therein. In other words, we are still in the dark as to the role of the expressive movement by which the inhabitant comes and goes.

Now, one also fi nds in these walks two quite singular fi gures. They can operate on the elementary level, but they are not elementary. They clearly manifest themselves on the scale of the overall combinations, but they do not correspond to a complete syntagmatic model. Their nature differs therefore from the fi gures previously expounded. Their role is to articulate among themselves the elementary fi gures that are present in


63

an overall organization. Metafi gures in a way, they intervene at the level of connections and acts of relation [des mises en rapport]: such are syn-ecdoche and asyndeton.

Synecdoche

Synecdoche is the process by which, several elements being brought face-to-face, a selection is carried out. Through this selection, “one takes the genus for the species, the species for the genus, the whole for the part, or the part for the whole.”21 Synecdoche is not mere substitution of one term for another. It involves a competitive play of signifi cations, among which there is a choice that depends on the context and the expressive intention. The selection made is not necessarily the best one, in which would be grouped together all the neighboring meanings in an exhaus-tive manner. Prevalence refers specifi cally to the context. When, to take up the traditional example, one says “the billows” for “the sea,”22 the context alone (the type of combination projected, as well as the tone of the phrase and of the situation being expressed) is able to show why and how the selection was this one. Synecdoche weaves a twofold relation: between competing meanings as well as between the criteria of selection and the context of the expression to be produced.

How does synecdoche appear in the reading-writing of space per-formed by these walks? Like the “Snark” hunted in Lewis Carroll’s fa-mous poem, how this metafi gure functions must be pursued, must be tracked down via the diverse effects manifested in the elementary fi gures and the combinatory fi gures.

As noted in conducts involving avoidance, the murky compenetra-tion of elementary fi gures fi nds its condition of possibility in one and the same instantiated principle, which is present in the formation of each of these fi gures: a metathesis of quantity (the more for the less, the less for the more) that is none other than synecdoche. To avoid, to bypass, to cut through, to diverge: each modifi cation carried out could be read as quantitative variation at the level of the space being traveled through. Yet this is but a second-order effect, the trace left by the fi gure in a syn-chronic representation.


64

We see the limit of analysis when it is conducted at the elementary level. Walking phenomena are grasped in relation to space rather than in relation to time. Also, it was possible to illustrate our examination of the elementary fi gures with photographs that set before us the “choices” of paths considered in relation to the spatial context. All inductions of another nature refer us back both to the combinatory fi gures and to the context of the action of walking. What is manifested in too spatial a manner is thus understood as a simple effect of the gravity of a more encompassing context.

In the elementary fi gures of polysemy, the metathesis of quantity found a more subtle form. Without the quantity of space being altered, the walk is geared in a certain direction rather than another one. In this way, there is never an equivalence of possibilities, even in bifurcation. It is always the more for the less or the less for the more.

Nonetheless, it is in the combinatory fi gures that synecdoche best shows its nature: a movement of constitution, the creative gait of lived space-time. In the line of the narratives, the inhabitants go once and again into the same sites. But the name of the site changes, and the mean-ing of a term is never equivalent to the meaning of its synonym or of the neighboring term when one compares the appellation of one’s bearings [repérages] to the nature of the trips these landmarks [repères] were des-ignating. As a whole, each narrative makes slippages of meaning appar-ent. A particularly well-sequenced example was related earlier.23 There, the woman in question employed four successive and progressively re-duced terms: the “Arlequin,” the “gallery,” the “commercial gallery,” and the “Community Center.” The specifi cations became increasingly particularized as the walks were recounted in more and more precise fashion. We discover at the same time that the fi nal term (Community Center) holds for them all, thanks to the attractive signifi cation of the site. From one path to another, from one day to the next, one discovers, in each interview and in each walking universe, such movements of par-ticularization and totalization—which are not a relation of partial ele-ments to the totality of the building complex but, rather, a selective or-ganization among sites walked through that hold as totalities and other ones (or the same ones, at other moments) that are valid as parts.

The whole for the part, the part for the whole: such are, in one’s


65

walks, the two extreme forms between which all the fi gures we have encountered take their places. And they do so to various degrees, the intermediate forms being the more for the less and the less for the more. But do movements of particularization and those of totalization even bear on the same realities?

We must reexamine more closely these examples in which the pro-cess of synecdoche crops up in a condensed way.

If I want to go from number 40 to number 60, I pass through the park.

Let us note, fi rst of all, that this is only one part of the “park,” the rest of which this inhabitant knows by frequenting it regularly. Second, she provides no precise details about the very act of walking. Finally, the crossing of this part of the park replaces the unpleasantness of the gal-lery at what she calls this “dead” spot with the pleasantness of the park taken in terms of its general value. A process of totalization of meaning occurs here, sought out in the name of the context.

In the park, I walk around in all directions. There is always . . . each time you scale the Mounds.

A remark: the inhabitant then lays out in an abstract way her reasons for liking the park. Yet only one site is specifi ed, characterized in terms of the lived experience of walking it: “the scaling of the Mounds.”24

For several inhabitants, the main feature of the park whose walking merits a description is the area around the lake. The park as a whole leads simply to some remarks that are general in character: there is a lack of “whatsits . . . like some tubes . . . for games”; it lacks “a cozy feeling.” The context of their walks in the park is focused entirely on visiting [le séjour] and relaxing within a lakeside poetics that, by exten-sion, characterizes the park.

An example follows of two synecdoches that are apparent in their selective succession:

The park . . . I go there . . . especially that sort of place where there are some bricks . . . that sort of place with the mounds, especially the Mound, the one that is equipped with steps.

From the park to the brick place, from the brick place and from the group of mounds to the Mound—that is the itinerary of synecdoches in


66

which the partial is made more precise as it is walked and in which the fi nal term bestows all the others with its lived signifi cation.

Often, I go into the space that is dirt-covered . . . toward the dragon, voilà!

Another remark: Nothing is more imprecise than the start of this phrase; nothing more specifi c and colorful than this enamel-covered metal “dragon” for the children. The surrounding space is hardly defi nable at all: half sand, half dirt, its polymorphic character contrasts with the en-vironing zones whose materials are clearly defi ned: high bushes, the lay-out of the gallery with the line of buildings. Overfl owing its condition as a signal for play, the dragon tends to become the landscape itself.25

To serve as a general example, we would have to quote the twelfth interview in full. The most detailed trip recounted in this interview con-cerns the inhabitant’s comings and goings on the mezzanine, copiously condensing the whole way in which this inhabitant lives at the Arlequin. The rest of the neighborhood and the other paths merit no narrative as storied as this one. Everything had already been said in its most tellable part, as the main portion of the walking occurs in the mezzanine. From a quantitative standpoint, however, the mezzanine trip is but one part of the space traveled. There is here a pathic synecdoche applying to the whole expression of the walker’s lived experience, which is marked by anxiety and a fascinated repulsion.

In these examples, as well as in every walk, synecdoche is organized along three lines of force that span everyday life in its entirety.

First instantiated principle: the reference to the overall walking context that orients this or that selection.

Second instantiated principle: the whole for the part and the part for the whole are expressed in terms of a difference in kind. The totaliza-tion process tilts very rapidly toward abstraction, an overall judgment: the foibles of the designers of the space are mimicked. The process of particularization willingly lingers, taking the time to recount the lived details, to digress. These two decidedly divergent infl ections place back to back the practice of the urban designers and that of the users of the urban space.


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Third instantiated principle: when the part stands for the whole, on the one hand the phenomenon is expressed in descriptive terms, on the other hand the part takes the place of the totality in the form of a climate and in a relation of symbolization. As lived, the climate of the mezzanine is concretely equivalent to one’s overall representation of the Arlequin. The atmospheres on the Mound or at the lake symbolize everything po-etic that can found in the park and in the neighborhood.26

In the rhetoric of one’s walks, synecdoche grounds a universal mode of organization in which the part stands for the whole. When the whole stands for the part, the walking process becomes allusive, and then Rep-resentation governs one’s apprehension of space. Thus, through one of the keys to the organization of walks into a reading-writing, one can see being sketched out, along with one fundamental characteristic, the disassociation between a representation of the trip and the narrative of a lived experience of walking. The selection of one of the instantiated principles tends to reduce and to exclude the others. More likely, how-ever, what it does is include them in a concealed way, referring each back to the overall context in which this selection is based—which is what the relation to the signifi ed is supposed to clarify.

Asyndeton

Asyndeton—“fi gure by which one suppresses conjunctions,” as we are told in rhetoric—is the second key to the process of organizing one’s walks.

Whereas synecdoche shows the way in which selection operates, the second fundamental process should bring juxtaposition, connections, and conjunctions into play. These are the links through which every ele-ment of expression follows another one of them in the constitution of the expressive whole. That is how things proceed in language proper, such as the process of connection that is characteristic of this or that style.

Now, ambulatory expression seems to be grounded essentially on an absence of connections. Only a topographical map will give the il-lusion of something “linked,” by transcribing the succession of steps


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and putting them into continuous lines. When grasped as a whole, the transcribed narrative can also make one believe in a relatively homo-geneous sequence: a mere overall impression. Yet let one listen to the interviews more closely, consider in detail how oral expressions repeat walking expressions, and take account of the silences, the suspended intonations, and the punctuation breaks, and then one will perceive, behind the well-connected fragments, a background of discontinuity that is present in all these interviews. Indeed, in considering the nar-rative in itself, one can identify patches of description that evoke the spatiotemporal unfolding of the moment of densely narrated walking, then, between these fragments, either a digressive transition in which value judgments break through or a connection of a temporal nature (“afterward,” “next,” “at such and such an hour, I . . .”) that leaps on-ward to another description and skimps [fait l’économie] on concrete spatial continuities.

There is an economy of narrative, it will be said, an economy of memory. One cannot recount everything. What can be known about what occurred during a walk? And yet narrative styles differ from one story to the next, as walking styles differ. What to us appears to be a fragment limited by the unit of description always tends to be given as a totality. The way in which synecdoche takes place, the prevalence of certain “fragments,” and the mode of occurrence of asyndetons (where connections disappear) are so many characteristics of a style belonging to the inhabitant.

A ten-year-old child thus offers us an expression that is typical of this age group, with connections by subject-point. The connections pro-ceed along the lines of contiguity, and not sequence, and exhibit a con-stant economy of descriptive detail (few adjectives, especially for per-sonal subjects and words).27 Being played out here is a point-by-point account of an overall movement, sometimes broken up by a sudden encounter with a few rare favored sites: the lake, the passageway, the Olympic Village.

A young girl uses many coordinating conjunctions (“and,” “right”; the latter being a popular conjunction not recognized in grammar) and sometimes sequential ones (“fi nally,” “however”), but they occur withinthese long, quite storied descriptions. Between these descriptions, recol-lection of the hour or the day takes the place of connection (“then . . . ,


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Saturday afternoon . . .”). Now, these transitions by leaps mask the chief asyndeton that structures the everyday life of this inhabitant: a forget-ting—indeed, the discreet rejection—of everything about her lodgings and the surrounding area. She speaks of her lodgings, in the end, only reluctantly:

interviewer: At number 50, what fl oor do you live on?

n.: On the fi rst fl oor.

interviewer: Then you haven’t told me about the end of your trips?

n.: Oh! . . . um, well, in order to arrive home, [sound indicating indifference]. . . . Right [beginning a small sketch], right . . . it’s always the same thing.

In this case, asyndeton permits her to leap from one path in her public life to another path of the same type: the aspect of her existence that this young girl values as against the problems at home that are placed within brackets. Except for stylistic differences, asyndeton fulfi lls an analogous function in the spoken and walked expressions of the ten-year-old child. The deceptive succession of contiguities hides a discon-tinuous style of walking in which nothing truly sticks to the child’s hur-ried steps, these short hops. Two forms of asyndeton are already taking shape: a state that, when taken on the scale of these trips as a whole, is diffuse and that the play of the narrative’s expressive contiguities does not succeed in masking; and a state that may be deemed as condensed in relation to a qualitative leap that occurs between this fi rst mode of walking and the few rare sites that are walked with enthusiasm.

The same parallel between what is said of these walks and the way in which it is said holds for all the interviews. Beneath the variety of styles belonging to each inhabitant, asyndeton operates insistently and with an identical function: in the narrative of a seventy-year-old inhab-itant, for whom the “holes” in the narrative correspond to a kind of walking that is designed to conserve her energy and is concerned with brevity from the start; in that of the thirty-year-old worker, where the division established by the break between the narrative of his walks to work and the narrative of his leisure walks corresponds only too well to the reality of everyday life as it is modeled in a certain mode of production; and in that of the forty-year-old housewife, where the po-etic mode of walking appears only through a break from the repetitive


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utilitarian mode. Thus also, monotony seems incapable of being altered, but only of being “broken.”

A few choice, specifi c examples will better illustrate the general and fundamental role asyndeton plays. Indeed, following the example of syn-ecdoche, asyndeton crops up from time to time from beneath an obvi-ous and succinct expression that offers us a digest version thereof. Other times, this same fi gure clearly dominates the organization of a walk: these are precious accidents that shed undiffracted light on the way in which the absence of connections grounds one’s walking expression.

HolesAsyndeton manifests itself in the following examples not only as a lapse in memory [trou de mémoire] but also as a hole [trou] in the narrative and as the very porosity of space:

j.: I never take, I don’t know why, I would take it, besides, the . . . as there are the passageways . . .

child present: —the mezzanine!

interviewer: Why?

j.: Um, well, it’s a bit complicated; I once wanted to take it with the kids, you remember? Then, there were some . . . dead ends, huh? That’s what they were . . . ? We made a U-turn and took the gallery again.

There is a loss of the name of the site in which one gets lost. The mezza-nine as walkway thus becomes doubly absent. It is a parenthetical site that is left up in the air, as manifested in the equivalent three dots of silence.

interviewer: In your [written] account, you talk about a few spots, but be-tween these spots, what is there? . . . nothing of importance? . . . or else? . . .

e.: Yes, that’s right. . . . What’s more, there is a passage from there to there [she points this out on a small sketch she makes]. Well, there, that’s the gallery and there, the little place. . . . Yes, this passage, I don’t talk about it. It must be quite harmless. . . . I don’t know.

interviewer: Right. On the left- or right-hand side of the trip? It doesn’t interest you?

e.: Oh, well that, it’s to be discovered! Later. . . . When I’ll go everywhere . . . um, well . . . I’ll be myself, huh?


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Refl ection on the fi rst absence (between two poles) leads the inhabitant to discover that her walks are written on the background of an absent totality. This “everywhere” that allows for a reserve of possibilities is, for the moment, only an unwalked area that surrounds her trips. Be-tween the gallery and the little place, there is nothing to say because nothing acted or suffered is expressed therein. The absences allow for a project of coming appropriation at the same time as a future elucidation of one’s identity as an inhabitant.

The compartmentalized state of the memorable and recountable walk appears as such only upon the background of a graphic repre-sentation. From this point of view, there very well are “holes.” On the other hand, over the whole of the context that envelops the lived experi-ences of one’s walks, these “holes” distinguish, rather, the moments of the present from those that are to come later on from a long-term effort at appropriation.

AbsencesThe climate within which a walk is carried out is an essential agent of the frequency of asyndetons, of their quantity, and of their duration. The trip to work will easily be permeable to large absences. The narra-tives transcribe this through holes in the phrasing or sometimes explicit recognition of the absence, of the “hole” that can affect a large portion of the trip, indeed the totality of it.

For the inhabitant at number 60 who leaves for work in the morn-ing, his presence in the neighborhood is remarkably short-lived. It all ends at number 50:

Oh, practically . . . I am thinking of number 50, huh? Afterward . . . afterward, I dash off, huh?

After number 50, there is nothing more to do than to “dash off.” Fo-cused on the worry and the repetitive burden of his job, which begins at the end of this trip after twenty minutes on a moped, the inhabi-tant has already left, even though he has not yet mounted his vehicle. The walk loses all detail, because, right away, the landscape is already “dashing off.”

Some other examples:


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interviewer: Was it the same trip when it rains?

n.: Oh, I look at nothing; I don’t give a damn at all! I don’t know anyone here . . . [fi fteen seconds of silence]. In the afternoon, I had some worries about work. I saw nothing.28 Nothing to say!

The two expressions of silence, the fi rst acted out, the second spo-ken, perfectly well punctuate, in this narrative, the way in which the walk was carried out: overall absence. Here we are dealing with genuine hole-trips. Only the “duty to remember” feature imposed by the frame-work of the interview has allowed these minimal expressions of walks with neither any thickness nor any density: ectoplasm-trips. The ab-sence of connection at this point merges with the absence of memorable lived experience. The asyndeton has taken up the entire place.

In combinations of fi gures, round trips organized according to sym-metrical alternations had already shown the phenomenon of a longitu-dinal hole (absence of a right or of a left). Henceforth, we can recognize in it a stylistic effect of prolonged asyndeton.

From then on, one can see how this impression of not having truly walked but, rather, of having traversed some sites in complete indiffer-ence is not some accident, an anomaly of lived experience, but, quite to the contrary, the very background for the organization of our walks. Whether it is expressed in terms of worry, preoccupation, weariness, neglect, or the wear and tear of everyday life, and whether we recognize therein the mark of a certain kind of civilization, the sign of a failure in building as it is subjected to the mode of production that directs it, this paradoxical phenomenon of articulation through absence of conjunc-tion continues to be probably the most universal one there is among all the modes of walking through an inhabited space today.29

From Figures to Code

Walking rhetoric is a quite particular form of expression. Its iden-tity owes as much to the elective place of two fi gures carrying greater weight than all others as to the typical layout of these two modes of constitution.


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These walks yield a surprising idea of everyday life. Nothing is ever lived except partially, the fragments giving themselves out to be the “globality” of the situation. These discontinuities exist only upon a background of absence, of “blanks,” of “holes,” as the inhabitants say. Asyndeton is the condition of possibility for synecdoche. In the pedes-trian statements in which synecdoche privileges the usage of the part for the whole, asyndeton renders possible the appropriation of the whole via the part.

The Poetic Idiom

Thus do the proposed analogies between linguistic analysis and a walk-ing rhetoric begin to fall apart.

Here is a fi rst difference. In our language, there is greater consistency when the task of connecting things together is performed well. But here, in the practice of one’s walks, one does one’s utmost to disconnect, to instaurate discontinuity. And a second difference emerges. A word is not chosen for itself all alone but, rather, in terms of the syntagmatic series. Yet daily strolls persistently confer value upon certain elements, spatial particularities that overfl ow the rightful functional partitions and shake up the territorial sequences.

The linguistic analogy is lame. No doubt, we rediscover in the enun-ciation of one’s steps the two axes language theory30 names as the “axis of combination” and the “axis of selection”—the combined play of a “metonymic process” and of a “metaphorical process” in which inter-nal relationships (the meaningful relation) and external relationships (the contextual relation) produce, at their intersection, a certain type of expression. But this intersection takes a quite peculiar turn owing to the eminent position of synecdoche and asyndeton.

How would linguistic theory evaluate what we call “walking ex-pression”? Probably by likening it to a specifi c form: poetic language, in which the measured hierarchization one fi nds in prose is broken up in favor of a rhythmic arrangement that lays emphasis on the terms fi rst of all for themselves. “The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination.”31


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“Equivalence” does not mean “indifference.” This sort of autonomy the word preserves in the poetic syntagma is the persistence of the pro-cess of selection, which is not forgotten when combinations are made—but on one condition, that is, that the process of combination would have created a vacuum, that the enunciative model privileged in prose (wherein words take only the fair share granted to them by the signi-fying whole that is to be stated) would be broken up. As in poetry, a part of the walk can be valid for itself and render itself autonomous in relation to a totality it shakes up and deforms while attempting to go beyond it. This process is possible because asyndeton breaks the con-nections that, when present, would prevent such interference of what is selective within the combinatory.

The fi nal contribution we could ask of linguistic knowledge may be formulated in a proposition that creates the dividing line between the language of prose and the rhetoric of walking: the organization of one’s walks is constituted in the manner of a poetics. The act of walking is not the progressive totalization of a given space to be traveled through but, rather, the uneven and jerky articulation of a movement that con-structs the lived experience of space in an often diverting mode. Take, for example, that fi rst moment of organization via exclusion, an initial fi gure about which we can now understand that it stems directly from the combined play of asyndeton and synecdoche. Take, also, that law of contrast at the level of overall combinations, which was permitted by the absence of conjunction and which leaves the part free to “stand for the whole” in the symbolic mode. Too vacant at times, overcharged at other times, walking styles seem excessive and chaotic only from the geometric outlook, which would like to see in a coherent—that is to say, well-connected—way how, and to what extent, the inhabitant does or does not “fi ll in” a traffi c space. But in the practice of one’s walks, one neither fi lls in nor fails to fi ll in. The rhetorical form indicates in what sense it has to be structuration, constitution of singular space-times, and not mere general usage of constructed spatialities.

The discovery of the two metafi gures thus moves into a more theo-retical lane of analysis, which will be taken again later on. Our rhetori-cal exposition still remains incomplete, and the question of signifi cation has been left hanging.


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Toward the Instantiated Principle of the Collective

The various modes of walking that belong to each inhabitant share a community of style that is henceforth recognized. There is one inhabi-tant rhetoric in the sense that the fundamental principles of articulation do not vary. This community of meaning is nevertheless entirely theo-retical. The inhabitants do not play in vain at their comings and goings. The fi gures of walking rhetoric propose an arrangement of signifi ers. But what concrete and everyday signifi eds do they express?

A new reading of the narratives is required, one more attentive this time to comparison of the referents each stylistic effect calls for. Here is our fi rst overall impression: everyday poetics rarely abandons itself to lyricism. Only episodically does one experience elation in one’s ap-proach or does an unforeseen and gratuitous event suddenly emerge and cross one’s steps (daydreaming at the edge of the lake or on the mounds and fascination at the play of light and shadows under the gallery at night are two of these rare examples). More ordinarily, these walks un-fold mainly in the epic mode: a poetics of narration.

The epic is characterized in modern rhetoric by the strong con-tribution it implies for the referential function.32 Like all expression, one’s walking conducts refer back to a context that situates them. In other words, one’s ways of doing (the rhetorical modes) tell us in a mediate way one’s ways of being. Pedestrian statement signifi es two things: one’s immediate goal (going to work, going shopping, going home, going for a walk) and one’s way of living the situation. This last signifi ed encompasses, among other things, the dimensions of spa-tial position, temporal situation, psychological attitude, and the pres-ence of the other. Now, the contextual element most often mentioned by the inhabitants questioned is a social referent, which is sometimes so explicit that it serves as a “message.”33 No one walks, it seems, without at least the vague presence of the instantiated principle of the collective.34

The descriptive study of everyday comings and goings is therefore to be pursued in the direction of its most manifest signifi cation: the so-cial dimension. We are hardly talking here about a sociological study


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in the scientifi c sense of the term. Our purpose is more modest. Just as each chapter began with a simple confi guration of traces, so we are at-tempting to do nothing more, at the perimeter of the chapter to come, than to describe the code through which he who walks and those who surround him are signifi ed throughout the walk itself.35

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3

An Inhabitant RhetoricTHE CODE OF APPROPRIATION

At all times, knowledge of the art of rhetoric has seemed to confer upon its owner a certain power. Well-chosen, well-handled words exert a sort of magical effect. A tight and mobile interlacing of terms charms, bewitches, and fi nally, like a quickly cast net, ensnares the listener, who forgets all his own arguments. The goal of rhetoric is to convince, to draw one’s adversary, or he who remains indifferent, into one’s game. This art of persuasion minimizes or exaggerates, avoids or repeats, ana-morphoses or transfi gures at that very place where the fl at statement would employ only the right and strict series of words deemed necessary to produce, as closely as possible, the truth that is to be spoken.1

Although the effort to render the truth of words equivalent to the truth of things remains an unresolved problem, there is no doubt that the essence of rhetoric is to fl ow beyond the object of discourse, to make it accessible and convincing, to “make it truer.” Through its propensity for stylistic effect, rhetoric strays from the literal meaning. The use of fi gurative meaning produces this interval [écart] that has always ren-dered undecidable any evaluation of the art of speaking well.2 Is one to appreciate rhetorical expression for its capacity to make the stated object splendidly appear or for its performance in “fi guring” things so well? Does what is expressed have more or less importance than the ex-pression, one’s way of expressing?

The same questions hold for inhabitant rhetoric, which, like fi gura-tive speech, is a swerving sort of [de l’écart] practice. We shall not re-spond to these questions before having sought out what the singular, everyday fashioning of space described in the preceding chapter might signify.

A N I N H A B I TA N T R H E T O R I C : T H E C O D E O F A P P R O P R I AT I O N

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Without doubt, each inhabitant always reveals, through his pedes-trian practice, the peculiar traits of his personality and his choices in relation to social attitudes as well as to the available options about the usage of space. And the depth psychologist, the classical sociologist, the political scientist, and even the economist will read, each in his own way and each through his own semiology, the “content” of these ambulatory confi gurations. It is not our wish, however, to snap so quickly the thread of the inhabitants’ narratives.

When a passerby bypasses a site, he traces a fi gure of avoidance. In the same stroke, however, has he not identifi ed, opposite himself, the real or possible movement of someone else? We already had a premoni-tion of these mutual anticipations of avoidance or encounter when ex-pounding the fi gures of walking.

Even more than that, the inhabitants to whom we have listened state explicitly in their narrations how the other intervenes in the everyday landscape through which they travel. Thus are woven together relation-ships of collusion, of similarity, and of cohesion, but also those of op-positions, of rejections, and of differentiations. Through repetitions and variations, spatial readings and writings, and the produced and the re-produced, the inhabitants recognize one another and make themselves recognized. A sort of code appears. Through this code, the signifi eds fi nd at least a minimum of homogeneity. The ways of organizing space fi gure the similarities and differences existing among the inhabitants.

How is this code to be qualifi ed? Every urban zone, high-density housing complex, group of single-lot homes, or island of buildings has particular ways and customs. Each has its own “good manners.” Be-neath the general codes revealed by sociology in its study of the opposi-tions between the urban and the rural, among various social classes, and among diverse ethnic groups, there exist more particular codes. Over a small unit of space, one can observe how, from day to day, the forms of sociability knit themselves together and unravel without stop. A more phenomenological approach would fi nd that the code for the fashion-ings3 of inhabited space is the fruit not of a state but, rather, of a mobile collective process that unfolds, most often, without the knowledge of the inhabitants (save in moments of extreme tension, where this or that law of the code is suddenly perceived as an obstacle).

The explicit stake involved in inhabitant practice is what may be


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called qualifi ed space. My steps qualify the path taken. But before me opens a space already traveled by the other. My way of coming and going is sometimes going to repeat the already accepted or sought-after qualifi cations; sometimes it is going to disqualify, or even to deny, hos-tile sites. The concrete seizure of space begins via the question of the appropriable. Are the sites to come beneath my steps appropriated or appropriable? And how are they so?

Everyday language talks about a “feeling of being at home” that meets with success or struggles to be successful or that fails, depend-ing on the case at hand. One also hears, “This place feels good to me,” “I feel good here,” “I don’t feel rejected here.” This syncretism among oneself, the space, and the other seems to be designated quite well by the term appropriation. We are dealing here with a notion that is never clearly defi nable, that has justifi ably been criticized, but whose fuzziness seems to us to designate rather felicitously the barbarisms and “blurri-nesses” of everyday life. In the pages to come, it will have a wholly in-strumental, entirely provisional value. And, repeated too often, it will perhaps end up losing its meaning altogether and disappear of its own accord, as happens with words spoken over and over again that sud-denly become empty sounds. When we shall employ it, it will be above all in order to indicate the concomitant presence of the instantiated principles of the individual, the social, and the spatial.

These reservations having been made, the writing of one’s walks seems to signify that there is a dynamic of appropriation. We shall en-deavor to bring out progressively its code. The rules that will be stated will not, however, all converge at the same time toward a closed defi -nition of this code of appropriation. They indicate the heavy punctua-tions of an observational approach—which is, fi rst of all, attentive to the most obvious forms of appropriation (and the most explicit ones in the inhabitants’ narratives) and then curious about more complex phe-nomena expressed in a discrete and sparse sort of way.

The Naming of Places

If we talk about the everyday circulation of pedestrian traffi c, about net-works of spatial frequentation that acquire consistency on a map, place-


80

names will serve to indicate enduring landmarks, the stable boundary markers between which the lines of people’s trips are stretched. Names are but one of the abstract elements in the system of cartographic loca-tion. All toponyms are then of equal value. None of them will tell more than any other in what direction the inhabitant walks with or against the others, granting value to some space or rejecting another one.

Our reading of the narratives of one’s walks has driven us, however, to overturn this reductionist attitude. In the confi gurative movement of one’s steps, toponyms do not in any way precede something else, nor do they constitute anything by themselves. They appear along the walk that instigates them, that informs them, and that annihilates them as it pleases. Signs among other signs, they refl ect the qualifi cation one’s pe-destrian gait inscribes therein by making them be.

In this sense, the inhabitants carry out a veritable process of place-naming. The narratives indicate this designation-assignment of the space within which speech expresses, within every community of style, what steps confi gure. Now, it should be pointed out that no naming is performed without the involvement of the instantiated principle of the collective.

The narrative of one’s walks calls for a citation of sites in a form that can be identifi ed by “the listener”: he who listens and, behind him, “everyone.” Through employment of the toponym, the narrative makes one recognize the space through the statements of a shared discourse. Nonetheless, the reference in question is not always clearly apparent. Some namings fail to achieve their project of shared designation. Thus do we discover a few moments in the narrative that are spent entirely on specifying an ill-understood or barely clear name. This is a metalin-guistic phase of the narrative where one goes off in search of equiva-lent units. The fi rst diffi culty encountered is therefore the relevance for a community of meaning of the appellations that are stated in the narrative.The words do not always succeed in encompassing the spatial feature involved on the background of a language-imposed requirement of uni-vocality. Between the individual and the collective, words do not express a spatial relation defi ned identically for everyone at all times.

While not being univocal, names do not, for all that, just sink into an irremediable state of equivocality. Indeed, as manifested in narra-


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tive, the mode of appellation contains a more or less faithful, but al-ways insistent, reproduction of the memorable relation places maintain with names. And this occurs through the general practice of one’s walks in the neighborhood. One’s hesitations and the mishaps that occur in the naming of spaces do not seem to be, in this case, purely formal and linguistic phenomena. They betray a certain way of having lived these places from which the collectivity is never absent. My toponymic landscape merges to a large extent with the others’ landscapes. Whence arises a second diffi culty: How is one to evaluate the collective connota-tion involved in the apprehension of places walked? “Apprehension,” we say here, for it really is a matter of a seizure by words as well as by one’s steps.

These namings are revelatory of a lived experience of one’s walks that is not exempt from diffi culties, errancies, even failures in relation to the instantiated principle of the collective. They can be arranged into a progressive series with two constants. On the one hand, the most com-mon names are those that bring the least tensions and differentiations into play. On the other hand, the more specifi c place-names become, the more atomized the collectivity becomes on the scale of the entire neigh-borhood and the more mutually distinctive social subgroups become.

Let us begin with the most common form of naming.

Numbering

So, the inhabitant says: “at number 60,” “toward number 100,” “from number 130.”4 Such appellations are used by all the inhabitants ques-tioned, employed either exclusively or as synonyms for a previously stated name deemed insuffi ciently precise. They do not in themselves call for any particular commentary in the course of the narrative—save, on occasion, in order to criticize or praise the graphic or chromatic inscrip-tion of the numbers. Reproducing the location devices imposed by the design plan and by the management, they connote what is most common and most clear in the identifi cation of sites. Nonetheless, self-assurance in the employment of the appellation and its frequency differ from one inhabitant to the next. The youngest inhabitants, the regulars at attend-


82

ing various activities in the neighborhood, and those who work around there juggle easily with the numbers. These are the same people who do not get lost and can circulate through the neighborhood “as if they were at home”—though this apparent ease does not necessarily correspond to a successful overall appropriation of the area. Others hesitate some-times, do not know certain numbers, or are familiar only with the num-ber of their domicile and those of their neighbors. This is the case, in par-ticular, of an inhabitant in her seventies. It would seem that the ease with which one employs these numbers should be a function of the level of one’s overall adaptation to the neighborhood. For, the places designated by the numbers, as well as their placement and the graphics used, dis-play an unusual type of organization. Referencing by numbers selects, de facto, a certain type of inhabitant who is likely to adapt quickly.

Functional Appellation

This form of naming differs very little from the usages commonly em-ployed in other urban neighborhoods. The shops and activity areas in the neighborhood permit unmistakable location—all the more so as these place-names also mark the environing space. “Toward the bak-ery” and “toward the butcher’s”—-these two shops being next to each other—are indications that allow for no ambiguity as to the space thus named. One sometimes uncovers more accidental names that refer to a transient operation of some sort. When one inhabitant says, “next to the children’s bedroom display,” he summons up in the listener the practice of a group of inhabitants who are well informed about the events that take place in the Arlequin neighborhood. More generally speaking, the perennial operations of the junior high school, the shops, the schools, and the neighborhood’s activity rooms, which everyone can place, do not require that one belong to the groups who make practical use of these sites, but simply demand a knowledge of the most obvious features of the neighborhood.

Other sites, designated by less well-known functions and prompt-ing frequentations for specifi c purposes, connote references to groups of initiates. They harbor activities of which other inhabitants are unaware or about which they are familiar by hearsay, without these activities


83

being able to serve for them as spatial landmarks. Thus, appellations like “toward the photo shop,” “toward the other retirement home,” “next to the insurance offi ce,” which are obvious for the three inhabi-tants familiar with these places, would be perplexing or ambiguous for other people. Finding one’s bearings [Le repérage] is then loaded with a clear allusion to a specifi c aspect of everyday life, because one’s walks are articulated with precision over these sites that are prone to a defi nite and limited appropriation.

Singularized or Particularized Appellation

This type of naming is to be distinguished from the others in that a syn-ecdoche is produced. This happens either through an effect of personal-ization or by reference to the part rather than to the whole.

When one inhabitant says, “I make this detour,” “I cross the small place, here,” the designation is narrowed down, with several notewor-thy effects: substitution of an allusive singularity for the discursive uni-versal; restriction of the meaning of the appellation through rejection of commonly accepted names; introduction of the motor order specifi c to the lived experience of one’s walk into a sequence of the enunciative order. Demonstrative pronouns and adverbs of place then indicate a latent appropriation that other expressions will come to confi rm more clearly: “my spot,” “I arrive home,” “toward my stairwell.” It is not a matter here of one’s own lodging but, rather, of the area bordering one’s domicile: the space near the elevator entrance that overfl ows onto the gallery. It is then that the act of appropriation delimits a space with no physical markings and makes it change its nature. The appropriated space stands out either as not being the place that is common to every-one—and then the value is placed on the singular, which borders on itself—or as being perceptible only to initiates, who in this case are sum-moned [convoqués] onto the fi eld of speech but who are supposed to exist for real also in similar practices that have them frequenting “this” detour or “that” little place.

The process of particularization heads in the same direction. When one inhabitant says “on the mound,” she either is provoking the ostracism of those who do not know whether one is speaking of the


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park and which mound or is spurring the complicity of those who un-derstand immediately that she is talking about “the big mound in the park with the stairs”—which is no higher than the others, but which is “very well known” and “where one sees so well,” as some inhabitants say. In this case, a shared appropriation is possible because the synec-doche and the ellipsis used here correspond to one and the same kind of frequentation of the park and to a seizure of the space that is carried out in the same mode.

Another concrete signifi cation of the fundamental fi gure of synecdo-che is manifested here. To say the less for the more is to refer to a par-ticular appropriation that is liable to bring together a group of similar spatial practices among distinct inhabitants.

Singularized appellation and particularized appellation tell us as much and more about spatial relations as about the space itself. And this rela-tion is always formed with reference to the collective.

Unnameables

The case of unnameable places shows very well that an appropriation and a qualifi cation of space would be impossible without appellations.

We are dealing here still with new or unusual architectural forms, ones that the authors have sometimes nicknamed by themselves but that do not correspond to any coding recognized or practiced by the in-habitants before they began to reside in the neighborhood. The angles characteristic of the facades5 and the layout of the street beneath the buildings take the inhabitants right away out of their usual element [dé-paysent d’emblée l’habitant]. Moreover, the names given by the devel-oper are not always convincing:

• the “gallery” is the main street beneath the buildings;

• the “passageway” is the access corridor on three fl oor levels;

• the “cove” is the exterior space outlined by the building’s curves; and

• the “ramp” is an incline fi fty meters long that raises the gallery from zero to seven meters in height.


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The inhabitants make attempts to use these words. Some of them succeed in doing so from the start. They have quickly integrated the representations of the neighborhood design plan and sometimes have reduplicated the offi cial appellations. Thus, one female inhabitant likes to name the Arlequin “New Town” each time an innovative feature is described. Others, less knowledgeable about the Arlequin “project,” confuse things in a way that the fi rst group would fi nd “glaring”: one inhabitant, for example, mistook the “Community Center” for the “Arts Center” (situated in the Malherbe neighborhood). Whatever the case may be, the names for the walkways and crossing areas retain an uncertain character. All the inhabitants questioned misuse the “of-fi cial” appellations at least once. One very often hears “gallery” for “passageway,” “passageway” for “gallery,” “galleries” for “the gal-lery,” “pool” for “lake”—so many places whose names put one off track, as they are more or less alien to usage and lived practice. These confusions are of practically no importance. And from this point of view, such “slips” are a matter of indifference. Indeed, we are dealing here either with common names (cove, passageway) or proper names (gallery, ramp) whose suitability to the site seems arbitrary or seems to designate a space too large to fi t the mood of a well-defi ned appropri-ation. In short, these place-names—still fairly alien to one’s everyday practices, wherein they are often likened to nonplaces [non lieux]—al-low of only one kind of social differentiation: that between those who know how to employ these terms perfectly well and those who make mistakes or who are unfamiliar with them. Spaces with nominal defi ni-tions hardly occasion anything but differences in one’s representations of them.

Other places are genuinely unnameable because they lack any imag-inable name. What is one to call the parts of the gallery adjoining the elevator entrance doors when, on the one hand, the gallery itself is not a street, as the inhabitants note, yet not a corridor either, and when, on the other hand, these doors open either directly onto the gallery or onto a half-enclosed space that is quite handy in protecting against the wind but looks quite expletive, like fi ller? In order to describe this spatial form that is of importance in one’s walks (a place for extended, and very often collective, waiting), the periphrases used reemploy what can be designated by use or proximity: “at the bottom of the elevator,” “by


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the mailboxes.” And what is one to call those “passageway” nooks that sometimes end in a window and sometimes lead to two or three apart-ment doors? One tried to pass them off as “social squares” but only those really in the know were able to connect the name to the place beyond the incongruity of the relation. For others, they are “bicycle garages,” “garbage disposal areas,” “corridors” as opposed to the pas-sageway, “entryways” (but where, then, are the entrances?). Clearly, these unnameable and unappropriable places are given over to acciden-tal and erratic uses—for the children who play there a moment or two, for some adults who periodically make them into the corridor of an apartment whose rooms would be each open lodging, and for “people who put beds in the corridors, in an emergency exit area!”

This diffi culty in naming unusual places does not last forever. Cer-tain spots, like the passageways and their nooks, remain an undefi ned area open to anything. Others, ill defi ned from the start, become char-acterized one day by a memorable appropriation. Between the groups that fi rst name places by appropriating them—thereby recognizing one other and being recognized by the quality of the names they have af-fi xed thereupon—and the rest of the inhabitants, a distinction is created through which a differentiated social relation is organized. The power to name is power over space and at the same timea distinct force within a sociospatial whole.

Collective Neologisms

Through the use of a created name, the process of appropriation ap-pears to us to be an effort to identify spatial forms. Figure 10 shows a few examples of collective neologisms.

As for what they denote, either these appellations impose a name where there was none before or they substitute themselves for the “of-fi cial” name, of which the inhabitants are unaware. “Agora” is em-ployed only on maps of the neighborhood and in the notices of the “Video-Gazette”6—with a meaning, moreover, that is different, the site for televised meetings most often being the “six-hundred-seat room.”

On the other hand, connotations differ from one appellation to


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another. Although it refers to a country-village-like feature that con-tradicts the urban setting of this neighborhood, the term Market Placenevertheless was established spontaneously and appears, at the time of the market’s creation, in the narratives of all inhabitants, irrespective of social group, age, or sex. The reemployment of an ever-so-common term has therefore marked the site according to its temporary function and with an indistinct appropriation performed on the scale of the en-tire neighborhood, as by general consensus.

The appellation “junior high school entrance” does not display the same lack of differentiation. Quite to the contrary, it generally occurs in the course of people’s trip narratives at the point where an obstacle is being mentioned. Rarer are the inhabitants who speak of this place as they approach it “without any problem.” Because of this, the denota-tion may vary beneath one and the same designation. For those whom it disturbs, the junior high school entrance lies outside and overfl ows too far onto the gallery, thus inducing fi gures of paratopism. That is to say, the part on the near side of the glass panels, “the inside,” the most outlying part is hardly visitable at all but, rather, imaginable, “with all those kids, those hooligans hanging around.” For the regulars at the junior high school or in the activity areas, this “junior high school en-trance” corresponds more to an entrance than to an exit. The part of the gallery of concern here is only a terminal point of the “entrance” within, the hall that penetrates deep into the buildings. Different uses of one and the same term therefore connote, from the collective point

Offi cial name Nature of the site Common appellation

(nonexistent) installation for the morning Market Place market in Arlequin

(nonexistent) main approach to the junior high junior high school school and the Community entrance Center on the gallery side

Agora fragment of the park paved Red Square in bricks and half-enclosed by a low wall

Figure 10


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of view, either a differentiation via rejection or an identifi cation with groups that are able to “enter the junior high school.” As one inhabitant says, “It’s open. Everyone can go there. We have the right, huh?” She enters the junior high school easily and even makes use of it from one end to the other as a crossing area; but “I . . . I don’t think that just any woman would get the idea in her head to do it . . . ,” she had said right beforehand.

Less polysemous, and used in a more restricted manner, is the ap-pellation “Red Square.” Some inhabitants of the neighborhood employ the term as a matter of course, marking by this common word a shared sense of belonging. Greater actors. or greater participants, to them none of the important events in the life of the neighborhood is alien. They know the history of the appellation, which recalls a stormy meeting, about work being done in the park, that took place on this small square between some inhabitants, “accompanied” by a political group, and the landscaper. The color of the material became associated with the color of the event upon the background of a well-known word-form (Mos-cow), in one of those syncretisms of which parallel languages hold the secret. This is also the case with languages of initiates, which other in-habitants speak only with care. Thus, twice do the interviews reveal the use of the term in a metalinguistic comment clause: “what is called the Red Square,” “the little square [ . . . ] that is named the Red Square.” The evocation of equivalencies and the discrepancy between speech proper and the appellations cited stem either from hesitations (like the one of the female inhabitant who knows the “park affair,” as it is seen later on, but has not made the connection, and who says, “Yes . . . I don’t know, because of the concrete, maybe. Maybe it’s dangerous for the kids.”) or from an effect of ironic distancing expressed by inhabi-tants who are quite up to speed about the “park story” and who, in a knowing tone, express astonishment that the appellation has become so matter of course.

Starting from nameless places or places of unknown name, the ap-position of a term allows a noteworthy appropriation of these places at the same time that it permits the manifestation of an identifi cation pro-cess for the social group that fi rst played with language’s relation to the space in question. While certain collective neologisms spread to a whole


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neighborhood and become elements for identifi cation, others, more re-strictive in character or even jealously guarded by those who employ them, have a strong connotation of belonging to this or that group or social subgroup. The defi nition of these social subgroups or aggregates is not given only in terms of “socioprofessional categories.” It is a mat-ter more concretely of a self-defi nition through which the aggregate dis-tinguishes itself by recognizing itself in a sociospatial practice of its own. We have seen, through prior examples, how important can be an act of naming that informs a site. Such a naming makes the site known, under one and the same qualifi cation, to all those who employ it and who thus recognize themselves in this identical usage.

It is often diffi cult to understand the meaning of the neologisms used by groups of inhabitants. Indeed, the more closed and typical the group is, the more hermetic is its language. One can detect in groups of chil-dren the appearance and rapid disappearance of neologisms that exist for the time of one game. When the child recounts the game to an adult (and to the sociologist who questions him), he no longer tells what qual-ity the cement tube had for the group (house? airplane? ship?, etc.). He decodes it by saying, “stuff . . . thingamajigs to have fun in.” Such mischievous concealment prevents knowledge of the concrete qualifi ers lived within the game. This appropriation set aside by private appella-tions equally operates among adults. When one inhabitant says he has taken a walk over “this sort of place in which there are bricks” and when others, either activity organizers or “active” inhabitants, call a meeting “on Red Square,” it is a matter of the same site, which is no more one person’s property than that of the others. However, from the standpoint of the lived activity, it is not the same place. It has, straight off, a particular qualifi cation, depending on whether this or that group fashions it in its own manner.

First Sketch of the Status of Appropriation on the Basis of Namings

The naming process yields an initial, approximative idea of the na-ture of appropriation. In naming everyday places in such and such a way, the inhabitants are concretely expressing the fact that they belong


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to some groups or collective aggregates. What is more, it is the social quality of every apprehension of space that hangs over the selection of this or that appellation. Appropriation does not bear, fi rst of all, on space but, rather, on such and such a relationship between a form of so-ciability and space.

One and the same space can be designated by different codes: simple codes of naming for the moment, but ones about which we have already had a hint that they signify ways of being. Certain times, appropriation by a group may coincide with a veritable social ownership of a coded site. Such is the case with all gang hideouts. Nonetheless, over the entire public space of the neighborhood, no place has been observed, or has been described to us by any of the inhabitants questioned, as remain-ing exclusive property on a permanent basis. The junior high school entrance, which is avoided by certain inhabitants, is not always “occu-pied” by the young. The school courtyards that are impassible at recess time become a perfectly calm crossing area at other moments of the day. While certain places are strongly marked by the coding of a few sub-groups and lead others to avoid them, one can nevertheless grasp that, beyond the sociospatial relation involved, appropriation basically is a matter of time. It is in time that a group manifests or does not manifest its existence and that it occupies a determinate public space at the same time as everyone else, but in a privileged way, or, on the contrary, at a specifi c moment.

It may be noted, moreover, that, in going from the sites most com-monly frequented by all sorts of groups that tend to be indistinguishable to sites specifi ed by a private, even secret, name that marks the exclu-sive relation of certain subgroups to these places, appropriation bears less and less on the given, reproduced space and more and more on the re-created space, in accordance with a specifi c time. It is the regulatory system of namings that indicates what type of social relation to space is at issue. Naming is the most obvious information the inhabitants set in opposition to the space as it is built.

A First Rule of the Code of Appropriation would thus state:

The collective nature of the frequentation of a space is inseparable from the

process of naming that characterizes that space.


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Territorial Appearance

In their narratives, the inhabitants mention spaces that, for them, do not change their social quality. These would be sites that are always well bounded. One could therefore draw up a synchronic map of the socio-spatial allotments inscribed upon the neighborhood and thus see terri-tories appear. And yet, beyond the fact that the map would constantly be changing, one would not know from it in what way these territories are constituted, nor would one be able to predict the likelihood of per-manent occupation by this or that group over such and such a privately set-aside space. As we know, territories are not, practically speaking, permanently occupied in the same manner; the fi gure of the metathesis of quality has helped to demonstrate this point.

For the inhabitant who speaks of or suggests recognition of such a “territoriality,” his relation to the space is always a negative one. If the limits seem to him so precise, that is because he delineates them through his acts of avoidance. The site under consideration is doubly “ill lived”: sensed in a harmful way and, in addition, often seen, not traveled through.The permanency of the occupation then felt by the inhabitant does not stem from his practical experience of the space but, rather, from the pure representation he makes of the spatial relations practiced by oth-ers. These territories, which are apparently so enclosed, are occupied by groups of inhabitants. Most often cited are “the young,” “the children,” “the North Africans” (and, within this pseudogroup, the “Tunisians” are distinguished from the “Algerians,” and vice versa). Also mentioned are “those from the activity areas,” “those who know how to talk,” and “the Video-Gazette.” Still other ways of occupying sites are manifested: “by the dogs” that have covered certain grassy areas with their messes and “by the cars” that must be walked around when they are parked. And, although they occupy space only in an episodic sort of way, bi-cycles and mopeds always appear as menacing features in the walking narratives.

The extension of the “occupant” category to other interveners than “people” allows one to suppose how imprecise is the defi nition of “oc-cupation.” In the act of sensing a counterappropriation, the delimitation


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and supposition of territorial permanency matter much more than the precise identifi cation of the occupying agency [l’instance occupante]. Groups that are apparently well encompassed by an appellation meant to defi ne them do not necessarily correspond to any reality. Such is the case with the group called “North African,” which appears as such only for those who do not belong to it; the aggregate known as “Video-Gazette,” to which a particular power is attributed;7 or “children” and “young people.” Heading in this direction, let us cite the following expressions:

In the market, there are too many children coming out of school. And as the school is next to the market, they all come to steal something.

I even fi nd that there are never many children at number 130. They play in the gallery or in the park.

You see, there are people who hang around all day in the passageways. Some of them piss in the passageway.

The Community Center, it brings in lots of things. It brings in . . . , there are always young people.

No, I didn’t go into the Community Center, because . . . it seems to me that you especially see young people in there.

At its outer reaches, “the group” extends to all other people beside oneself. This is quite clearly apparent in several of the interviews: it is that one can inhabit one’s lodgings, “despite” the whole New Town, or that the whole neighborhood fi nds itself incorporated into a sort of phantasm of the threatening collective, or that all the other inhabitants would be represented as mineralized, part of an overall landscape one only grazes against:

[At number 50,] there are some people concentrated around there and garbage cans lying around. When I can, I keep clear; unless, that is, I go on the road.

People watch us from the bistro. Their expressions are indifferent, rather hos-tile. Or maybe it is the shape of their faces that bothers me?

Generally speaking, the group is fi rst of all “the others” who are distinguished and identifi ed only through vague names, by one or two determinants. Here is a particularly evocative example in which a site’s state of being-rejected reduces recognition of hostile collective forces to some simple topical assignments:


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For all the good there is that the Community Center is located in the middle of the gallery, people don’t fi nd it very easy to go in there. One hasn’t been taught to speak; one has only been taught to listen. So, it’s always the same. The other day, a lady talked so well during the meeting that no one said anything afterward.

For that inhabitant, this not easily accessible site would be the property of a group that is doubly determined—namely, by the fact of being at the Community Center and by the privilege of their power of speech. Beyond the character of destinal facticity well underscored in the ex-pression, for which we grant our respect, the state of passive fi xedness is confi rmed by the phrase that follows: “it’s always the same.” One’s way of being in space passes on one’s wholly negative way of being with the other. The failure of appropriation is attributed in the end to a prohibi-tive counterappropriation in the face of which the inhabitant identifi es herself with a still imprecise “one” whose identity is but that of being situated outside the occupied site. Nothing is more vague than this com-munity of rejects that does not recognize itself in itself but is to be in-ferred simply along a Manichaean dividing line. A general judgment that arises soon after the fi rst quotation confi rms this point:

The New Town belongs to a category . . . to one category of inhabitants, that’s all! The others feel themselves housed, that’s all!

Once again, we see the partial phenomenon erected into a symbol of everything. The lack of a precise defi nition of the “others” considered as a group makes possible the unlimited extension of the power of ap-propriation that is ascribed to them. It suffi ces to compare such a way of apprehending this site called Community Center to the way a regu-lar does so in order for us to understand how much the closure of ter-ritorial limits and the permanency of such and such a social quality are manifestly obvious only for the person who feels excluded. The inhabi-tant deemed to be a regular at the site and belonging to the group of the “others” will not necessarily have the same opinion, nor will he carry out the expected conduct. He can be excluded at a certain moment or not feel himself to be a member of one and the same occupying group. He will say:

Sometimes, when passing by, I cast a glance at the half-opened door to the six-hundred-seat room to see if there is another meeting.


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Or:

I pass by the Community Center because there is always something to see. Even without any specifi c purpose, I really like to pass by there . . . to try to better integrate myself.

Confronted with the modalities of occupants’ lived experience of a site, defi nition of a permanent territory seems quite fi ctive. It holds but one interest for us: it brings to light the tensions centered on impossible-to-achieve or diffi cult appropriations, which point to the minimum con-stituent element of the code of appropriation:

Second Rule of the Code of Appropriation:

The characterization of the inhabited space in terms of fi xed territoriality is but the apparent effect of the assignment to a site of the group one has diffi culty defi ning.

Territorial Fluidities

Is territoriality a fi ction? Do there exist only counterappropriations? No doubt, the process of rigidifi cation of a territory corresponds to one’s inability to identify the lived way in which a group occupies this space. It stands in for a defi nition of the occupying unit. But an inhabitant’s domain of appropriation does not have the nature of a no-man’s-land:8

a hollowed-out constitution delineated by positings of “fi lled-in” sites. A positive appropriation will come to light if the space is seized not as appropriated pieces of a puzzle but, rather, as the fi eld that has allowed and does allow the appropriable. It is not to be assessed in terms of a locating of immutable and closed territories or of a listing of “proper-ties” but, rather, on the basis of the nature of the movement through which the inhabitant walks with ease or uneasiness, feeling “at home,” in some sort of way, or “extradited,” in the mode of collective complicit arrangements or in the mode of feeling alien.

On the elementary level as much as on the level of organization, walking fi gures already gave us a glimpse of some interesting indices. Certain fi gures may be placed under the heading of a tendency to main-tain one’s appropriation. Here, we are talking about two redundant


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processes (metabole and hyperbole)9 and symmetry. Other fi gures signal one’s search for appropriation. Included here are anaphora, which lays siege; digression, which forgets; and simple paratopisms, which create some paths in order to avoid other ones. It really was one’s encounter with alien appropriations or counterappropriations that provoked peri-topisms and paratopisms. Finally, synecdoche allows one to see quite well what kind of economy organizes appropriation and how the lived parts are, to an excessive degree, given therein in order to stand for the totality.

Appropriation is a dynamic process. As such, it shakes up spatial permanencies. Depending on the directions of one’s walks, territories neither fi nish nor begin in the same spot. Thus does one see one’s being domiciled dissociated from the notion of lodging; the former undergoes expansion or contraction—movements designated diastole and systolein the analysis of the fi gure of dissymmetry.10 The feeling of being “at home” glides from one place to another and can extend quite far, indeed, through a series of imperceptible gradations—even when it is embodied only in those slippers one is permitted to wear under the gallery, where the “public sphere” still seems to tolerate the “domestic” one. In order to do one’s shopping, a grandmother from the neighborhood says,

You don’t have to take an umbrella and you can go down in your slippers; with this gallery, you’re near everything. You even see women in dressing gowns.

Conversely, where one is domiciled can be reduced to an area smaller than one’s own lodging. Then, even on the interior staircases, even in one’s living room,

where there are the little ones, a twelve-year-old sister who is jealous of the other sister, the brother who does karate, the father who yells, the mother who is preparing the meal, with the television on top of that . . . you always fi nd yourself outside.

The sole refuge, the only place where one feels at home, becomes one’s bedroom.

Another breakdown in these territories (which we had thought of as frozen in place but which start to dissolve and become metamorphosed in climatic and chronometric time) is to be found once again in the fi gure


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of the metathesis of quality.11 To the examples already cited in this re-gard, let us add some other, quite eloquent ones: the extended occupa-tion of the center of the gallery during the summer months by inhabi-tants from the south (especially North Africans); the takeover of this same site, on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons,12 by groups of noisy, nimble children (on roller skates and miscellaneous vehicles). Follow-ing a group of adolescents with nothing to do, one sees the territories change when night falls. From territories for hanging out that are clearly bounded during the day (junior high school entrance, two-wheel-vehicle repair shop, mezzanine at number 50), one passes, at night, to a diffuse and mobile territoriality. With this last example, we have still another di-mension of appropriation, which upsets one’s spatial prejudices. By day, small youth gangs are seen, and their uproar, if any, makes itself heard only intermittently above the clamor of daytime comings and goings. At night, most of the inhabitants sense the irruptive presence of these gangs only through their hearing. The territory suddenly becomes diffuse and takes on an extension incommensurable with any spatial judgment that could strictly be connected with their visual faculty. The same thing ap-plies for unaccustomed cooking odors (grilled lamb and fi sh) that may waft from some unassuming balcony. These odors exhale, toward all the upper and surrounding apartments, the heightened presence of an alien group whose members are nevertheless spread out spatially.

It’s a specifi c odor . . . though it is summer. I think that the smell of spices comes from number 50.

It smells like . . . how to describe it? It smells like the kind of cooking I don’t do.

These territorial fl uidities reveal already a fi rst feature of the dialec-tical nature of appropriation processes. Anything that one would look for in terms of spatial division and permanent states would mislead us. Even the notion of a state of ease or of uneasiness merely transcribes momentarily and individually what has been, or will be, movement and a project of differentiation. When one inhabitant walks everywhere with ease and yet does not feel at all at home in the neighborhood and fl ees as soon as he can, whereas another inhabitant feels at ease only in a tiny territory leading up to her apartment and yet prepares a tenacious


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project of conquering the rest of the neighborhood (a project which, a year later, we know to have been successful), the difference in the qual-ity of the appropriation is beyond doubt. The fi rst person will always be an individual skirting the social as well as the spatial, without anything more. The second will not necessarily succeed in appropriating for her-self the entire space, but she will live her appropriation in relation to all other appropriations, now or in the future; through this movement, she will designate the group to which she belongs.

Two phenomena that are temporal in nature shatter the bounds of territories seized in their spatial permanencies. They render the strictly spatial determinant of the code of appropriation unsuitable as an ex-planation of this code.13 It is through change that territories appear and disappear and that two territories, which should be merged in space, do not coincide, for one’s walks give them a specifi city that depends on intention and orientation. It is via anticipation that appropriation overfl ows the territory’s spatial forms, that it makes itself heard or felt before it is seen, and fi nally that, beyond space, it bears on time and on the possible.

Third Rule of the Code of Appropriation:

Movements of appropriation assume, as their condition of possibility, the sur-passing of purely spatial determinants that express social relations only in the form of simple “states of affairs.”

Such movements imply a dynamic that is apprehended in time.

Differentiating Appropriations

From the foregoing, we can retain two paradoxical remarks about ter-ritory. On the one hand, every collective movement of appropriation stands out thanks to territoriality—therefore, thanks to the identifi ca-tion of a space endowed with qualitative unity, if not with almost as-signable limits. On the other hand, nothing can be understood about collective appropriation if one does not seek to know, via individual ev-eryday actions (we have chosen walks under this heading), how qualita-tive differences are constituted.


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Synchronically speaking, the state of a collective housing complex is therefore to be described as an organization of appropriations that are interconnected and opposed to one another through their specifi city. Diachronically speaking, movements of appropriation enter into dia-lectical relation. Every identifi cation of another appropriation produces a differentiation. And every differentiation posits the specifi city of an appropriation in which the inhabitants who are operators of difference are identifi ed.

What about the notion of territory, then? It becomes the fi eld of as-signment (from the synchronic point of view) around which move (dia-chronically speaking) the fi gures of a walking rhetoric that is productive of territorial appearances.

In following the walks taken in everyday life, one never notices this territorial “system.” The representation of the whole reconstructs it, yielding for us a “state” of this system that is never lived. On the other hand, the writing of one’s walks expresses quite well indifferent skirting, unpleasant encounters with oppositions and exclusions, and the search for sites that are favorable or deemed appropriable.

From this point of view and depending on the time, the counterap-propriation that arises through the walk modulates, in proportion to its strength, the quality of the competing appropriation. Over a spatial whole given as a unit of habitats, the state of reciprocity in which all possible appropriations are situated displays no homogeneity. Certain sites are appropriated neither in unity nor in opposition but, rather, in dispersion. Thus, walks in the park encounter only weak counterappro-priations. The park, a site for daydreaming, or a site for one’s eyes, sum-mons everyone in an undifferentiated way. Individuals or small groups always see one another from a distance; avoidance is easy to prearrange mutually, and one can believe oneself to be alone there.14 Whence such expressions as the following concerning the park:

It’s looking at people from behind.

It’s being able to watch over the children from the mounds, because from here you have the best view.

It’s the pleasure of going outside, on the grass, where you can even get a suntan without knowing you’re being watched.


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It’s a spot that could be even more intimate, if there were more trees.

In this way, the process of differentiation borders on metastable indi-vidualization. In such forms of macrocollective usage, one fi nds neither clear oppositions nor genuine collusions but, rather, a loose and tempo-rary consensus. The site momentarily takes on a fi ctive unity that is ex-pressed well by the names then employed: “the park,” “the stores.”

In contrast, the strongest appropriations manifest themselves through the fundamental fi gure of synecdoche. There is always, in this case, a particularization of space rather than a partitioning of space, the latter only occasionally expressing the former. The marketplace be-comes socially qualifi ed when a part of it is occupied by a group of ac-tivists or when gangs of children invade the area behind the counters. The gallery becomes qualifi ed when, in a corner, one hears or catches sight of an aggregate of inhabitants who walk or visit in the same mode. The more these counterappropriations are anticipated, in their expression and in their perception by “the others,” the more partial ap-propriation tends to give itself out as total appropriation. As soon as the fi rst students leave the junior high school at noon, the central sec-tion of the gallery is already, for passersby, fully occupied. Three “hoo-ligans” “go up” the gallery at night, and already “the whole gallery has been invaded.” The worried inhabitant then passes to the outside of the covered street.

Other particularizations of space practiced by those who feel ex-cluded come in response to particularizations of space encountered as obstacles. The elementary forms of avoidance observed in the fi gures ex-pounded in the preceding chapter thus fashion spaces of rejoinder and reaction. At the same time that sites are divided up, the force of oppos-ing appropriation is heightened, which in language is expressed through a generalization.

Let us follow an example of this complex process that applies to one and the same site. On the side of the counterappropriation as felt, we have:

I didn’t go into the Community Center, because . . . it seemed to me that a lot of young people were seen there. People of a certain age don’t go in there. Young people feel at home there.


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And on the side of the supposed appropriation (by “the young people”), there is this:

To the Community Center, it’s instead there that you go. When there’s some kid, he’s told: “You are not from here, go home!” Everyone really knows one another, so one always has a tendency to stay in the Community Center, . . . to see what’s happening.

A little later (for the same social aggregate):

OK, at 5:30, they kicked us out of the Community Center. In the Commu-nity Center, there was no one there any longer! So, we get together, us young people, and hang out, doing what? Talking bullshit.

Let us note that the site of specifi c concern is the entrance to the Com-munity Center, a well-circumscribed site, and yet one confused with the whole establishment both by the “young people” and by those who feel “excluded” therefrom. We have some symmetrical synecdoches, but also a series of generalizations: the “young,” on the one hand, “they” or “one” on the other.

It clearly follows that, in the main, appropriation is situated in the oppositions and not in the system of mutual recognitions that is always approximative and situated off center. Ultimately, the series of coun-terappropriations encountered in the course of one’s walks tends to become simplifi ed and to be schematized for economy’s sake. Various territorial occupations of different natures are grouped around a com-mon quality. Thus, dogs and children are assigned to one and the same process of appropriation that arises from counterappropriations by the adults who kick them out of the house:

People have animals; they have children: it’s the same thing. They put them out in the morning, and for the whole day!

The rhetoric of one’s walks therefore seems to proceed with as much excess in its signifi ers as in its signifi eds. Of all the quotations reported, of all the expressions coming from inhabitants concerning the processes of counterappropriation, none proved correct in an “objective” exami-nation of reality in general. The confrontation of various appropriations assigned to one and the same site, as well as that of the various sites at-tributed to the appropriation of one and the same group, tends to cancel


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out differences. When a group declares itself to be excluded, it is not necessarily the one that the occupying group rejects. Either the observer spots the relation between appropriated sites and the groups who appro-priate and will then, while establishing the limits and at the same time setting the facts straight, give an account of the instantaneous system he has identifi ed, or one trusts the inhabitants’ narratives and then becomes witness to the manifestation of extreme expressions of what arises in the everyday existence of social aggregates. In this sense, movements of ap-propriation are expressed only through a propensity to diminish differ-entiations or, quite the contrary, to heighten [amplifi er] them.

The arrangement of signifi ers—what walking fi gures express—into a stable organizational structure generally applicable to a territorial whole thenceforth becomes more and more improbable. An inventory of the state of appropriations that would end up representing everyday life as a system of relations of force would constantly have to temper the excesses of signifi cation, moderate rhetorical effects, fi nd abstract mid-dle terms between these expressions that singularly heighten the force of their competition, fi nally reduce the contradictory particularizations that go into a given space, and allow the appearance of only one pre-dominant signifi er. Yet, for the benefi t of a system of appropriation that is, moreover, always incomplete and always to be modifi ed again, one would be rendering the force that moves appropriation insignifi cant and makes the study of its nature incidental.

Through the decisive weight of its dynamic feature, the fourth rule of the code of appropriation marks the limit point of the study of pe-destrian signifi ers in terms of combinatory structure. It calls for a choice between the analysis of a system of relations of force and the study of expressive force.

Fourth Rule of the Code of Appropriation:

The movement of appropriation takes on specifi city and is apprehended under the modality of a force of variable degree. The quality of the appropriation is to be assessed in terms of the force of competing counterappropriations.

Up to the present time, the play of such competition has manifested it-self in three basic modes. With the appearance of the dynamic factor, one begins to suspect now that these modes are dialectical relations:


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• a dialectic in which appropriations and counterappropriations oppose one another and that produces identifi cations and differ-entiations in a connected way;

• a dialectic between space and the fi rst dialectic as concerns the movements of appropriation; it transforms space through change and anticipation;

• a third dialectical form in which one sees oppositions between walking practices of appropriation and verbal generalizations (coming under the heading of representation and of the repro-duction of systematic classifi cations).

Nonetheless, we are still unfamiliar with the overall movement that brings about these antagonisms. It will become possible to affi rm that it really is a matter of a dialectic only once our examination of the nature of the forces of appropriation and counterappropriation has been com-pleted. Inhabitant activity displays still other properties that allow us to advance in our understanding of this force; and, as a matter of fact, such properties cannot be integrated into a systems model that tends toward closure. This is the resolutely disruptive function of everyday events and the fundamental role of spatial deconstruction.

The Differentiating Event

Although appropriation and counterappropriation would be liable to appearances and disappearances, regular reappearances at different mo-ments, and also prolonged absences, one discovers, if not some per-manency, at least a persistency in the qualifi cation of spatial relations. Thanks to this, such and such a social aggregate can infer the existence of other aggregates. Subgroups must really have a tendency to be insis-tent in their way of manifesting themselves, which thereby allows recog-nition of them and a presentiment of them in their minimal identity.

Already qualifi ed by their assignments of a group to a space, and vice versa, appropriations are also qualifi ed by a marking to which they refer and which, moreover, specifi es them. One thus fi nds, through these


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narratives of one’s walks, a concomitance between the manifest force of an appropriation and the memory of an event. Appropriations persist all the more when the irruptive force of the event has created a greater impression.

One question posed to the inhabitants was aimed at knowing what they had felt to be events in the neighborhood since their arrival. Now here, two classes of events appear: on the one hand, more or less fore-seeable changes in the collective space, the best example of which is the creation of the market, but also the openings of various sectors of activity or consumption (library, self-service restaurant); on the other hand, unforeseeable accidents that happened to individuals or groups, like the “park affair” (Red Square), the children’s carnival, collective celebrations (Bastille Day, stairwell or fl oor meetings), fi ghts or violent confl icts whose nature is well encapsulated in the expression of one female inhabitant: “It’s not every day that there are things like that.” The varieties of events are to be distinguished fi rst of all by the dura-tion of the event. The creation of the market was an event that lasted fi ve or six months; the diffuse force of its impact and its nature, which was judged to be pleasant by all, authorize a collective appropria-tion on the scale of the entire neighborhood. Ways of inhabiting space change smoothly through the fashioning of a common usage deemed suitable to all. “The market opened Saturday,” one female inhabitant recounts,

and I fi nd that it’s good, really good. The fi rst few days, there were some musi-cians. . . . Did you see them? I sensed something intimate. There are many people who know each other. Afterward, you get used to it.

By way of contrast, the carnival and the fi ghts, though of inverse moral value, are both of short duration. And yet their strains or their din have a lastingly resounding effect upon the way one conducts one-self at such and such a moment, in this or that place, or opposite one or another subgroup. A child thus exclaims:

There was the carnival! There was the Archi brass band. I really like brass bands. And then a big dragon; that was neat. Everyone was in disguise. [ . . . ] I knew that the market was going to happen, though I didn’t know about the carnival.


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One inhabitant living near the café says:

For a while, it was a disaster. One night there was a fi ght. Everything was broken! I was listening; I got goose bumps because of it. Yet, I was up above, huh? . . . Now, you can no longer go to this bar. There’s practically nothing but Algerians.

The marking of the appropriation or of the counterappropriation proves in that case to be much stronger and more memorable. The recognition of the identity of the subgroup authoring the event or the difference tends to be heightened, and to persist longer, as one sees when relating the tracings of one’s walks to the narrative of events.15

Between events that include an expected change and irruptive events, the synecdoches are reversed. Taking on a form of appropriation that affects the neighborhood as a whole, the market in fact alters only a part of the space and the practice of a quite particular moment of everyday life. Having arisen in some corner of the neighborhood, fi ghts acted out and lived out by a small number of inhabitants tend to heighten the dif-ferentiations among groups and to mark in a lasting and memorable way one’s relation to this space or to that group; each time one’s path approaches the site, one recognizes the group. Morphogeneses differ in their effect. Certain events fi rst alter space set aside for public use; oth-ers fi rst alter one’s way of being in the space. Appropriations and coun-terappropriations stand out in a much stronger and more differentiating way in the second case.

“Eventfulness” is an operator of difference that shakes up spatial ap-pearances because it contrasts the wholly singular marking of a time of its own with the duration of the everyday. Even more than that, events of a similar nature (moped treks, the passing by of “gangs,” altercations as well as neighborhood celebrations) do not resound in the same way in all cases and do not enter with equal importance into the lived expe-rience of one’s habitat. Some groups of inhabitants attempt to attenu-ate the irruptive features of the event, to gloss over the effect of a break. The style of their narrative abounds in incidental clauses of the follow-ing type: “that happens so often” or “it hardly surprises people any-more.” Alone, two or three events will seem inordinate, inconceivable. Other inhabitants, by way of contrast, look for anything that shatters


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the commonly held image of the living spaces in the neighborhood and anything that builds up a tension therein. All sorts of events then be-come for them levers for difference.

Eventfulness is creative of differentiation under several headings. Each time an event occurs, a difference is brought into play (until the point of rupture) via the tension it generates among ways of homog-enizing time, ways of repeating the space in one’s memory habits, and ways of shaking up spatial repetition and chronometry through the en-hancement of irruptive moments, through the hyperbole of the memory of one time. Eventfulness differentiates, within a spatial whole, via the synecdoche of fragments that are rendered exceptionally singular and that will never again be as they were before and, for a long time, never anything other than the suddenly marked site. The third difference is the collective effect of the fi rst two. Depending on the strength of the im-pression and the nature of the interpretation of the event, some groups of inhabitants differentiate themselves from other groups through an identifi cation in their same treatment of what is memorable; they have similar ways of fashioning the event.

Fifth Rule of the Code of Appropriation:

The forces of appropriations and counterappropriations vary in direct propor-

tion to the impact and persistence of the marking performed by the eventful

memory.

Whence a twofold consequence regarding the various ways of un-derstanding the process of differentiation in everyday life. Assuming that the code of appropriation could be classifi ed as a system, it would not be a closed system in which the contiguities between identifi ed ele-ments would persist in terms of the permanency of the differences in-volved but, rather, a system open to change, and even to disturbances of unforeseeable effect. A second consequence follows: only if we take into account the unforeseen eventualities brought about by nonchronomet-ric time can we clarify the nature of the dialectical movement through which appropriations and counterappropriations articulate lived collec-tive relations—in other words, in what sense this movement, as reten-tion of the other as other in the same, is differance.16


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Appropriation via Dislocation [Non-lieu]

After the reversal of the hegemony of simultaneity and of purely spatial determinants that is performed through the manifestation of the force of time and of memory, there subsists an ultimate instantiated principle, one that is quite active in the appropriations recounted to us by the in-habitants. Present in the processes of heightening, of anticipation, and of synecdoche, it never is observed directly from the site [lieu] itself but, rather, from its negation. The “topos” in which it is willingly incorpo-rated is the discourse that circulates among the inhabitants, and rather through snatches than in an organized manner. Beyond synecdoche, the fi gures it prefers are the metathesis of quality, hyperbole, staggered poly-semy, anaphora, and paralipsis.

This instantiated principle, which is imaginary in nature, may be detected fi rst of all in the rumor, most often disturbing in nature, that envelops this or that site. It is always connoted by a certain dose of fas-cination, even when one wants to treat hearsay disdainfully. Several in-habitants thus begin by saying that the rumors are not to be believed. Nevertheless, they dread trips at night, by prudence on their part or because of a lack of self-assurance in case some unfortunate and un-foreseen thing might happen; it is the gallery as a whole that becomes a “fearful” place, to use the expression of one female inhabitant. Other inhabitants alter or cancel their trips solely on the basis of what they have heard others recount.

I was haunted by this return trip. At night, the galleries, it’s like a labyrinth. A lot of things have been said: the gangs, the attacks, the people you wouldn’t want to associate with. Also, I refuse a bit to see people, since I fear that they would scare me with their gossip.

In the exemplary case of staggered polysemy,17 one sees the elevator become loaded up with one signifi cation after another. Behind or at the end of these signifi cations, imaginary extensions borne by rumors un-failingly appear.

People recount a lot of things about the elevators. . . . It’s true that that encour-ages a lot of things.


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One no longer knows, in the end, whether the series is ordered by the mood of the imaginary or terminates, as if accidentally, with imagin-able evocations of things to come. However, the ease with which images drawn from bestiaries or science fi ction are superimposed upon all the signifi cations of restriction, tension, and worried collusions and encom-pass them leads one to think that these signifi cations are quite often only the instrumental delegates for an unavowable imaginary expression. It is a matter less of a counterappropriation than of an appropriation in which social differences are easily confused and which, taking the de-tour into the imaginary, “derealizes” the merely spatial dimension of the site. That elevator cab suspended at the end of a cable and making its destiny-led hazardous voyage no longer encloses anything but the dis-turbing, the threatening, and the fatal. Thus:

People are monstrously scared of the doors; they believe it’s a vise that is going to crush them. You’re trapped like wild animals there; you know: Bam!

Everyday observation shows that, inside the elevator, verbal ex-changes and dramatic evocations are set into gear on the basis of noises.Some of the elevators do indeed emit metallic scraping sounds worthy of a Scottish castle: “an infernal noise heralds its arrival.” Jokes about exorcism or exclamations verging on panic inaugurate the process of communication and explicit collective appropriation in which memory of rumors is mixed with metallic rumblings. All the passengers sink into the same sense of imminent catastrophe. But the most dramatic images arise with the halt of the noise, at the point where one no longer knows whether one is moving or if one is stuck: “you no longer hear anything; for me, it’s the start-up of the gas chamber.” The site is then completely cut off from the environment and anything becomes possible, provided that it would be the worst.

Thus, certain spaces that are lived in a mode impregnated with the imaginary tend to lose their nature as a “site” inserted into a laid-out and developed spatiogeometric context. The process stems from the ef-fect of an excessive division owing to synecdoche and from the effect of a derealization of the representations and recollections of visible space. What is heard, whether collective rumor or disturbing noise, covers over and deconstructs the visual realm, which ordinarily is predominant.


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One no longer sees the elevator, or the café, or the mezzanine where the development plan has situated them; imaginary instantiated principles metamorphose their reference to the situation.

Such an appropriation via dislocation is always inserted into the complex web of pedestrian movement, which follows the rhythm of singular events. A sequential attempt to take one’s bearings by distin-guishing spatiotemporal fragments one by one would never allow such an appropriation to be seen. In this sense, the abrupt silence of the el-evator is particularly dramatic, for the preceding occurrence of the dis-turbing noise had already absorbed the entire lived experience of the atmosphere.

The dislocation is often of what is heard, noises or words. And yet one already has a presentiment of other varieties of atopic confi gura-tion—in the sense that the geometrically constructed space collapses—in various walking fi gures.

First of all, there is the metamorphosis of spatial determinants in hyperbole.18 The dreamlike appropriation of a “site” makes it lose its “real” spatial context and tends to give it out as the totality, presented under the heading of a preeminent quality. Thus, the “mound” does not correspond to a part of the park as the latter was laid out; it recovers and symbolizes the dreamlike quality belonging to the park. Through an imaginary evocation, the staircase inside the apartment derealizes one’s lodging and removes it from the context of the high-density hous-ing complex: “With this staircase, you’d think you were going back into a small private home.” These types of appropriation are hardly based on oppositions. Rather, they draw their strength within the con-fused cathexis of reproduced attitudes and image patterns: the solitary dreamer; one’s desire for a single-unit home. Eminently singular, such a dislocation, such a nonplace is never totally dissociated from the “com-monplace” or from what is named the collective imaginary.

In anaphora and paralipsis,19 fi gures that may be compared by the presence within each of fascination and that write en route a prudent besieging of a site or its delayed avoidance, dislocation corresponds to what could happen. The increased force of attraction imaginarily pro-jected into a site that thereby becomes fascinating comes to reinforce one’s persistent imagining of possibilities, and one thereby fi nds one


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has a hard time diverting one’s steps. Beyond de facto differentiation (being rejected), these fi gures signify delayed identifi cation, as well. This is what one assumes about alien appropriation, about which one can-not make oneself indifferent. That is the nature of the fascination one encounters in one’s walks. Frequenting the bordering areas or linger-ing around there is equivalent to sketching out already the projected appropriation.

Indeed, the imaginary component in the force that moves appropria-tion gives one last dimension to the signifi cation of the processes of asyn-deton and synecdoche. The division and the deformation of the laid-out and developed space are accompanied by a derealization of the rela-tion between sites and the overall spatial context. The intention of this clearly and distinctly composed “reality,” which presupposes territorial homogeneity, is to situate every everyday practice within the context of the geographic whole. Such referencing is put in check by the phenom-ena of rupture, delay, anticipation, and impregnation by the imaginary. The dialectic of appropriations and counterappropriations refers to the lived spatiotemporal situation and not to spatiogeometric representa-tion, which this dialectic returns to its originary abstractness.

Sixth Rule of the Code of Appropriation:

The process of everyday appropriation of a built-up and developed space implies a derealization of this space. Collective ways of being in space do not necessar-ily privilege the visual order, but also that of the audible, of the tangible, and of the imaginable, all three of these instantiated principles being very active in this deconstruction.

Conclusion in the Form of a Bifurcation

Obsolescence of the Notion of Appropriation and Splitting of the Signification of the Code of Appropriation

The code of appropriation is very much the result of a dialectical move-ment. This dynamism, whose nature had earlier called for further clarifi cations,20 is a force of negation, of subversion of what are taken to be self-evident territorial facts. The essence of collective life in an


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urban setting is to be defi ned not only through the lived experience of oppositions of one social group to another, but also by a constant ten-sion between constructed spatiality handed over for use and the rhetorical deconstruction of this space, which is done in favor of the expression of styles of inhabiting. Nothing is ever defi nitively settled or decided in such a play of oppositions. Reproduced by the dominant representations of functional use, territorial appearance resists; the inhabitants enunciate it in terms of having, of ownership, of spatial boundaries, of territo-rial solidity. This resistance is incorporated into all the effects of encod-ing that tend to have some permanency. The effects of decoding, or of counterappropriation, each time express, in their movement of nega-tion, the reality of an ever renewed dynamic. In other words, one day or another, the apparent appropriation of territory is denied, but, in other respects, it is absorbed and preserved21 in order to be used in some new spatiotemporal confi guration. Also, the code of appropriation concerns just as much the social organization as the disorganization of space. It can serve two readings.

The term code therefore takes on two signifi cations. On the one hand, the play of encodings and decodings gives itself out to be a system of explanation of collective life over a space that has become the stake in a confl ictual affi rmation of groups and social aggregates. Yet we are dealing here with a code of effects, of signs of differentiation and identi-fi cation. For, on the other hand, there exists a rhetorical code, or meta-code, which is for us the condition of possibility for the other one. The moments of its emergence form a discrete sequence that reduplicates the succession of codings and decodings carried out in appropriated sites. This repeated effort of destructuration—which is possible one day or another—of every coded and apparently appropriable space undoubt-edly becomes apparent only through careful modal analysis.

In conformity with this perspective and despite the systematic ap-pearance of a statement of “rules,” the sequence of the six noteworthy forms of appropriation that have been presented has nothing of an enu-meration of explanatory laws about it. If such were the case, the expo-sition would be but a feeble contribution to the problematic of social codes, which has, moreover, already been skillfully developed in the fi eld of contemporary scientifi c knowledge. Its sole interest would then be to


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propose an ever more critical analysis of the pseudoconcept of appropria-tion, which has already been used and abused so much. Indeed, we have seen how appropriation affi rms itself only through its own negation.

From the fi rst to the sixth, each form of appropriation outstrips the preceding one through a repeated dialectical process. At the outset, the possibility of the gap is announced by the indication of the impact the name has on the site. It is then that territorial constants are fl uidi-fi ed, movement renders the apparent structure shaky, rhetorical force (through excess, immoderation) rattles systematic representation, and what is singularly memorable breaks up spatial permanencies—to the point where the site itself is derealized. The sixth rule offers the fi nal explanation of what the preceding ones had only approached. Even more than that, it introduces a decisive rift into the reading of the code’s signifi cations.

We were expecting that these signifying pedestrian confi gurations (the fi gures of walking) would be pregnant with a body of well-con-nected signifi eds and that this body would be surrounded by the—now quite dubious—name of code of appropriation. Here, signifi cation is split in two: on the one hand, it denotes; on the other hand, it con-notes. Denotation brings to light the organization of the appropriation of the space by aggregates of inhabitants in the form of an unstable structure that is always being called back into question. Connotation refers us back to something else; it indicates the structuration itself, the code-producing movement. Inhabitant rhetoric produces a strange division of Meaning. Two signifi cations run alongside each other, one of which ends up expressing the social constitution of an inhabited space, the other of which is the return of meaning upon its own power to signify.

Undoubtedly, the fi rst signifi cation will seem to be the sole one ac-ceptable. Our taste for clarity and univocality will tell us again and again that every signifi er has to be pregnant with a different and unique signifi ed. The examination of the rhetoric of one’s walks would then be but the stylistic study of the contemporary situation of being “housed” in town.

Nevertheless, the second signifi cation points to the possibility of an inhabiting power. As tenuous as it might be, we want to spin the web of


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this power at the point where scientifi c knowledge, preoccupied as it is with the massive forms of causality (“production of space,” “social re-production”), would see only anecdote.

The Third Meaning of Rhetoric: An Inhabitant Expression

Would inhabitant rhetoric not signify itself? Occupied with confi guring the habitable, would it not express at the same time its own powers?

Behind its cautious and submissive appearances, ambulatory prac-tice is also capable of avoiding the trap of making a clear distinction be-tween signifi er and signifi ed as well as that of asserting their necessary correspondence. So, does not rhetorical analysis, which distinguishes a signifying body and a signifi ed body, bring out the expressive movement at work in everyday life? Because it knows how to express more than one signifi ed as well as to express itself, this pedestrian irony scrambles signifi cation and overfl ows the bounds of such an analysis. After hav-ing served the purpose of rhetorical analysis, pedestrian irony marks its limits.

Several phenomena of noteworthy importance bear witness to this. These phenomena also raise as many questions. Let us recall them here.

1. The entire signifi cation of one’s walks is shot through with the pro-cesses of asyndeton and synecdoche. These processes affect as much its signifi ed side as its signifying side, because, already being essen-tial conditions for the confi guration of everyday sites, they persist in the code of appropriation (the event’s derealization of the spatial context, the memorable, dislocation, and qualitative overdetermina-tion of a site). Discontinuity and the overfl owing of the partial onto the whole are the signifi er and the signifi ed at the same time. Whence comes such an excessive power?

2. Ambulatory practice refers to the space as it is laid out and devel-oped only by derealizing it. Even more than that, it increases the confusion22 by purposely granting more than one signifi ed to a signi-fi er. This polysemy clouds and clutters up the representation of so-


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cial space, which would like to have univocal codes. The imaginaryis probably not alien to this upheaval infl icted upon a too well con-structed reality. Where does this imaginary come from? Under what heading does it intervene, in so impertinent a manner, within the fi eld of signifi cations?

3. Nonchronometric time has intervened each time the qualifi cation of sites is diverted from being a simple play of spatial relations. As early as our examination of combinatory fi gures, as early as the third form of the code of appropriation, lived time was taking on increasing importance. It inserts itself into polysemous fi gures,23 as well as into the delaying process of anaphora, or into the “time taken” to confi g-ure metabole. It takes the forms of memory and eventful resonance when the code of appropriation is infl ected in a decisive way. None-theless, its action still seems subordinate and instrumental. It is again only the antithesis of spatiality, a rhetorical effect.

The topographical simultaneity of a map charting everyday trips will obviously tell us nothing about the lived experience of the walk. Yet the coordinated stream of the organization of walking fi gures seems to sweep inhabitants into perpetual movement. Nothing has appeared of the pauses, halts, and temporary or prolonged visits that either punctuate one’s walks or terminate them. If what is suffered and what is acted are never absolutely dissociated from each other in one’s ways of walking, perhaps these two do not take great care only to characterize one walk as especially acted or another as especially suffered. Might it be that one’s general style of walking in indiffer-ent fashion as well as a walking style that acts through difference and variation do not exclude, in any of their moments, an articula-tion from the absent to the present, from the acted to the suffered, from movement to pause, from accelerating to slowing down? Of time, rhetorical analysis will have listed only the noteworthy effects brought into play through the movement of everyday life.

Everything that is displayed as rhythmic in the movement of one’s appropriations and walks has thereby also been reduced. The evoca-tion of time here has left us nothing to understand about temporal-ity. Walking in town again becomes a “given” that can be analyzed


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in itself. And the act of walking seems to arise from the movement traced by steps taken without a body.

4. What status is there for signifi cation that will fi nally account for ar-ticulatory and rhythmic phenomena? Our study of styles has shown how the close connection between the expresser and the expressed becomes overloaded and how excesses in expression, emphasis, and hyperbole are added thereto. This expressionism outstrips the seman-tic suitability or equivalency required by prosaic signifi cation, the kind that always intends the proper meaning and the unique meaning (univocality). Often, walking fi gures connote more than they denote, and sometimes, so excessively that they will seem irrational, includ-ing thereby too much that is implicit, too much that is unsayable. In each of them, this fi gure of silences and suspension points—asyn-deton—maintains its vigil, ever ready to reject unity in favor of the plural, the total in favor of the scattered. Shattering the order of dual-isms, it makes it possible for a plurality of meanings to fl ourish.

If, beyond the signifi er and the signifi ed, the third meaning of the ac-tivity of inhabiting (signifying oneself) merits some attention, one must stray from a discourse that is too obstinate to distinguish terms two by two, either in the language belonging to the laid-out and developed space (whole and part, container and contained, space and time) or in the language about the practice of this space (acted and suffered, writ-ing and reading, signifying and signifi ed). Without that, the movement of expression will always fall to pieces.

The rhetoric of one’s walks has demonstrated the possibility of an inhabiting power. Yet, too tied to the order of signifi cation, it cannot truly attest to the existence of this power, nor can it comprehend its na-ture. The issue of the status of expression must now be taken up, because what is now in question is also the power of an inhabitant expression.

How, through the whole of everyday rhetorical activity, can inhabi-tants express themselves and express their own power?

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4

The Body of Inhabitant Expression

To return to things themselves is to return to that world

which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always

speaks, and in relation to which every scientifi c schema-

tization is an abstract and derivative sign-language, as is

geography in relation to the countryside in which we have

learnt beforehand what a forest, a prairie, or a river is.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

The study of inhabitant rhetoric succeeds all too well. The steps had left traces, stigmata, which permitted the excavation and ex-humation of something expressed that is obscure and yet marked by everydayness. As if it were some unknown town—which is here a met-aphorical town, the subtext of built-up appearances—here the coher-ent organization of pedestrian tracks1 that will satisfy our demand for knowledge has been brought to light.

Is it not to be regretted that, by retracing too well its structure, by classifying too well its fi gures, the act of structuration—the movement of confi guration—has faded away and now escapes us? The geography of our travels dulls the taste for landscapes we nevertheless inhabit. Is inhabitant expression never but a play of effects, of marks affi xed upon the space? Or will one be able to tell how these steps had a body, how they signed simply a presence in space capable of a broader-based ex-pressiveness that is also pregnant with other powers?

Already, we had noted a stylistic homology between the narratives recounted by the inhabitants and their spatial practices. Do not narra-tive style and ambulatory style emanate from a more encompassing style

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of being that engages and commits the whole of our experience of the everyday world? And is not this experience rooted in a lived immediacy, of which we have related only its winding trajectories?

The question of the body of expression invites one to rediscover the experience of the body before knowledge,2 before the mediation of rela-tions of signifi cation. We shall “reawaken” this experience of the world by rereading the inhabitants’ narratives in another manner. The preg-nancy of their everyday atmospheres and the immediacies of their sen-sorimotor activity will be our Ariadne’s thread.

Climatic Pregnancy

What is one to name this set of impressions that surround the lived instant? “Climate,” “ambiance,” “atmosphere”? The fi rst designation has a meteorological ring to it. The second conjures up too much the idea of some artifi cially-produced contrivance (“creating an ambiance,” “mood music” [musique d’ambiance]). The third wavers between the meaning given to it in gaseous physics, Arletty’s memorable intonations in Hôtel du Nord, and the indulgent smile of knowing arrogance, per-suaded that such an object is ungraspable, unclassifi able, psychologi-cally too complex, and sociologically too trifl ing.

We shall be less attached to words3 than to the reality they surround, each one in its own way. Indeed, the climate of this or that moment of everyday life always takes on a capital importance for the inhabitants we have questioned. Not easily identifi able, it is quite appropriately felt through an immediate sensory experience. Abortive expressions, impre-cise periphrases, suspension points: in language, climate is not separated from its preperceptual characters. Yet how many avoidances, how many redundancies are there in one’s walks; how many stops and stays are ex-plained by the pregnancy of a site’s atmosphere.4 How does one avoid for long a site that is nevertheless deserted, where the striking event that has marked it no longer has timely relevance? Why persist in besieging a site into which one cannot really penetrate? Is the obstinate repetition of certain trips just a constant treading over the same ground, when weather and light are always changing, be they ever so slightly? Like


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collective presences, built forms are never given in strict permanency and rigorous identity. Altered, transformed, present although (“really”) absent, they become what reasonable acquaintance would call “unreal.” They are incorporated, in fact, into the climatic, the “pathic,” into a cer-tain atmosphere that envelops the ways one inhabits, the force of which, sometimes being very restrictive, always helps to qualify the actions of everyday life. In the sense that climate overdetermines, it could be called something “surreal.”

By virtue of their nature, everyday atmospheric phenomena are a discouragement to every expository device that would try to defi ne them and classify them in an exhaustive manner. Because they are lived in their sensorial immediacy, they certainly could be subdivided in line with the fi ve senses and the proprioceptive senses. But the various types of sensation often become entangled. And while certain expressions of inhabitants relate only what is felt—the pathic—most add thereto an actual or an anticipated motor dimension. The acted and the suffered introduce themselves from the start and simultaneously. We shall there-fore attempt to sketch some lines of force for the pregnancy of the atmo-spheres involved in the lived experience of one’s walks. How is inhab-ited space to be qualifi ed on the basis of “climates” and how, through the latter, does the wholly unique relation of the acted to the suffered manifest itself? The identifi cation of sites on the basis of their climatic characters5 bears on very different units, the smallest ones being one’s lodging or a part of one’s lodging, the largest verging on the neighbor-hood itself.

Here are two extreme examples:

At sixty-eight years old, one lives at home in one’s atmosphere; the rest doesn’t interest us.

When arriving at the Arlequin, one is no longer on the alert, that mind-set one has when one is in town. In relation to the noise, one is more sensitized in town; one is kept on one’s toes. Here, you feel at home; there’s no more danger.

A climate seems to be perceived clearly only through a play of differ-ences. Thus, a sensation can take on a quite particular, or hitherto non-existent, nuance and intensity, suddenly surging forth and rendering a site clearly distinct from the spatial whole.


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The second type of differentiation comes almost exclusively under the heading of the olfactory realm. Those odors that rise up as if by magic—a surprise that things would still be fl avorful—and that are en-dowed with the gift of literally enveloping passersby qualify the atmo-sphere all the more when they are impalpable, unstable, vanishing when one would like to smell them, obstinately hovering around when one would like to ignore them. An inhabitant clearly identifi es one passage-way by the odor of the wall coating but smells nothing in her own one, whereas the odor is the same. The power of olfactory selection exerts itself all the more when the scents are foreign, rare, or unexpected, thus leading people to say things like, “In the morning, there’s a smell of bread near the baker’s!” or “Near number 50, there’s spicy cooking, like down south,” or “It smells . . . it smells like the kind of cooking I don’t do!” When they are the sign of the times, odors relate less specifi -cally to defi nite objects. They will then be messengers of seasonal cycles: “There is a certain odor now. . . . Maybe it’s the summer.” Some eve-nings, the wind from the southwest brings unpleasant chlorine smells that suddenly insert the whole neighborhood back into an urban setting where industry is once again a lived presence. The weather takes a turn, and this rotation lets the manufactured, anti-“nature” side, which one would like to forget, become apparent: “You’d really like there to be more of a smell of fl owers.”

The sweet-smelling or foul-smelling character of the atmosphere punctuating one’s travels and enveloping the moments of one’s stays plays a minor role in the representation of everyday life. Olfaction—a sense that is so well developed, it is said, among our distant ancestors from fi shing- and hunting-based civilizations—becomes today the most neglected of senses, the deepest buried. The lexicon of olfactory adjec-tives is probably the most impoverished one in our language. At the same time, and not fortuitously, evocations of smells are hardly ever ac-companied by hints of motor responses. This sensorial form remains the most accidental of characters, the most incidental, the most unforeseen of the everyday world, the one that manifests itself the least willingly in one’s memory of inhabiting.

On the other hand, climatic differentiation through one’s other sen-sory modes easily interweaves sensations at the mere transmutation of


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an adjective. Let us reread a page from the notebook of a schoolgirl.6

The trips leading to the junior high school and those leaving therefrom that morning were undertaken unenthusiastically. How are they quali-fi ed? By a climate transcribed in adjectival expressions: “I was afraid,” “I was very hot,” “we were sad,” “without any enthusiasm,” “I was sick to my stomach.” Everything blends into the same character, that of a “lousy morning,” as one might say. And no part of her everyday chores could be avoided: “I didn’t really want to go there”; this is the wish for fl ight that will come true only in the evening: “I went home, happy.” Various sensations are mixed together, but nothing truly is canceled out. Everything complements the rest and everything is redu-plicated. These walks tracing out a fi ne example of metabole are all the more feverish as the object of her worry that particular morning was unavoidable. Nothing specifi c describes this detrimental site (the junior high school) that is nevertheless willingly frequented at other times; for, it becomes then uninhabitable, almost a nonplace, and wholly ab-sorbed in the world of this feverish fl ight that would have wished to annihilate it.7

A climatic quality is deliberately expressed through a mixture of sen-sations. Thus, cold will characterize, through a series of slippages, one’s relations with the other, the felt effect of the temperature, and the tactile reception of the wind. “It’s sad to say,” one inhabitant notes,

but it happens to me for whole days at a time not to . . . without seeing some-one. Even if I do encounter some people I know, we don’t talk for long. . . . Not that it could be said that one would establish right away . . . Because it’s cold. . . . Yes, I fi nd that it’s because it’s cold. It’s a bit windy.

Likewise, “the air” signifi es equally a certain “current” of air, the absence of a roof (unlimited vertical dimension), and the absence of walls or pillars. Depending on this or that meaning, the act of “getting some air” or “being out in the air” differentiates one’s lodging from the gallery, or the passageway from the gallery, or yet again the gallery from the “open-air” zones. “Between the passageway and the gallery,” it is said,

there is a tiny difference . . . in the sense of being out in the air or not out in the air; a bit like the difference between being inside the buildings or outside.


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Thus, in the climate of such a moment of everyday life, the diverse sensations of nature come together and give to the inhabited world a quite particular atmosphere that transforms the apparent immobility of the architecture. At the Arlequin, all the inhabitants talk about the wind, “a pool [bain] of air currents” that envelops and passes through one, bidding one to stay under cover or else to hasten one’s steps. The whole gallery becomes a whistling and, as a matter of fact, striking8 landscape that rushes toward you too quickly; it seems to take a long time to step through it. And this confrontation with the wind is no more epic than the upheavals one feels with variations in the seasons, meteorological changes, and the nychthemeral cycle. Night can conjure up many phan-tasms.9 The same malleability of a new order in which artifi cial shadows and lights follow sidelong one after the other is burdened with threats regularly waiting in ambush “at every pylon,” “at every corner.” At night, the gallery becomes “smaller, narrower.” This fear is sometimes tempered by the “calm silence” and by the magic of the lights.

Rainy weather prompts the same ambiguity of affects. Felt through the cold and the dampness, rain will precipitate some into solitary fl ight10

but will give others a taste for the convenience, even the poetry, of the gallery, which has become a genuine dwelling. Indeed, with the gallery, “when it rains, no need for an umbrella,” “it’s pleasant; you can do your shopping in your slippers,” and then, “there are really bright colors.”

Let us be even more specifi c. Urban atmospheres are born in the crisscrossing of multiple sensations. In this immediate experience of the world, the rain, the wind, and the night hardly have any value of their own. What the inhabitant retains therefrom is the raininess, the windi-ness, the “fearfulness,” that is to say, the affective tonality. Thus, raini-ness (coldness, dampness, desire for shelter) will qualify the lived world in that very moment. An everyday ambiance takes on a consistency on the basis of a focusing, of a valuing of one element in the environment that will symbolize and reduplicate in an expressive way the atmosphere in which one is bathed [baigne]. There is a “reduplication” of urban sites, as Pierre Sansot says.11 This color or that coldness will set the tone for all the rest of the sensations and will even enlist, as if by a never ex-tinguished resonance, cultural images, social representations, and ideo-logical refl exes. Here is one example from the world of sound. North


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African music, which is heard rising up on hot summer nights and wakes up the inhabitants of one “cove” around midnight, often exacerbates feelings of expropriation or injury (injuria, in the sense of ethnic illegal-ity). But for certain inhabitants, an indulgent sense of satisfaction that “there’s a party” is awakened at the same time. And perhaps those peo-ple are lulled back to sleep with dreams of an unavowed exoticism.

Moreover, collective presences can by themselves alone create char-acteristic climates. Boisterous invasion or teeming games when the last school bell of the day rings, jostlings and crowdings at the foot of the elevators at these same times, lascivious or bustling times in the market area—these are so many different atmospheres that the auditory and the visual, sometimes the tactile, and more rarely the olfactory senses make one feel and that can bring on opposing kinds of conduct: pur-suit or fl ight.

This boils down to saying that the extreme diversity in the nature of atmospheres and in the way in which they alter the style of one’s walks calls for an inexhaustible number of descriptions. Climatic and pathic phenomena seem therefore to have become diversifi ed into a limitless pluralism. And yet, climates and atmospheres are continually instructive, in that they render explicit and explain the qualitative reso-nance of everyday lived experiences. The same goes for atmospheres that are as peaceful and dull as they are unsayable, those that are unre-markable, those that are repetitive and wherein one day looks like an-other, and those that one inhabitant labels “gray days [griseurs].” And such a gray day also deforms and anamorphoses, as through a mirror whose silvering has crumbled away, the ephemeral monumentality of housing spaces.

Here, then, we have a fi rst form of derealization of the built world as it is handed over for use. Here it is that, over the days one lives one’s life, an unmeasured separation redistributes the produced space. One term returns over and over again in the interviews, as if it would be the main criterion by which the various atmospheres are to be differentiated from one another: the inhabitable, which is defi ned by the possibility of dwelling, of coming to a stop. Through the climates of everyday life, in-habiting and walking take on the same lived meaning. There are walks that inhabit certain sites and other ones that do not inhabit them. The


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sole difference is this: one must really carry out trips directed by the de-mands of usage. But as one female inhabitant says, those sites one walks alongside (rather than traverses, for everything slips into indifference, if not into a precipitous effort to be fi nished with them as quickly as pos-sible) “cannot be called spots.” A “spot” would be, in this sense, a site that is appropriable under the sky of an inhabitable atmosphere, that is to say, a site in which one could stop. Visiting is possible there; there, one walks willingly.

The climatic allows one to understand how walking and inhabiting refer to each other. Indeed, it envelops every moment of everyday life and is its sky, its horizon. At the same time, it shows how styles of being, styles of inhabiting and walking, are qualifi ed within a habitat-space. It is an impression, one might say, in both senses of the term: what is felt and what is imprinted.12 It encompasses in this way both the acted and the suffered, the reading and writing of one’s walks, the static presence of the architectural and the deformation of this built world. The still too brief examination we have been carrying out of this climatic condition allows one to discover two hitherto neglected dimensions: that of dwell-ing, of stopping, and of pausing, on the one hand, and that of motor movements, on the other.

Sensorial Hyperboles and Anticipations

Thus, all that seemed structural in rhetorical analysis begins to take on bodily shape in a movement of structuration: the shaping of the inhab-ited world on the basis of climatic quality. From this point of view, the dichotomies between given (built) and lived, between acted and suf-fered, between the world of objects and that of subjects, my presence and that of others fi nd themselves shaken up and tend to become like each other. It would be wise, therefore, to fi nd out on what common ground such nonexclusive disjunctions are possible. But fi rst, we may ask, how do these compenetrations occur, how are these mutual assimi-lations organized, and how are they linked together?

The inhabitant’s narratives allow it be understood that there exists a sort of excess of sensory experience. Such excess was condemned by


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the academic “psychology of faculties” because, from the standpoint of rational knowledge, each sense must remain in its proper receptive place and be, under the command of perception, free from error. But the old textbooks of Jansenist morality, which anathematized this “overfl ow of the senses,” had perhaps better surmised their dynamic and Dionysian nature. Sense impressions already have a power that is to be understood only in accordance with the time involved. These excesses, these hyper-boles, these surprising usurpations of synecdoche encountered in walk-ing fi gures appear here once again through the discrete and scattered expressions of corporeal lived experience. The various sensations picked up in “atmospheres” tend to overfl ow the site in which they should have been confi ned.

For all the inhabitants questioned, the colors painted on the central-western facades of the Arlequin herald the fact that “home” approaches. The most oft-cited color is blue, a color that is nevertheless generally viewed as unpleasant: “not very aesthetic,” “overwhelming,” “disturb-ing,” a “civil-defense blue that makes me sick,” a blue that gives a para-doxical intensity to the look of the windows, which become darker by way of contrast (for, “you don’t see who might be looking”). And yet seen from quite far away, this color already projects the inhabitant to-ward his site of rest. Blue becomes the signal13 of the still far-off environs of this neighborhood. “You’re in the New Town as soon as you glimpse the blue from afar.” However, up close, the preferred colors are the reds and oranges on the other facade, the one seen from the park side. Blue thus takes on a double meaning: from far off and from nearby, or even from one’s abode. As lived in its tonality, it is split in two, depending on the inhabitant’s current conduct, depending, too, on what he is doing in such and such a place, and depending on what he is going to do. More than a signal, blue seen from afar acts like a character (and therefore a sign) on whose basis is created a new climate in which spatial forms, topical position, the time remaining for one to travel along one’s path, the precise place of one’s domicile, and the presence of other inhabi-tants all fuse together. It engenders a climate that ushers one in as one leaves behind oneself “the town” one has barely yet vacated. Feelings and attitudes fi nd themselves already altered, whereas the outer limits of the neighborhood have not yet been crossed. At the fi rst glimpse of


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the “reading,” the “writing”—that is to say, the action of inhabiting—is already beginning.

Would this be only a fore-seeing? Let us clarify without delay the peculiar status of the visual in urban atmospheres. The concept of read-ability, which is connected to that of the transparency of forms, comes very much under the heading of a plastic arts’ vision of habitat.14 The vi-sual sense would be directed and led toward the most obvious signifi er, attracted necessarily by the spectacular dimension. Thus, from the top of its imposing wall, the “blue cove” so absorbs one’s gaze that it turns that gaze into being-gazed-at. This “seeing for the sake of seeing” also rules over one of the ways in which one contemplates the park—which is “simply looked at” because it is “pretty” or even frequented solely via its “belvederes”15 and which, as beautiful, is precisely for that reason uninhabitable, unlivable.16 One young female inhabitant evokes with amusement how the postcard then becomes the ridiculous paradigm for fi nding one’s bearings through sight.17

But fore-seeing is not only a view from afar and from on high. The topological confusion of colors is often noted because the climate of such and such a moment on one’s path was well matched with a single tone. Some inhabitants thus cite colors on the facade that in fact are found on the ceiling of the gallery, and they add that this ceiling is not colored. Their fashioning of space is carried out in perceptual indistinc-tion, in a preawareness of the most pregnant color that took the place of the sky under which they were strolling. In anticipatory fore-sight, motor reaction or action is implied. Let us cite the case of an inhabitant whose body suddenly becomes numb and ill at ease in a part of the gal-lery where, “with those slabs of concrete, you don’t see.” Conversely, a young woman remarks that,

when one takes an octagonal trip, on a visual level . . . you see beforehand. . . . For example, before taking the turn, one already sees the garage or what is going to happen. . . . But, when you have a turn with a right angle, you already stop there, huh? You’re blocked by something that stops you, ahead. And for people, it’s the same thing. It’s important . . . to see a larger space before one-self, to see people coming.

These two expressions do not refer to some spectacular form of objecti-fi cation. They denote the concern one has to be able to tell in time what


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the future one will be traveling through is to be made up of, to have some sort of premonition of whether one’s encounter with the other will be unforeseen or whether one will be able to ready oneself for it, as well as what walking fi gure one already has, or does not have, the power to sketch out (fi gure of redundancy or fi gure of avoidance).

Sensoriality is doubly “overfl owed.” The senses encroach upon one another to such an extent that certain colors are expressed only through their form and certain forms only through the mediation of olfactory or tactile perceptions.18 Yet, on the other hand, the motor order is inserted within the sensorial order and works to select tangible qualities. A site will thus take on the tonality of the effort spent to travel through it. Someone will say:

It’s the terrace that . . . you go up the stairs. . . . You must go up the stairs to get to the fi rst level.

Or:

On the terraces, the stairs are inconvenient. The steps are too long or too short. If you take two steps at a time, it’s too long. If you go up one by one, it’s too tiring. So, in general, I go by way of the smooth part.

The kinesthetic quality is antecedent to all others. The space is also fash-ioned when one stumbles around, prospecting the situation.

In short, it is unknown which one precedes the other, what is suf-fered or what is acted. Sensed climates already sketch out the conduct of one’s action. Spatial distances contract along with the time; the here and the there are narrowed into an “already.”19 Bearing witness to this are numerous expressions gleaned from inhabitants in which the description of sensorial experience is expressed through some motor conduct. Climates differ according to these various ways of “passing through” the park, which is so large in geometrical reality and yet “soon crossed” or apprehended only through the “short promenades” it of-fers for one’s steps. The mounds are qualifi ed essentially by an upward climbing movement and the tactile sensation of the grass. As for the “terrace” of the silo-garage, it has no meaning as a visual composition, for one is surprised by those rare plant stands, looking so ridiculous and so lonely, that are crushed by the high rectilinear facade assailing them. The collage of a meaningless decor superimposed upon a function to


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which it remains absolutely alien (roof of a silo for automobiles) and which it never succeeds in covering up was conceivable only according to the order of the plan. The meaning of the landscape composition ap-pears only from on high, forty meters aloft. This terrace where adoles-cents are happy to hang out fi nds quite another meaning in the terms of one’s lived motor experience: the stairs one can climb up, the recesses in which one can sit down, the spaces “where the kids play,” and, above all, the fact that it is a favorite inhabitable crossing area, even if some-times a few worries are mixed in (the oppressing view from all the win-dows). Such is, however, very much the dynamic nature of the lived ex-perience of inhabiting, which endlessly re-creates, in its own way, given spaces and preconceived uses.

And in order to cast radically into doubt the received notion that fi rst we perceive and then we react,20 one must recall the ways in which the fi gure of bifurcation and that of digression arrange [décident de] the space on the basis of the movement undertaken. When an inhabitant passes to the right or to the left of obstacles set in the middle of his path, any rationalization of one’s conduct comes only after the fact. Motor function decides when one’s foresight allows itself to be surprised. This was also the wholly preconscious way in which inhabitants stepped over the “holes” created in the walls that hold up the gallery.21 Let us listen to their silences as well as to their utterances: “Sometimes, I fi nd myself in front of . . . and I pass through.” The three suspension points denote perfectly well the immediacy from “feeling” to “moving.” Be-tween the feeling and the movement, there is no antecedence, nor any consequence. The motor act does not follow the sensation, nor does it precede it. Anticipation makes what is still far off feel close. And already, the movement is sketched out. Such sketches are reactivated at certain moments in the narrations we have heard, as when the inhabitant, no longer fi nding words of his own to recount what happens during a trip, draws on a scrap of paper, confi gures something through a gesture, or points with his fi nger. He sketches with a gesture in the present what he had felt and thus reproduces as closely as possible the lived instant.

With this motor anticipation, one will come to have a better under-standing of several phenomena of spatial practice that were sidetracking us when we undertook the rhetorical approach. Territorial limitations


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are split into two opposing varieties: on the one hand, limits represented (and reproduced) according to the planned order, which are geometri-cally spatialized into routes, breaks in architectural forms, differences in material, various closures (porticoes, gates, barriers), and, on the other, limits as they are lived through the very act that transgresses them or readies itself to transgress them, in the tension from near to far. Why do limits not have the same spatial assignment depending on the direction one is walking, unless it is that the climate for entering and the one for exiting always differ?22 Through motor anticipation, the inhabitant is already “inside” or “outside,” whether the site in question is his lodg-ing, some part or other compared to the rest of the neighborhood, or the neighborhood itself.

It could no longer even be stated that urban atmospheres induce alterations in bodily attitudes and conducts. Is not the climatic also a form of action, since it is immediately composed by potential motor responses, based on what is possible? The feelings of exaltation from on high or of crushing heaviness, as were expressed in the fi gures of polysemy,23 imply motility. It seemed that the dimensions of height and depth should have remained the prerogative of architecture—which, having laid down elevated forms, would have given them only to be seen, shifting all motor conduct into the horizontal dimension. And yet the elevator itself, which was to have turned the vertical dimension into an abstraction, brings to life through motor response (one’s apparent bodily immobility changing nothing about this) lovely as well as terrify-ing imminent prospects of plummeting.24

Let us recall, fi nally, how certain atmospheres are lived and are en-gendered through one’s very contact with a material: the “ramp,” whose uneven height is combined with a “granular and unpleasant” fl oor sur-rounded by “repair-work mud,” and “wild” paths where one’s pleasure in treading on the grass is barely disguised. The possibility of walking on laid-out and developed paths (concrete, tar) or on better equipped, or grassy, or truly muddy ground allows a variety of motor conducts—from following along charted paths to the most unexpected sorts of trailblazing—at the same that it serves to differentiate one’s climates.

Through these climates and by the power of motor anticipation, our everyday steps take on a new meaning. They were simple schematic


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traces, rhetorical fi gures; here they are now as operative movements. The work is the way, said Paul Klee.25 This affi rmation, it seems to us, holds not only for the “artistic” production of space but also for the in-habitant who reorganizes it after his own fashion. The work is the walk, and the act of walking is the work, confi guration.

Every walking, every inhabiting gives itself out not only as struc-tures, fi gures, but also as confi guration, structuration, that is to say, de-formation of the built world such as it was conceived and re-creation of space through feeling and motor function. The “overfl ow of the senses” [débordement des sens] (of the sensible) therefore produces an overfl ow of the meaning [débordement du sens] (formal signifi cations) set in the edifi ed world. Against the “real” as conceived, the power to orient oth-erwise the edifi ed world remains ever active. Each direction of meaning derealizes all that does not enter into the climate of the lived instant.

A second form of derealization now comes into view. On the basis of the site traveled through and inhabited, everything that is neither near nor far has no consistency and fi nds itself literally “marginalized.”

And yet, in this “between near and far” in which all walking is or-ganized, anticipation still appears only in the form of a shortcut, of a forward projection, of a rather spatial gait whose temporal nature is not yet apparent. Moreover, does the rest of the space the inhabi-tant will be able to travel through tomorrow or later on have no value just because today no lived movement is animating it? Will these absent sites not be present one day or another? The space confi gured here and now is not a reductionist gathering of all the other spaces. For, then it would turn out like some magic crystal ball that contains the world but whose description in successive stages does not end. Let us reread the strange story by Jorge Luis Borges.26 The “Aleph,” a mirror of the universe, at fi rst provokes the marvelous illusion of a simultaneity of all spatially contiguous entities.27 Disillusion then sets in: nothing has been seen without the passage of time and without forgetfulness enter-ing in.28 The gathering of the universe into the lived present was pos-sible only upon a ground of absence. Is that how it goes perhaps for the atmosphere of the everyday world that envelops each lived moment? Would not asyndeton (absence of conjunction, “holes”) prove to be the condition for synecdoche?29


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Is this fi gured absence in syndeton nothing? Would there not be, in the fi nal analysis, a way of understanding how, in inhabitant prac-tices, the present would respond to the absent? Does it not boil down to the temporality of securing the identity between the act of inhabiting and that of walking, indeed of conjugating movement with pausing and dwelling?

An Articulatory Process

Le Corbusier’s theory of the “modulor” is well known. The forms of one’s habitat are to be composed of the basic postures of everyday man (reclining, seated, standing). This is a fi ne example of static architectural thought, where lived time is broken down into attitudes, into poses, and is thus reduced to the architectonic. Now, inhabitant expression as ap-prehended through one’s walks shows that there is nothing of the sort. Rather than postures, the narratives of inhabitants express gaits: a style and quality of movement. Rather than poses, pauses, and the character-istic possibility of stopping.

In all the expressions we have gathered from the inhabitants, we note three principal stylistic varieties that concern one’s way of being at once in space and in time. Yet it is particularly diffi cult to grasp this. To the extent that we are talking about rhythmic phenomena, how is one to know exactly in what way time spans each style of inhabiting? Communication through sympathy (Einfühlung) would bring us noth-ing of decisive importance. Let us imagine an ongoing cinematographic observation;30 it would still be the objectifying illusion of transcribing in continuity what is discontinuous.

And yet the examination of the verbs used in these narratives, the specifi cations made through oppositions and differences, and the simi-larities between narrative style and walking style allow a convergence that, though too coarse when compared to the lived quality of each in-stant, permits one at least to sift out some common characters that do not contradict what inhabitant rhetoric has been able to show us. These three varieties are dominant accentuations that exist in one’s fashions of inhabiting.


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1. The retentional tendency expresses itself when the inhabitant recounts his trips while saying that he “leaves home” or that he “goes home” instead of saying “I am going to . . .”; when the atmosphere of his lodging is contrasted with all the “rest” of the space, which is charac-terized in terms of mere utility; when, even in the course of long trips, everything unfolds in perfect regularity and “nothing snags” the in-habitant; and when, fi nally, he lets himself more often be led by the space as laid out and developed than he transgresses it.

2. The protentional tendency expresses itself when the walk is already completely stretched toward its goal; when one’s busy and some-times feverish movement telescopes the topological succession of sites (this is the case in particular with fi gures centered on a site that holds one’s fascination); and when, fi nally, no genuine moment of dwelling is memorable in the whole of everyday life and the inhabi-tant leaps nonstop from one site to another.

3. The third variety would offer a eurythmic composition combining protention and retention, either in a minimal mode (“I’m not in a hurry, but I don’t stop”) or in a more pronounced mode, and then the walks are easily punctuated with stops and changes of rhythm: “I walk in a normal way, but also in a, how would you say it . . . brisk manner, when I go to work.”

Through this last quotation, we can clearly see the incompleteness and fi ctive approximation such an enumeration carries along with it. Its sole advantage is that it illustrates the protentional component and the retentional component that do indeed operate in every confi gura-tion of inhabited space. Rhythmic phenomena are expressed in all the narratives, and they do so as much on the level of elementary fi gures as on that of combinatory fi gures. Each time a break or a variation inter-rupts the continuity of this or that gait or such and such an orientation, each time a hyperbolic redundancy occurs (the exalted scaling of the Mounds), but, more fundamentally still, each time humble everyday-ness repeats itself, there is always a minimum of protention and reten-tion, be it only through the simple motor articulation in which one step follows another. From the vaster seasonal cycles observed in “climates”


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and “atmospheres” to the tiniest gesture made, inhabitant narrative is found to be completely shot through with the disappearance of one time and the appearance of another in the here and now of lived experience: there are chronotheses and chronogeneses, at once felt and acted. More than this “temporal succession of fortes and pianos” by which academic musical theory had defi ned rhythm,31 at issue here is the opposition of a mutually engendering pause and burst [élan].32 Rhythm is the coinci-dence of contraries captivating appearance and disappearance, making each of them the condition of existence of the other. For the absent to present itself, the present must absent itself.

To the dimensions of the near and the far, the high and the low, one must add those of presence and absence. Without them, the others never exist. On whatever scale one’s walks are associated—the whole of a trip leaving one’s lodging and returning to it, a circuit considered worthwhile in its own right, the description of a site through which one has walked, or even simply some details about one’s gait—absence manifests itself in the very movement that guides one’s steps. It is the apparently total absence of never-frequented territories, the absences or “holes” in the course of a trip, the disappearance of sites left behind and the absence of sites on their way to becoming this “far away” about which one has a presentiment before oneself. The presence of others can itself be lived in the mode of absence, either by avoidance or by an instating [mise en état] of difference.33 In a lived differentiation, one rejects the alien group into a time-dependent absence; and the force of this group, which fi nds itself represented then in purely spatial terms, is all the greater as its re-turn to the present is felt as the premonition of a possibility, in the mode of encounter or confrontation.

Finally, would the relation of movement to pause have any lived meaning if it were not referred back to the possibility of an articulation from the present to the absent? Whether we are talking about a momen-tary halt to one’s steps (which “are snagged by something or someone,” as inhabitants say) or deliberately stationing oneself in this or that part of the neighborhood, about which one can say “it’s mine,”34 or, again, one’s favorite place of retreat within one’s own lodging, all these halts are lived in the mode of a presence that has rendered the rest of the space absent. Still, such absence is transitory, and what is imminent is the re-


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appearance of the absented sites. The inhabitants recount these absenc-es-in-abeyance either as the path that remains to be traveled when the body, already en route, draws the heaviness from the lingering look or as the glance through the window of one’s own lodging that, in an allu-sive way, evokes one’s memory of the space of the neighborhood.35

The absented space makes a special irruption into one’s dwelling through one’s auditory apparatus. Sudden invasions of louder or softer noises have the ability to dissolve the closure of one’s lodging, which one had thought was inviolable. And if a sonic solicitation from this “outside,” which was supposed to be absent, becomes too present, one’s dwelling ends up losing all domestic and private meaning of its own. It was for this reason that one of the inhabitants questioned later moved. In the design of the edifi ed space, where arrangements have been made either to favor one’s “view” or to mask, through architectural forms, the private sphere, the auditory sense comes to undo the territorial lim-its that had been set between private and public.

Inhabitant expression incorporates itself into a tension between near and far, between movement and pause, between presence and absence. Is not the concrete articulation of the act of walking the eminent paradig-matic sign of the tensional nature of everyday lived experience? Inhabi-tant practices are a form of expression inasmuch as they are grounded upon an articulatory process we shall defi ne as a connection of heteroge-neous instantiated principles enacted in lived time.

Is this not the very essence of rhythm? And is not the diffi culty one encounters in describing such phenomena the result of writing’s inabil-ity to project itself ahead while also going back and its inability to enun-ciate at the same time a signifi ed and its opposite, which bodily rhythms nevertheless succeed in making coincide?

Also, will not the reading of the preceding pages have elucidated quite easily the diffi culties inherent in every attempt to describe lived time? A few remarks are needed to take stock of this moment in our ap-proach, to reinvigorate the key contributions of rhetoric, and to indicate the import of such an interpretation of everyday life in an urban space.

1. In order for us not to become lost in an abstract theory of signifi -cation, we sought to grasp the lived body of everyday expression,


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whose actors would be the inhabitants. Now, it is the powers of our corporeal being that go to make up the way in which this expression occurs: the power to be in affective resonance with an ambient atmo-sphere and the power to anticipate our motor reactions. The particu-lar tonalities of our surrounding landscape are the mirror of our sen-sibility of the moment as well as of the project of our action or of our relaxation.

2. Between suffering and acting, there is neither logical sequence nor confusion but, rather, degrees of tension. We all have in our memory the immediate experience of these fairly retentional moments (when action is deferred) or, instead, protentional ones (when one’s sensi-bility, lying in wait, tends in the direction of our action). Also, every strolling has meaning only in relation to stopping, and vice versa. The articulation from walking to abiding [séjour] defi nes what inhab-iting is.

3. Fundamental fi gures of walking rhetoric, synecdoche and asyndeton emanate from lived sensorimotor experience. A sign of our capac-ity to qualify space in a singular way, synecdoche expresses the im-mediacies and discontinuities of lived time over against the lineari-ties and transitivities of chronometric time. The spatial contiguities and conjunctions that seem to ground the existence of laid-out and developed space upon connections between homogeneous parts re-main abstract fi ctions. The near and the far as well as the high and the low exist in a relation of heterogeneity; for, in conformity with the power of the body, everyday rhythm proceeds from the interval [écart], from rupture. The “blanks”—the “holes,” as the inhabitants say—allow for a lived instant that would be similar to no other one. Asyndeton inserts absence into space and into time.

Faced with such a criterion of heterogeneity, an urban territory would be split in a qualitative way along two types of spaces: on the one hand, a set of sites that are inhabitable because they leave to strolling and to abiding the power to confi gure them, to re-create them, to articulate them in a play of absence and presence or, on the other hand, a set of uninhabitable sites (sorts of nonplaces, in this sense)36 because between walking and abiding there is no possible


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articulation: these are instead mere crossing areas or places “where one has to go.” Such wholly homogeneous sites offer no place for sensorimotor confi guration to get a foothold in them, and they are lived in the mode of an absent presence; they correspond not only to the unfrequented parts of the neighborhood but also to those parts that leave one indifferent. They bear witness to a space that is con-ceived in homogeneity and yet, through lived sensorimotor experi-ence and “atmospheres,” melts into insignifi cancy.37

4. Upon this concrete condition of absence, “inhabiting” has nothing of an abstract or static concept about it. It is always born of some-thing possible: the inhabitable. Its dynamic nature appears in the ten-sion between the absent and the present. Absence is combined either with forgetting, rejection (or the attitude of indifference the inhabit-able puts on), or with possibility and project. The present exists only between these two forms of absence that permit what we have called structuration, confi guration.

Instating absence is the third way of derealizing the real. As such, it subsumes the fi rst two: climatic transformation, overfl ow and anticipa-tion. It tells us about the condition through which what is built up is deformed into an “atmosphere,” that is to say, is formed otherwise, ac-cording to feeling and motor function. It indicates to what extent the lived present is to be evaluated in terms of force and not of a state.

Understood through the body of inhabitant expression—that is to say, through the powers of the body38—rhetoric then becomes “gen-erative and transformational.”39 Against the container state some have wanted to assign to it, corporeal being retains the power to reform, to deform, and to develop. From this standpoint, the word derealizationmight still be deceiving. Where, indeed, is the “real”? In the habitat as it is produced or in one’s sensorimotor way of inhabiting? Inhabi-tant expression does not “derealize.” Rather, it “realizes” in its own way. And this way radically contradicts the current postulate of how to build, namely, produce space according to chronometric time and foresee usage according to purely spatial considerations. Inhabitant ex-pression shows us, on the contrary, that inhabited space is articulated according to lived time.

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5

On the Imaginary Ground of Inhabitant Expression

As we rise higher in the triangle, we fi nd that confusion in-

creases, just as a city built on the most correct architectural

plan may be shaken by the uncontrollable force of nature.

—Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Thus, the everyday strolls by which we come and go, hastening us to the point of running, delaying us elsewhere to the point of taking a pause or even making a visit, took on the air of obeying the silent in-junctions of the urban space. The architectural forms and functional uses these injunctions try to give out to be read seemed to propose an inevitable text, a program to which we cannot but conform.

Yet here it is that, step by step, the tracks confi gured according to the whim of ordinary preoccupations bring the city into a state of decay and undermine the foundations of the representation one usually gives of it. An unforeseeable force “defying all calculations” asserts itself.1 And the nature of this upheaval has just become apparent to us: lived time invali-dates the rules of rationally composed space.

Suddenly, the question about the ground of inhabitant expression becomes only that much more insistent. If spatial totalities lose all meaning of their own and are but the occasional material and pretext for deconstruction, for derealization, what is the fi eld of reference for everyday action? What is the basic ground brought into play by expres-sion, when laid-out and developed space fi nds itself relegated to an ac-cidental modality?

The question can be posed in another way. Inhabitant rhetoric made us understand that our walks move about over a space that has come undone and been dispersed. We inhabit a discontinuous space in

O N T H E I M A G I N A R Y G R O U N D O F I N H A B I TA N T E X P R E S S I O N

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accordance with a time of differance. Is this to say that everyday actions correspond to an inhabitant stochastics? And yet, from one moment to the next, from one place to another, between the visit and the walk, be-tween my way of inhabiting and that of the other inhabitants, everyday life does not unfold like a Brownian motion in which, over a given fi eld, one grasps only the feverish and random traces of particles that other-wise allow themselves to be defi ned only in the contradictory terms of immobility. The ways of inhabiting are located through their discretion,less in the sense in which they allow themselves only to be glimpsed—and is not discretion connatural with everydayness?—than in the sense in which they exist only at the pinpoint. We thus rediscover an older ac-ceptation of the term: the discretum.2

Now, the fact that inhabitant expression manifests itself only “dis-cretely,” in a scattered way, here and there, does not imply the absence of qualitative unity. There thus exist a stylistics and a process of senso-rimotor articulation that give an overall coherent meaning not only to the lived experience of a single inhabitant but, also, to the whole of co-existent everyday lives. In other words, one must ask oneself how unity concretely circulates between each “discrete” manifestation, and how each of these manifestations refers to a never clearly expressed common ground.

Does there exist an instantiated principle whose omnipresence would have already been indicated to us by prior observation of walks—one that would be able, on the one hand, to explain in a concrete way the connections between each discrete expression and, on the other, to char-acterize the nature of the ground from which all everyday expression proceeds and from which it draws its expressive force? And would per-haps inhabitant expression, which is both incorporated and grounded, merit then a more theoretical defi nition?

Between the Present and the Possible, the Imaginary Ground

Beyond all the varieties of spatial practice that manifest it, inhabitant expression has two basic ways of breaking up the representation of the continuities and homogeneities that belong to laid-out and developed


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space. In anticipating action, it renders present what “really” is not yet so (we have already sketched out in this way both avoidance and the search for a site that is not yet but on the horizon of our stroll). In de-realizing large fragments of space, it renders absent what representation would judge to be “really” present (thus, those “blank trips” lived in the mode of absence, or asyndetons that insert discontinuity into our everyday travels). In both cases, the imaginable overfl ows the limits of a spatial “reality” that is otherwise represented in terms of two contra-dictory characters: on the one hand, the real corresponds to the present; on the other, the real is defi ned in relation to a totality of which it is a precisely assignable part.

In this sense, the instantiated principle of the imaginary, whose dis-crete existence we have often pointed to in the course of reading walk-ing narratives, seems to respond to our expectations. Does it have the power to produce those fundamental connections that would give co-herency to the functioning of inhabitant expression?

Instead of a formal defi nition of the imagination that would risk reproducing the foibles of that psychology of the “faculties” in which mental operations are divided up, taken apart, and hierarchized (per-ception, memory, “the” imagination, etc.), in which the form is substi-tuted for the force, and in which what is organizing power is given as a mere instrument, we prefer an a posteriori defi nition that is engendered little by little through empirical illustrations. It is the lived imaginary that we are to understand, and it is its modalities of appearance, be-tween the present and the absent or the possible, that we will have to carefully note down.

Nonetheless, a brief reminder on the theoretical level will allow us to evaluate how, within the process of inhabitant expression, the place of the imaginary has pertinence. Several times in the history of thought, the imaginary has been considered neither as one of the lower faculties, archaic in origin and confi ned to the production of images, nor as too confused a faculty to be able to attain the empire of reason, too unculti-vated and too uncontrolled in its sudden appearances to be a bearer of truth. Each time our “imaginary” capacity has been taken into account as a whole, it was in order to point to its operative function: imagining is the power to connect. The imagination is the medium par excellence.

Thus, Kantianism—which, two centuries ago, did not immediately


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preoccupy itself with the instantiated principle of the imaginary—never-theless conferred upon it the threefold role of reproducing, synthesizing, and creating. If deprived of the connections the imagination afforded them, the understanding and sensibility would never meet. Experience of the world would not have any meaning, and knowledge would have no concrete application. It is to be understood that, far from being a simple and passive reservoir of images, the imagination possesses an activity and a capacity for synthesis.3 Thanks to these, the manifold and the singular can fi nd unity and universality (which is the essential feature of Kantian concerns). But is it not by this same power that the acted and the suffered, sensation and motor function, the present and the absent are tied together in a process of articulation we were evoking just a few pages ago?4

Certainly, the Idealism that centered on the problem of knowledge developed this capacity of the imagination to synthesize only to the ex-tent that the functioning of the understanding was clarifi ed by it. To judge from a short statement by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason5

and by the pages devoted to the analysis of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment,6 the at once obscure and overfl owing aspect of the imaginary, which literally outstrips the understanding, is clearly indicated.

In an entirely other epoch, the dynamic aspect of the imagination was even more clearly accentuated. Developing the contributions of the Neoplatonist current of thought, the Renaissance was already familiar with this power of connection, but it understood that power as the man-ifestation of a force that spans the universe and constitutes its very tex-ture. The imagination connects the manifold and the scattered because it animates and grounds at the same time.7 (And under this heading, we prefer to designate henceforth such an instantiated principle by the word imaginary, which takes on a less restrictive meaning.) The imagi-nary would have not only the force to unify discrete pluralities but also the force to make opposites coincide (the coincidentia oppositorium is, in the Renaissance, a central notion in the interpretation of the world), which give it a surprising importance. Its faculty of conferring unity of meaning upon instantiated principles as contrary as the universal and the singular does not just have the merit of making it an instrument of noteworthy value. The set of connections is more signifi cant than the set


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of connected objects. In synthesizing, the imaginary fi rst of all signifi es itself. Through the omnipresence of this activity that gives it its eminent quality, it becomes the common ground and the fi eld of reference for all that it sets in a relation of coincidence.

These indications can relevantly guide our fi nal reading of walk-ing narratives, which is now coming up. The power of the imaginary takes on coherency only at the end of our path. It does not allow itself to be grasped with ease. Does not such diffi culty stem from its highly peregrine nature? The imaginary voyages. It does not hold topical as-signments in place but, rather, defi es them. It accepts the paradox of being at once the fundamental instantiated principle and the instrument of connection. The concept of vicissitude,8 which the Renaissance pro-posed as a key for the interpretation of the world, splendidly expresses the imaginary’s dynamic: making very different things alternate in an ever mobile reciprocity.

Such a circulation of the imaginary,9 which runs the risk of irrever-ently transgressing the clear distinctions we claimed to establish between the particular and the general, as well as between space and time and be-tween the individual and the collective, will be illustrated thanks to the reversibility between the present and the absent and between the lived and the possible. And perhaps we will fi nally come to know whether the inhabitants whose narratives we have listened to do indeed practicallylive in the same world.

Evocation of the Imaginary: The Present according to the Possible

Each urban atmosphere lived by this or that inhabitant at such and such a moment is never absolutely alien to what the other inhabitants are liv-ing. The various narratives of everyday life in one and the same neigh-borhood demonstrated homologies and similarities between the defor-mations and new structurations the space undergoes. In other words, in disqualifying the laid-out and developed space, each lived present substitutes for that space an imaginable possibility, whose active power we have noted; indeed, the inhabitant’s conduct can be deeply affected by it. All the styles of inhabiting have at least some points in common.


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It could therefore be assumed that the inhabitants’ everyday fashionings are based on a common expressive ground. Now, the narratives we have gathered explicitly evoke an overall imaginary climate that arises from time to time and in whose name spatial derealizations are possible.

The most apparent vehicle for this imaginary ground is to be found in all the common rumors that are passed by word of mouth. Most often, inhabitants place responsibility on those who do not live in the neighborhood. Here are three examples.

In Grenoble, they say: How can one live in the New Town! Aren’t you overrun by the fi lth yet?

New Town! It has a bad reputation, between us, huh?

People who don’t know say, “You oughta be careful.” . . . Their impression is that there are muggings, stuff like that.

These particular turns of phrase, these ways of hiding what was felt and what one does not dare to admit clearly, demonstrate quite well the imaginary essence of these “they say” expressions, whose force of impact is not negligible. Circulating in people’s speech, rumors that are only hinted at seem hardly distinguishable from a local form of ideol-ogy that stigmatizes the Arlequin neighborhood and is trying, in politi-cal terms, to exorcize the “socialist myth.” But in addition, the rumors are grounded in sites, and it is unknown whether they are felt impres-sions that are masked behind the rumors of the “they”—that is to say, of the others—or whether it is these “they say” expressions—collective delegation—that allow individuals to specify more sharply their own lived experiences. Whatever it turns out to be, the following remarkable cases will demonstrate that the atmosphere of sites goes well beyond the power of rumor and that, in the lived present, everything is reactivated in accordance with the force of the imaginary.10

The Diurnal according to the Nocturnal

The nychthemeral (night-day) cycle does not yield a simple and regular rotation of daily atmospheres. We have seen in the fi gures of polysemy11


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how, though in demand during the day, the gallery, this central walking site, might be avoided at night. But there is more than pure alternation going on here. In the simple terms of frequentation taken on the scale of the collectivity as a whole, the gallery is inhabited above all during the day. In terms of diurnal ambulatory rhythm, the nature of the pos-sible is that of a project or of an intention already under way that varies quite obviously from one inhabitant to the next. Along the entire length of one and the same walk, multiple differentiations segment the gallery, derealizing such and such a part in favor of some other part.

By way of contrast, with the appearance of the nocturnal the whole gallery is encompassed within one and the same overall qualifi cation, within one and the same climate, placed under the heading of the imagi-nary. This possibility, which the inhabitants sense as a common ground, is eminently disturbing. Is the danger real or not? We have gathered no narratives of nighttime muggings, though there probably have been a few. Whatever the case may be, the paths we are told one takes at night do not veer away from more or less hidden expressions of dread, swerv-ings, avoidances, even downright runs. The same inhabitant who states that she is “not afraid at night,” who looks to go on labyrinthine ex-cursions, and who likes to get lost will also underscore the unhealthy climatic features that well up at night (chlorine and garbage smells) and will loathe the feeling of going downstairs (“it’s too dark”). Some in-habitants who do not have these nocturnal fears nevertheless do not fail to report rumors about the nighttime and to admit their feelings of reticence about “going out on a jaunt during those hours.” All the nar-ratives refl ect echoes of unwholesome vibrations in which expressions of dread are repeated to various degrees, yet they always narrow into expressions that in part symbolize the unsayable. The most frequent synecdoches are the possible presence of “hoodlums” or gangs, disturb-ing noises heard once or several times and then amplifi ed and inter-preted, fear of “waking the dead,” or the fear of “meeting drunks or old people.” Finally, the evil power of the nocturnal realm becomes a force physically felt when the howling wind is added:

I’m scared; I’m very scared. I went out only once at night [ . . . ]. The wind, which was blowing hard, carried off my scarf, and I didn’t go looking for it! I felt reassured only after getting inside my door.


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Nychthemeral alternation is therefore not governed by symmetry. The night brings together in a confused way what the day had distin-guished. And the ways in which the gallery is qualifi ed offer no point of similarity, or even any complementarity: on the one hand, there is diur-nal dispersion, dependent on the preoccupations of each person; on the other hand, nocturnal condensation. Sometimes, the inhabitants make comparisons between pleasant places and unpleasant places, but the ref-erence remains spatial. More often, the same place that is “lived well” calls for an evocation of its nocturnal mutation through a temporal an-tithesis: “whereas at night.” Above all, one apprehends (in both senses of the verb) the gallery as a whole in a similar way in terms of nighttime. The many-sided multiplicity of the daytime gallery is grounded upon a shared evocation of the gallery at night.

Even more than that, the nocturnal realm reduplicates its insis-tency. As a threatening absence one exorcizes in daytime activity, it has a way of being spatially present. For, the apparently reassuring and fi rm ground of the gallery trod upon by one’s steps covers over and conceals a hell below. The earth beneath one’s feet then sounds hollow. Daytime activity unfolds in a feigned carefreeness over a void fi lled with shadows that are evoked only through half-articulated hints: a terrifying under-ground den where the foulest beasts teem in the twisted innards of one’s habitat. The mechanical gallery that reduplicates down below the lay-out of the busy street-level gallery in fact harbors the indispensable belly of the complex that digests, that pumps out, that forces back up, that is supposed to ventilate, and that often just plain stinks. Source of and bosom for the air,12 of now-digested food matter, of clean water and of dirty water, and of heat, it fi lls itself up and empties itself out nonstop. The mechanical operations governing the fl ow of all these fl uids are suddenly turned into some altogether unforeseen quality. Their purpose was to maintain life; here they are, imagined to be something deadly.

In accordance with an imaginary metabolism, a transmutation has taken place between everyday sensory experiences and what is premoni-torily sensed on a ground of collective rumor. As one inhabitant says:

Some disturbing things, . . . well, it’s used stuff, huh? People hardly remem-ber that. Bizarre facts, it’s not sorted out. . . . Me, I know about it through a


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worker who came to repair the bathroom; a panel that might have tumbled into the mechanical shaft. But it’s not a coincidence if vermin are climbing up everywhere.

Another inhabitant says:

Underneath, it seems, it’s unbelievable. Vermin, rats, everywhere. . . . Someone tells how one day some offi cials came around. But they left running! [ . . . ] Often there are odors from the garbage cans that waft back up.

The infernal insidiously rises up through the ducts and conduits (“me-chanical shafts”) and into the most intimate recesses of people’s dwell-ings. It snakes around and creeps into the dark recesses of one’s domi-cile. One has a presentiment that each bug, each cockroach, and each rat that frolics around at night still lies in ambush during the day. The nauseating odors that ascend from somewhere in the depths of the apartment complex also bring up with them hints of an omnipresent absence. Thus, under the gallery but also through the openings in the walls, everything is possible, and in a catastrophic way.13 A latent sub-terranean underside sticks to the diurnal surface of functional uses. The right angles of the ducts and conduits are turned into tortuous knots.

Form and Use according to the Accidental

Modes of inhabiting evolve upon the common ground of an imagi-nary that is clearly nocturnal and subterranean in tone. Other shad-owy forces also manifest themselves here and there through one’s walks, like delegations of the nocturnal, more isolated substitutes. Possibilities that can be evoked readily lie in ambush in the accidental irregularities [accidents] of a spatial form opening before one’s steps. The corridors, called “passageways” and yet lived in a rather favorable way as a pre-lude to one’s domicile (and some of these passageways really do extend one’s lodging, as the door remains open during the day), will be criti-cized for their length and their overly rectilinear perspective; but, “You put up with it.” By way of contrast, the recesses in the passageways, like those of the gallery, cast a shadow over the tone of one’s walk. The threatening irruption of a more pronounced shadow, hidden in a break


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in architectural forms (pillars, open areas, acute angles), becomes pos-sible. Also, these “ratcesses” [racoins] (to borrow the expression of one inhabitant, which would delight a psycholinguist with the reduplication it includes and the reversal it evokes: corners for rats [coins à rats]) are tied up with the malefi cent nocturnal realm. (Contrasted with them are the “little corners,” as the inhabitants say, the places in which the famil-iar, the domiciliary, and “homeyness” take refuge.) They are the “spot where one needs to pay attention, because anything can hide in there.”

The spiral staircases, called “emergency stairs,” create more uneven-nesses [accidents] of an architectural nature. To these are added unan-ticipated rubbish as well as excrement both seen and smelled. As one can read in the journal of one inhabitant:

The staircase is disgusting, broken glass strewn about and unidentifi able refuse; I think that there was a break-in at night or something like that!

Also, these stairs are never taken without a certain amount of fear. The feelings of dizziness they provoke are qualifi ed as “horrible” in a double meaning of the word, in relation both to the sensation of “falling,” the suffering of vertigo, and to the prospect of some horror.14 One never knows where or when the fatal encounter in the labyrinth will occur. Likewise, in the mezzanines, which nevertheless are ordinarily so calm and so deserted, regularly arranged formal irregularities—“details,” in the view of an architect—imaginarily spill out [débordent] onto the entire form of the edifi ce. The mezzanine becomes a site for harmful events, a site of potential accidents for most of the inhabitants, except for the children who go through in their roller skates—these “children who can throw things on your head,” as the adults say. Either one does not frequent the mezzanine, and yet the unforeseeable still accompanies one’s walks from above, or one takes the mezzanine in a more or less avowed search for the unforeseen. Let us mention once again the unre-markable butcher shop in the middle of the gallery, where

there is always something bizarre; the windows are often broken . . . the cur-tain’s messed up. And, indeed, you wonder why.

But it is within the elevator that one lives out the accidentalness that is felt most likely to occur. Such accidentalness highly derealizes


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its instrumental form as well as the everyday use one makes of it. In rereading the numerous excerpts from inhabitants’ narratives that illus-trate staggered polysemy and appropriation by dislocation,15 one will discover how the imaginary ground surfaces. It is an imaginary ground that combines the sensations of imprisonment with an imminent sense of free fall, the “infernal noises,” similar to some sort of bestial posses-sion and ready to seize hold of someone (“like jaws”) as well as to per-form a metamorphosis (“you’re trapped like wild animals. . . . Bam!”). All these powers of the night play at ceaselessly driving away and bring-ing near the unspeakable subterranean world. This fateful game of cat and mouse is well described in graffi ti repeatedly engraved on the doors of the elevator: “rat trap.”

The Ordinary according to the Alien

The preceding examples already serve to illustrate precisely how the form of the present is lived according to the force of the possible. Here are some other examples in which the imaginary evokes—as if at the surface of one’s walks, one might say—alien forces that may possibly be encountered. Territorial appearances—which correspond to an at-tempt to assign a group onto a site in a fi xed way16—take us back to an effort to exorcize all that is imaginary and confused in the identifi catory movement of social aggregates. The force of all the affl ictions that one believes to be possible, even though they have not actually been felt, is confi ned within the apparent limits of a site. One tries to represent as perpetually distant that which in one’s premonitions may imaginarily be approaching. All sorts of eclectic, symbolic collages are possible for those who wish to safeguard their “ordinary existence,” their familiar world. Some point to the “stairwells” of the North Africans, others the fancy apartment stairwells. Tunisians identify typically Algerian sites. Messy or dirty space is associated with the space inhabited by the “for-eigners,” but equally well with spaces in which too many children hang around, and also with sites where “there is too much concrete.” Alien sites are apprehended in confusion, in a “mixed-up” sort of way, as in-habitants so often say; these are sites in which one does not make out


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very clearly what is going on and in which one does not quite know what might happen. A sign suffi ces; a signal, rather: an odor from a foreigner’s kitchen or intense traffi c circulation of children in the pas-sageways is sensed by one’s sight or hearing and amplifi ed by rumors. Through these signals, the foreigner fi nds himself fi ngered, indexed, and, starting from these indices, which are often quite slender, all the rest is left up to the imagination.

Projected onto the topography of an urban map, this imaginary to-pology would be incoherent. There would be double or multiple contra-dictory meanings for one and the same site, a general polysemy for one and the same signal. The intense traffi c circulation of children within a passageway may signal a North African mode of life or a style belonging to those “student households where everyone lives together, they say.” Homologous interactions between signifi er and signifi ed (foreigner:dirty, dirty:foreigner) will put causal links off track, for the meanings of sites are superimposed, one on top of the other, and territories become fl uidi-fi ed.17 Understood in terms of force and not of fi xed boundaries, these contradictions nevertheless coincide. Appropriation has any force at all only through the force of its contraries. For, what is contradictory ac-cording to a clear-cut spatiality becomes contrariness in the lived pres-ent. The ordinary is dynamized only through the evocation of the pos-sibility of the alien, the strange, and the foreign. Without a recognition of the dynamic ground of the imaginary, the only meaning this play of forces will ever have will be that of epiphenomenon of a social mecha-nism according to which everyday lived experience is an insignifi cant accident.

The Everyday according to the Eventful

In its everydayness, the ordinary is a present that is repeatable each day. Beneath the storied fi nery of the event, the possible corresponds to what would happen a single time. In the ordinary present, this extreme singu-larity of the exceptional event is imagined as something eventual, or else it is reactivated—reimagined, if we may put it that way—as a unique fact from the past and an unreality from the present. There is nothing in


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common, it seems, between a fact that has “really” occurred and some-thing eventual that is not obliged to arise by any necessity. To the extent that they can be evoked, the nocturnal, the accidental, and the strange would be grouped under the banner of a true or false imagined eventual-ity. On the other hand, “eventful marking,” whose importance we saw in the study of the code of appropriation, would bear on the persistence of a quite true “reality.” And yet the concept of truth, which is closely connected with the truth of the concept, loses its self-assurance in the lived practices of everyday inhabiting. The present’s relationship to the possible is ill judged in terms of an exclusive true-or-false disjunction. From the standpoint of inhabitant expression, the possible is defi ned (engendering defi nition) by the imaginary and, in this sense, it is a “nei-ther-true-nor-false.”18 It is evaluated not in terms of the real but, rather, in terms of the present quality of which it constitutes the horizon.

Now, past events that have marked urban places and climates were either seen—in which case they implied the presence, close by, of the witness (like the fi ght in front of the junior high school)—or heard, and then they are reconstituted according to the visual imaginary or else again reported through rumor. Yet, once passed, all these unforeseen events continue to impregnate certain spots and, in subsequent presents, they alter for a long time one’s ways of strolling and inhabiting, because their repetition, even if improbable, is still evocable. For the inhabitants who imagine such possibilities on the horizon of their present, all these different types of events, whether they were “really” lived or not, are brought together in the modality of something eventual that is neither true nor false and yet endowed with a force that makes these people avoid the site, bypass it, or seek out its specifi c quality. And the present takes on an affective tonality that differs according to whether the even-tuality in question is imagined in a harmful or a favorable light.

Indeed, this tension between the possible and the present is ex-tremely variable in degree and in quality, depending on the peculiarities of the action of the inhabitants. Was the imagined or reimagined event dramatic, or else curiously unforeseeable, or else again the unexpected punctuation mark on a walk that thereby exits from the ordinary? In the least catastrophic cases, the possible becomes an expected probability, even one sought after. Thus, a cricket heard last year and now chirping


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again, as one had hardly hoped to expect, with a song whose presence makes it sound completely surrealistic in a universe of concrete and metal, signals the existence of a ridiculous yet tenacious natural world.

A cricket at the minimarket! Well, somewhere near the store, really! Most likely hidden in a metal pylon! He was already there last year; I don’t know if it’s the same one or another one! It so astonished me that there would be a cricket here!

Other events that function as a signal are repeated so often that the thing being signaled fades away. This is the case of the sirens that in-dicate a problem in the garages’ ventilating systems, the bells that call for help when users are stuck in the elevator, and the alarms retailers have installed in their stores. All the ringings that make people jump and worry end up merging together. Through excessive repetition, they come to blend in with the everyday background noise. Let us cite again the ongoing noise at construction sites that, with time, loses its unfore-seeable and irruptive quality. It is rather when there is a halt to this noise that one is surprised. Some inhabitants mention the impression of agonizing silence when the mechanical systems that ventilate the apart-ments cease operation because of some accident. Studies on the imagi-nary list all these phenomena less readily in their classifi cations of sym-bols, because such sounds do not correspond to visual images; they are nevertheless precious indicators both of the dynamism of the imaginary and of the reversibilities these forces perform. The imaginary that is thus evoked through what is heard insinuates itself into the lived present and gives itself out as a ground—“background noise,” in the paradigmatic sense this time—coexisting beneath the present.

Would it not be necessary to reread again the singular tracings pro-posed in walking fi gures, and in particular those of hyperbole, ana-phora, and metabole, examining them now in terms of the role played by the modality of the evocable? In these variations, these detours, these fascinated bypassings, in the impetus [élan] of a delayed or deferred project, in the excesses and overfl ows of synecdoche, would one see not only on what ground of possibility the everyday is constituted but, also, how the possible introduces itself into the present in the forms of a lived imaginary. In expressive lived experience, the evocative trait brings the present closer to the eventual and weaves an intimate contemporaneity


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between these two instantiated principles. The present is not situated simply on a ground of possibility; it immediately implies the force of the imaginary, whose import has so often been evaluated. Ought we not to look for other everyday expressions that would carry out the reversal from the evoked imaginary to the convoked imaginary, thus showing us the two sides of one and the same power?

Convocation of the Imaginary: The Possible according to the Present

The Event in the EverydayCertain events end by coloring with a particular tonality the sites in which they arise. Thus, the market is mentioned by all inhabitants, be-cause its installation, whether or not it was foreseen, was noticed by everyone and because the event persists on this place that has become the “Market Place.” The market’s periodic presence punctuates in a fa-vorable way the cycles of everyday life. Going to the market remains, for the housewife, “a little event.” For several inhabitants who frequent the Community Center or the Medical Building, the possible is con-voked within the present in the sense that one is looking for something new, tiny unforeseen events, a change in climate, unexpected encoun-ters. These cyclical events in which the exceptional tends to become commonplace are evoked as much as they are convoked. On several occasions in our interviews, the Arlequin in its entirety has been consid-ered as itself an overall event. It punctuated an important moment of the residential history of the inhabitants who never regard it with indif-ference but, rather, either with enthusiasm or a certain dazedness. The imaginary is closely mingled with a diffuse ideology centered on two op-posing poles: “concrete hell” or a “new life.” For the enthusiasts, some-thing of this favorable event remains and is still surreptitiously exuded beneath their everyday steps. And “although one has now put things in perspective,” what is possibly imaginable has still not been exhausted.

Let us mention one last time the remarkable form of everyday event-fulness that fl ourishes in certain walking fi gures and that, in its superfl u-ity, borders on hyperbole, even on the sublime. The sites about which one can wax most poetic are situated in the park, such as the Mound, which hovers between sky and earth, and the lake:


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When one is on the hills, you see, one is not on earth; it’s not always fl at, it’s high up, it’s a bit high up! When you go up on the hill, there’s the sun. . . . One would say. . . . The sun is there, and you, you are there!

One evening coming from my home . . . [small voice], it was in August; there was a moon all big and round, and there it was being refl ected in the lake! . . . It’s the fi rst time I ever saw that!

These are still straightforwardly urban sites in which tenuous signs of nature nonetheless both wander off and dig in their heels. On the basis of such signs, the present convokes the possible:

The gallery is made of concrete. And yet, it has to be said, near the elevator, for example, that there are these three small trees that are in the corner, with their foliage, and when a bit of air is blowing, it’s quite pleasant.

These sites lose all topographical meaning. Transfi gured, they are felt like some sort of atmosphere, an imaginary world that turns its back on functional space and suddenly opens up an unhoped-for prospect.

When removed from their context by someone’s fl oating and daw-dling attention, certain architectural elements take on unexpected fea-tures and serve as a support for imaginary events. One example is given by the irruption of the rural within the most massive sort of urban world. Because it rises between two walls and a ceiling (a vault?), the “ramp” can be traversed as if it were the “backstreet of some steep village in the South.” The café tables arranged on the “Market Place” during the summer months create in a fl ash a village-like atmosphere. Seizing hold of these spatial clues and transforming them, inhabitant expression tries to live “what the neighborhood could be” by superimposing upon them some entirely contradictory values.

Thus, when the eventful becomes commonplace and reemerges into the immediacy of a present with which it blends in, the possible is sud-denly convoked and takes shape on the basis of the present. Later and elsewhere are woven right into the lived now.

Tomorrow according to TodayThe ways in which one envisages the future evolution of the neighbor-hood offer a remarkable convergence of perspectives. All the inhabi-tants have a premonition of its eventual obsolescence, which stretches


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from partial deterioration to cataclysmic disintegration: a “disaster,” a “pigsty,” “everything fallen apart.” Physical deterioration as well as a deterioration of the social climate seem like they are going to arise little by little of their own accord. One then imagines the forces that might be able to check such a decline through a reinforcement of social activities. Yet then trivialization would become inevitable: “It would become a housing development like the other ones.” Now, the vari-ous forms of deterioration as well as the kinds of forces capable of “restoring discipline”—or of better supervising the maintenance and upkeep of the neighborhood—presently exist within everyday life. The way of imagining Arlequin’s tomorrows is organized on the basis of the present.

Facts lived everyday feed the possibilities envisaged. Filthiness here promises to be fi lthiness everywhere. And, as one inhabitant notes, di-saster is already conjugated in the present tense:

If there are some people who are a bit fi lthy, later, there will be a disaster. Sometimes, you see old armchairs, stuff lying about, it’s a disaster. [ . . . ] If this became really unpleasant, you could no longer live here.

A female inhabitant who said, “When I’ll go everywhere [ . . . ] I’ll be myself,” has too great a fear that the overall atmosphere might change in the meantime. One keeps an eye out for the fi rst signs of abstention or abandonment on the part of the activity coordinators and the mu-nicipality, the two major guarantors to whom, through the deliberate choice of making the neighborhood an ongoing creation, this neighbor-hood fi nds itself tied.

I feel a bit apprehensive for the New Town of tomorrow, because I fi nd it really nice, very colorful, and I like it a lot . . . and I would be quite afraid if the mu-nicipality abandoned it. It would be a pigsty in no time at all, huh? Because the New Town, if abandoned, would be horrible! It would be a labyrinthine pigsty.

Reading these statements from the inhabitants, it appears that the sometimes fantastical evocation of the future brings us back to a way of living the possible in the present. The apparent evocation of a future destiny is imperceptibly turned around into an immediate presence of the imaginary thus being convoked. The Arlequin is already, according to certain signs, what it could be tomorrow.


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The Whole according to the PartThe process of synecdoche manifests itself again as these evocations and convocations of the everyday imaginary unfurl. Synecdoche was pre-sented as a fundamental fi gure of a walking rhetoric. Here we fi nd it in the process of organizing the latent yet fundamental presence of the imaginary in the lived experiences of inhabitant expression.

Three heuristic examples will clarify straightaway how the imagin-able is convoked in one’s ways of inhabiting frequented sites.

Three inhabitants repeat each day the same short trips. Whatever the variations in atmosphere might be, they occupy only a very small part of the neighborhood, spatially speaking. None of them has gone even once into the park, and they are unfamiliar with most of the build-ings. But this ignorance implies nothing unimaginable. Each of them evokes in his or her own way the rest of the neighborhood, and these modalities are qualifi ed according to the style of inhabiting belonging to each one. For the fi rst inhabitant, the neighborhood in its globality is evoked as a possibility that is appropriable little by little. She hopes it will always be “nice” and “colorful”—whence her understandable fear that the nocturnal world, the windiness outside, and maintenance ne-glect might come to impede her project of inhabiting the area and con-fi ne it to what she calls “my corner that I’ve made for myself.”

Another inhabitant lives according to a style that is decidedly vol-untaristic. A regular at various activities, she imagines the rest of the neighborhood as a space that is to become appropriated more and more by everyone and to be lived in the mode of “encounter.” The enormous qualitative charge affecting such brief trips (the narratives are quite long and always different from one day to the next) highlights her walking as a way of inhabiting the whole neighborhood.

The third inhabitant, who is very disturbed by his short daily trip in the mezzanine, has no project for a more expansive appropriation. Each day he traverses his daily hell, and the Arlequin neighborhood as a whole is evoked for him by the “garbage and vomit, the carcasses of bi-cycle frames and the shells of old cash registers” he steps over each day.

For these three inhabitants, the rest of the neighborhood is evoked and convoked in the present. The uninhabited elsewhere stands out al-ready as inhabitable possibility, or as uninhabitable. And these obser-


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vations hold for the inhabitants as a whole, who are split between two extreme cases: that of the voluntaristic project of appropriation and that of fascinated abandonment. The style of the fi rst inhabitant offers the example of an intermediate case: that of a rather balanced articulation between her project and the resistance it encounters. No inhabitant, not even one who travels widely across the territory of the neighborhood, succeeds in making his everyday life coincide with the spatial totality. One’s steps cite and confi gure at the same time a space whose nature is nontotalizing yet globalizing.

Such a globality, which gives itself out as the common ground of inhabitant expression, is constituted through the evocation of the pos-sible and the convocation of the imaginary within the atmosphere of the present act of inhabiting. This twofold movement—which, in the nar-ratives we have gathered, accentuates sometimes the evoked, sometimes the convoked—refers us back to one and the same imagining power in which the possible and the present are mutually responsive. The same outstanding common characters—the nocturnal, the accidental, the alien, the eventful, and their contraries—are also found to be convoked or evoked. These characters are capable, each in their own moment, of insinuating themselves into those particularities that will predominate in this or that present and in such and such a possibility. If inhabitant expression deforms and derealizes planned urban totalities, is this not, in fact, on account of the implementation of this imaginary ground in which the lived present draws its corrosive quality? Why are harmful characters experienced in places the designers of the spaces, in their rep-resentations, thought would be pleasant, more propitious for encoun-ters with others, and even favorable to the blossoming of a genuine “social life”? Why is the color not necessarily cheerful; why does it not render forms light and “transparent”; why are the volumes not always reassuring? Yet all that took on meaning only in an overall project in which everything was all too well tied together. Given in homogeneity, equivalency, permeability, and transparency, the real totality offers no foothold; it is radically unimaginable. In everyday life, the “real” is the presently lived site. And, through it, the totality is reimagined as global-ity. Moreover, the disturbing possibilities the process of conception-pro-duction had evacuated reappear all the more in one’s not represented,


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but rather lived, usage. Against the diurnal transparency of a techno-logical habitat, the imaginary can still, through lived experience, set in opposition the forces of the accidental, the unforeseen, and the noctur-nal, in the sense in which the imaginary has “an autonomous symbolic existence.”19

Three Powers of the Lived Imaginary

The imaginary does not have the phantasmagoric and unstable charac-ter one ordinarily assume it has. A study of everyday life that is attentive to singularities and to details would show that in it lies a power whose import is ill evaluated by the universe of technical production.

Presented as one of our psychological faculties, the imagination looks like it is abiding in a space of its own, a sort of mental territory that is not to surpass certain limits and that is called upon during quite a specifi c set of activities: connecting perceptions, preparing the genesis of concepts, being the compost of artistic and technical creation. It is conceded a single liberty: it is allowed to go at will into the seemingly incidental fi eld of aesthetics. From this perspective, the imaginary would be the mere complement, the facile foil, of the real. Everything that the former would not accept would be thrown out as dross in the latter domain. Is not this reduction of a concrete power into a psychological faculty, this way of confi ning the irrational and the polysemous in the seedier parts of town, in the suspect “zone” of the city of knowledge, a strategic effect? Yet, by hurling into the vacant lots of the irrational all that might cast doubt on rational rules and the clear and distinct con-ceptions governing both thinking about space and its planned produc-tion, so many additional attributes have been given to the diffuse and subterranean force of the imaginary.

Examples of social deviance, unco-optable forms of urban conduct, and everyday practices that remain inexplicable20 no doubt share a com-mon bond. They manifest in a point-like way and with a peculiar sort of irruptive violence the hidden presence of a forbidden imaginary of abid-ing. We have studied some of the most commonplace expressions of this way of being, which is characterized by the following modalities: refusal


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of ongoing connection, or conjunction, and rejection of exclusive dis-junction. These two characters, which are entirely suitable to a logic of the imaginary,21 are to be found again both in ordinary urban practices and in exceptional ones. Rational urban thinking will be scandalized by them. One willingly grants the existence of heuristic and “marginal” cases, those accidents and imponderables that readily justify the conten-tion that one must always plan more. But it can hardly be granted that the essence of lived everydayness is grounded upon these same irrational instantiated principles and that, in this sense, the system of our certain-ties might be shaken to the core.

And yet the two principal walking fi gures—asyndeton and synec-doche, those spatial derealizations on whose basis the social code of appropriation and the articulatory process that defi nes the act of inhab-iting are structured—signify, each in its own way, the fundamental pres-ence of these two imaginary instantiated principles in every inhabitant expression.

Instead of a formal defi nition of the imagination, we have preferred a genetic defi nition of the imaginary. The fi rst kind of defi nition would have straightaway put forward one function among others. In that case, we would have appealed to it in order to clarify some spatial practices that were too vague. Such a theoretical option—which, moreover, is quite common—will always demonstrate the incidental role of the imagination. The second one, which prejudges nothing, establishes it-self bit by bit along the line of a concrete examination of everyday ac-tions and until it reaches the point of the hitherto improbable affi rma-tion of its decisive import. The term imagination conveyed too much the classical distinctions among various functions for us to have been able to use it here. The imaginary is a domain, a fi eld of action and of passion that spans the whole of our existence in space and in time. We never completely leave its soil. In its insistency beneath the apparent so-lidities of planned spatiality and functional uses, it exhibits the tenacity of that nocturnal realm we evoked earlier. Indeed, it is always ready to disturb the diurnal certitudes that feign to ignore it. And this paradigm illustrated better than any other in what sense the lived imaginary is the ground from which inhabitant expression draws its three principal powers, which we now recall:


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1. Power to exceed. Thus, all ambulatory fi gures border on synecdo-che—which, thanks to the absences and breaks made by asyndeton in planned space, make the part stand for the whole. But in order that a site might take on such an importance that the rest of the neighborhood or the city would be canceled out, a particular sen-sorial condition is required. One sensation sets the tone for all the others and overfl ows the apparent spatial limits that, in addition, motor anticipation transforms into a tension between near and far. Everyday conducts introduce chaos into the spatial organization produced by the developer and excess into foreseen functional op-erations. They confi gure the space in their own way by fi rst render-ing it heterogeneous. In this sense, the imaginary upsets constructed spatialities and derealizes them by the power to give the whole in the fragment.

2. Power of reversibility. The reversals between whole and part, be-tween present and absent, between acted and suffered affect the most fundamental ways of living space according to time. Thus, the total is not suppressed. Evoked in the partial, it is convoked also under the form of an atmosphere enveloping the present. The climate of such and such a lived moment substitutes a sensorial and imaginary globality for the representation of the spatial totality. But the qual-ity of the present action that is to come, or is deferred, determines the tonality of this atmosphere. Likewise, the evocation of a possible future on the basis of the present reduplicates the convocation of to-morrow in today’s inhabiting.

These reversals pertain to a process of symbolization that is pe-culiar to the imaginary and that outstrips what received knowledge says about it when it defi nes the symbol: “every concrete sign evok-ing something that is absent or impossible to perceive.”22 In everyday life, the process of symbolization convokes at the same time that it evokes. Graffi ti that are not understood, the cardboard box of gar-bage half strewn across the fl oor of the gallery, the still-green edge of lawn or some striking color—all these evoke in their own way absent possibilities of which they are discrete signs. Each one symbolizes in this fi rst sense (evocation in a shortcut form) something imagin-able with indefi nite limits. And yet, spanning affectivity, feeling, and


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motor function, these same symbols produce imaginary resonances that are capable of mobilizing the presently lived act. Reversibilities indicate that the evoked imaginary and the convoked imaginary are caught in a mutual genesis, this “incessant exchange that exists at the level of the imaginary between subjective and assimilative drives, on the one hand, and objective summonses emanating from the cosmic and social setting, on the other.”23

Finally, a linear representation of time is absolutely alien to the lived modality of inhabiting. If an image must be provided, that of the circle would be more fi tting to illustrate such circulations that carry the present toward the possible and bring the possible back toward the present through the vehicle of symbols. The power of re-versibility implies the rupture of chronological continuities and spa-tial contiguities.

3. Power of immediacy. One has rightly attributed to the imagination the functions of connection, assembling, and synthesis. It engenders an imaginary fi eld that is the medium par excellence, the site of ex-change between the drive-induced gesture and the environment, be-tween the plurality of styles of inhabiting and commonly held mo-dalities. Yet the imaginary connections hardly use conjunction and logical sequence at all. The imaginary is lived according to imme-diacy. The pregnancy of the imaginable in the climates of this or that moment, the superimpositions between the convoked possibility and the evoked possibility, the convocation, in the act of confi gur-ing space, of an evocable climatic globality—all these processes show that inhabitant expression lived in space and in time skips causal or rational sequences and does without streams of representations. There is nothing about it of a “relation” of part to whole or of a “re-lation” of the individual to the “socius”; the same goes for rational-izing explanations that would yield on the one hand the subject, on the other hand the object, on the one hand knowing, on the other hand the world in itself. To the extent that everyday life can fi nd meaning qua expression, the imaginary proposes itself as the essen-tial referent to which the moments of inhabiting, and all the spaces inhabited, relate. The imaginary weaves beneath each present lived experience a ground the imaginary immediately gives to it as world.


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At the outset of a patient reading of narratives of everyday life, we were seeking a change of scenery. The progressive appearance of the global power of the imaginary leads us quite far afi eld. Are we ram-bling? On the one hand, one will have had an adequate glimpse now of how everyday conducts are not forms of occupying a space that has been proposed to one but, rather, forces for reorganizing a lived space-time. One will also have glimpsed that this dynamism emanates from the imaginary. This would thus be a contribution to present-day re-search on the imaginary roots of collective life. But, on the other hand, can the lived experience of inhabiting be told and understood only in the trace of a pure practice, with only snatches of it being grasped and its empirical examination never ending? Is it only dispersal, and is its unity of meaning simply hypothetical? In short, in overfl owing the boundaries of the well-known and reassuring structure of the relation of signifi er to signifi ed, inhabitant rhetoric would lead to a set of remarks that, from errancy to errancy, might end up straying into the realm of the arbitrary. Is inhabitant expression but a series of rejections, or just some babbling provocations launched against urban planning? Has it no internal ne-cessity? Can it not be rephrased into a theory?

Toward a Theory of Expression

Just as the inhabitants whose steps we have followed sometimes stop in the course of their trips and look back on something or toward some-one, so, along the itinerary of our investigation, have some notewor-thy points interrupted our forward bound [élan] and invited us to take a look around. These theoretical adjustments have taken place four times:24 when two fundamental fi gures, synecdoche and asyndeton, referred ambulatory rhetoric back to a poetics rather than to prosaic statement; when spatial derealizations brought to light by the code of appropriation scrambled the order of clear signifi cations and indicated that everyday rhetoric also signifi ed itself; when the body of inhabitant expression showed that acting and suffering are not two distinct instan-tiated principles but, rather, that they are lived through a process of articulation, in a rhythmic manner; and when, fi nally, in the preceding


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pages, the ground of inhabitant expression proved to be imaginary and was to be characterized by the three powers of excessiveness, reversal, and immediacy.

On four occasions, everyday practices have expressed a rejection of the self-evident truths of planned space. And the four forms of inter-pretation they called for seem to call into question the certainties of our knowledge of social space and to disturb our overly inured habit of seeking general causes and clear signifi cations. Is there, however, noth-ing in common among these four theoretical sketches of inhabitant ex-pression that, as against determinate space and knowledge, plainly per-sist in stating the existence of the polysemous and the arbitrary?

Yet, as a matter of fact, the status of expression outstrips that of bi-nary-structure signifi cation in that it never functions in an arbitrary way.Everyone knows the two principles on which the theory of the sign is grounded: the arbitrary relation between signifi er and signifi ed, on the one hand; the linear character of the signifi er, on the other.25 Now, one need only bring up again the fi gures of inhabitant rhetoric in order to grasp that “expressers” outstrip the order of “convention” and that they are far from “unmotivated.” Also, walking rhetoric clearly differs from a linguistic process. Even if the space “traveled through” were the same, one never walks exactly in the same way. However unremarkable our ways of inhabiting might be, they would never depart from a climatic pregnancy that never leaves them totally “unmotivated.” The atmo-sphere brings together a veritable network of signifi cations that envelop the lived presents. Of the convocations and evocations of the imaginary that are mingled with “climates” and that ground the articulations of each inhabitant expression, as well as of collective relationships, it could not be said, they are “a line.”26 Finally, the fundamental presence of the imaginary in the regulatory system of lived inhabitant expression ap-pears not only likely but necessary. It makes one understand that, at the level of the process of symbolization (which becomes concretized in spatial confi guration through synecdoche and asyndeton), expression is never carried out according to an arbitrary relation and does not unfold in a single dimension.

In everything that inhabitant expression has manifested, no ex-presser remains the arbitrary instrument of what is to be expressed. The


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signifi er holds and is valid only by virtue of the signifi ed content. It al-ready “holds” and “is valid” for itself, qua mode of expression already loaded with meaning. What is expressed (for example, avoidance or the seeking out of a qualifi ed site; ease of habitation or inhabitant malaise) refers back to the mode of expression. And in its way of confi guring the inhabited space, the mode of expression implies straight off what it en-deavors to express.

No doubt, the narratives of the inhabitants, like our ways of read-ing them, are hampered by the linguistic process one must indeed use. And in its linear stretch, this linguistic process has a hard time account-ing for the expression of a practice that is itself already lived as an ex-pression. The narratives turn back around and take up in another way what was said, move about from one detail to another, colliding against and shaking up the linearity of the statements made. The same goes for our attempts at analysis. And yet, if one does not succeed in making a complete tour around this inhabitant expression and exhausting its ex-pressive force, is it not that its nature has nothing linear about it and that it must be understood, rather, in its multiple dimensions? Is it not true that each lived moment in this or that site implies and convokes, in a manner that is not arbitrary and yet is pregnant in its concrete plural forms, the globality of the inhabited space? One never fi nishes recount-ing the modalities of any one inhabiting. There is still and always some-thing else to say.

This “nonfi nite” character of the narrative of everyday life, as well as that of the analyses made about it, can be exasperating from the “scientifi c” outlook, which likes to tour all the way around questions and put a decisive full stop. As for us, through our understanding that the modes of inhabiting have meaning only under a regulatory system of expression, we come to suspect that the study of such modes fi nds no decisive end. In addition, the strangeness of such expression, which functions in an immediate as well as mediated manner, sidetracks our habits of thinking in terms of exclusive disjunction, or binary principle of noncontradiction, through which an object is this or else that and cannot be qualifi ed in a contradictory way. Yet in the end is it a matter of contradiction or of contrariness?

It is not contradictory that there might be at once a relation of the expresser to what is expressed and, on the other hand, a reversal from


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the expressed to the expresser that can be contracted into immediacy. It is quite diffi cult to give a theoretical representation of this, and we lack the notions to do so. Or rather, the theory of expression no longer exists. It offers no operative interest; it is not usable in any production technology.

As a test and in a transitional way, can we fi nd a way of thinking that accounts for expression’s status and presents it in a theoretical form?

Examined in its concrete operation, the lived practice of inhabited space displayed itself in accordance with two movements. The most evi-dent one is developmental movement, a movement of unfolding in spa-tiotemporal succession by which one step follows another, a path ends in a stationary position, and a confi guration is displayed in fi gures. Hav-ing “unfolded” in this way, the various modes of inhabiting allowed one to see the elements of their composition and authorized the disjoining of this or that fi gure from some other one, of such and such an aspect of movements of appropriation from another, of the acted from the suf-fered, of the present from the absent, of the possible from the present, of the eventful from the everyday. The connections, like the absences of connection, could thus appear at all levels of analysis. The second is an enveloping movement, a movement of constriction, one could say, in which the elements developed in the preceding movement convoke one another mutually: from expresser to expressed, from expressed to ex-presser. The whole was given in the part, the possible coexisted beneath the present, the imaginary ground was convoked immediately in this or that lived here and now.

And yet these two movements thwart each other, because the fi rst goes from immediacy to the exposition of mediations and distinctions and the second from the mediated and the successive to immediacy. This contrariness nevertheless has permitted us not to betray the lived expe-rience of various particularities and to spurn hastily arrived at abstrac-tions. It has also allowed us to sift out the shared principles involved in multiple ways of inhabiting. These movements of explication and im-plication that appeared in our attempt at an approach in fact make up the fundamental mode of inhabiting that gives itself out as expression. Although they are contraries, these movements are lived simultaneously.What is this third movement?

A theory can account for this coincidence of contraries only by


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appealing to a third term. One must go back rather deep into the his-tory of thought, back to the Renaissance, in order to fi nd a triad of no-tions capable of giving coherence to the representation of the status of expression. These three specifi c notions have been borne by a—never-theless suspect27—current of thought that became established especially with Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno. Whatever the object to which they may be applied, one can preserve the meaning of these no-tions, which are eminently suitable for thinking expression. We are talk-ing about explication, implication, and complication.

Explication corresponds to the movement of modal exposition, of successive development, of an expression that confi gures and allows how expression confi gures itself to appear. Implication is the movement in which modal particularities convoke one another, the expressed re-ferring back to the expresser with each expression wrapping itself up in the others. Complication, which here has the meaning of global inclu-sion, of totalizing union, is at once the state of envelopment expressed through implication and the movement that expresses itself through ex-plication. Simultaneity and succession as well as immediacy and medi-acy coincide there in the same sense. Both ground and power at one and the same time, complication seals the status of expression.

This triad probably provides the most pertinent means for giving theoretical unity to all that the lived modes of inhabiting have allowed to appear in the diversity of their articulatory forms. It accounts for what we named the process of sensorimotor articulation, but also for the cohesion of walking fi gures in spatial confi guration, for the meaning of these at once contrary and concomitant movements of differentiation and identifi cation, which manifested themselves in the code of appro-priation, and for the diverting and paradoxical powers of the imaginary. Finally, it accounts for the way in which the part gives itself out as the whole and the whole can be convoked in the part. All these processes have, in short, the same meaning: lived experience of inhabiting does not have to express anything other than itself.

Everyday existence expresses itself practically in the modes of in-habiting that express in turn an autonomous power of expression. This autonomy, which can be defi ned in theoretical terms by the notion of complication, is not an everyday delusion that would be superim-


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posed upon the prosaic “usage” of the laid-out and developed space. Quite to the contrary, when recognized as expression, a lived experi-ence of inhabiting has the power to deform these habitat situations one hardly chooses, to remove from them the unimaginable reality with which they are adorned. A collective habitat is perhaps even a mat-ter of choice—yet, it is inevitable in present-day building production—about which everyday lived experience can manifest its buried and un-noticed powers.

Why, fi nally, does a theory of inhabitant expression seem barely con-ceivable today? The notions that would allow such an approach have been emptied out.28 But furthermore, the approach remains particularly diffi cult. It cannot be performed with clarity and binary distinctions. Indeed, theory brings “expressions” back up to the expressed—the ex-pressed being, in short, the meaning of being-able-to-express. Now, the expressed has a very paradoxical status. This is because, as Deleuze notes,

“what is expressed” has no existence outside its expression, yet bears no resem-blance to it, but relates essentially to what expresses itself as distinct from the expression itself. Expression thus bears within itself a double movement: one either takes what is expressed as involved [on enveloppe], implicit, wound up in its expression, and so retains only the couple “expresser-expression”; or one unfolds [on développe], explicates, unwinds expression so as to restore what is expressed (leaving the couple “expresser-expressed”).29

One grasps clearly only one or the other of the two movements. And yet the attentive analysis of one of the two must not lose sight of its comple-ment. Otherwise, the complication that gives coherence to the status of the expression comes undone and is split up, the expressive power will not allow any meaning to appear, and one will no longer understand what was to be expressed.

It is precisely the paradoxical status of the expressed that would show how an act of inhabiting, grasped as expression, can be deleteri-ous if it itself recognizes itself and that would show what threat it would then evoke. Indeed, this paradox exceeds the dualisms and the prop-erly distributed conjunctions that govern a dominant mode of think-ing-producing. Let us cite Deleuze once again:


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In short, what is expressed everywhere intervenes as a third term that trans-forms dualities. Beyond real causality, beyond ideal representation, what is ex-pressed is discovered as a third term that makes distinctions infi nitely more real and identity infi nitely better thought. What is expressed is sense: deeper than the relation of causality, deeper than the relation of representation.30

We have proceeded from the most spatial forms of everydayness to the sketch of a theory of expression. Here we are at the end of our change of scenery. Borne by the inhabitants’ narratives, our approach has bided its time, in envy, perhaps, of the time of inhabiting that it has taken pleasure in making apparent, abandoning itself to the “gray tones [griseurs]” of the everyday, allowing itself almost to be surprised by events, and thus playing at varying the paths it takes. While the lived experience of inhabiting now gives itself out as expression, the wealth of inhabitant expressions has hardly been exhausted at all.

We have been told over and over again that all capacity to inhabit space in an active way has by now disappeared, that, despite its spo-radic efforts, inhabiting power is henceforth impotent, that the soul of our cities is dying. But has inhabitant practice been able already to ex-press itself? Would we not have betrayed its ingenuity in favor, rather, of a discourse that reproduces categories that would not in the least be disavowed in the universe that makes a profi t from the production of space? Although concerned with fi delity, our very approach will have re-lated only one “story” of everyday life among others. In order to make one and the same fi nal discovery—namely, that inhabitant expression expresses fi rst of all itself—many other approaches would have been possible and they remain so, under the heading of one and the same fundamental similarity. Let us therefore fi nish up without ending by re-ferring to a few lines from Samuel Beckett that will translate the lived experience of the climate surrounding our own itinerary:

Dawn was just breaking. I did not know where I was. I made towards the ris-ing sun, towards where I thought it should rise, the quicker to come to light. I would have liked a sea horizon or a desert one. When I am abroad in the morning I go to meet the sun, and in the evening, when I am abroad, I follow it, till I am down among the dead. I don’t know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I’ll be able to tell an-other. Living souls, you will see how alike they are.31

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Conclusion

A Cosmogenetic Point

The space open before you does not have any

other measure, any other quality,

Than that given to it by the form and

the rhythm of your steps.

—Traditional Vedic saying

There are conclusions that, in ending a book, put a full stop to the question being treated and offer it up as a fi nished object. Such a procedure would have no meaning here. This book remains a rough draft, a preliminary sketch; it ends nothing. On the contrary, our wish is that it would invite one to return to this infi nitely more precious and rich text on which ambulatory practices write without their tiring and which they recommence each day upon an urban space that seemed to reject them or remove all signifi cation from them.

Before formulating this invitation more fully, we shall take stock [nous ferons le point] of the situation. One of the great concerns of our time is to know for how long, in our cities beset by an unprecedentedly vast undertaking of planning, the inhabitants will still be able to “fi nd themselves” within it.

In a way, the answer is simple. If the “constraints” and the “impera-tives” in whose name development is carried out are really necessary, the preconception of spatial practices in the form of functional usages would have to keep on growing. The process of urban production (ren-ovation, restoration, new neighborhoods, traffi c plans) will have to add up an increasing quantity of parameters and, for this very reason, secure for itself a more and more general mastery of space. The singularities

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lived by inhabitants who are isolated or in small groups (for, the social unit of everyday life is the aggregate, not the class or the social group, which are real, but abstract, entities) have no weight. Not only that, they are reduced in advance, codifi ed in the profi le of the typical inhab-itant, and classifi ed in general terms. When a new neighborhood rises from the ground, everything essential is stated. Thus do we believe that concrete is steeped in ideology as well as in economics. The singular “occupants” are to be satisfi ed with architectural forms and are to sat-isfy a way of life largely prepared in advance. Lived space seems to be-come an accident of conceived space.

In another way, the answer is undecidable. Indeed, if we wanted the point of view to change, if the requirements of economic imperatives were to be bracketed, be it only for the time of conducting an analysis, if we were to take into account everyday existence in town not as it is represented but as it is lived, we would see that the categories of “use”and of housing [logement] correspond only very partially to our ways of inhabiting. The production of planned space has its own rhetoric, a particular way of forming space and qualifying it. We would summarize this way in the following proposition: Planned space is conceived and is achieved only on the basis of a representation of its totality. The “real” is the territorial whole and the functional partitions that are arranged therein. All the rest is but imaginable.

Now, inhabitant expression proposes an entirely different confi gu-ration of space. A housing complex can be lived only partially, in a dis-crete manner, with absences that render the space heterogeneous. The “real” is the presently lived fragment of space. All the rest is grounded in a globality that is imaginary in nature.

These propositions are antithetical. It is hard to see how they could be reconciled. There exists but one actual state of fact: the planning im-perative of urban space reduces1 the power of inhabitant expression. Yet, this reduction is again reduplicated through an epistemological choice that gives out the totality as essential and the fragmentary as accidental or incidental. Depending on the capacities, the limits, and the degree of rigidity extant in the fi eld of knowledge in which an analysis of spatial practice is conducted, inhabitant expression will be apparent there or will not. Let us examine one fi nal example, taken from within the neigh-

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borhood we have studied, which will illustrate this determining factor. Everything depends on the way in which the questions are posed.

During the spring of 1974, drawings done by neighborhood chil-dren appeared in the windows of local businesses. Noteworthy is the fact that all these drawings represented the Arlequin neighborhood as seen from rather far away, the buildings blocking out the horizon, and with, of course, the interesting deformations peculiar to children’s sense of graphics: a window standing out in a close-up and certain anamorphoses of architecture regularity. But no building “interiors” were to be seen, none inside the passageway, nothing within the apart-ments, not even under the gallery. Only two drawings depicted the in-teriors of the studios of the “Video-Gazette” and the judo classroom. How had the organizers of this competition billed the topic? “The New Town, the Inhabitants, Games”—a proposition that was as ab-stract and reifying as could be and one to which these children from six to eight years old responded to the best of their abilities, shunting into a far-off view what they were living every day. The “fi rst prize” is de-scribed in the following terms by one of the competition’s organizers:

Very interesting, with this universe of concrete which seems to be falling to the side in which it is leaning, and with, in front, by way of contrast, the grass and the fl owers.

This was the best “landscape.”Other children’s drawings were exhibited in the same storefront

windows in late 1979. Quite different, these later drawings allow us to glimpse gestures, sketches of some lived relationship to this or that part of the space. No longer do we see those ridiculous stick fi gures that had been pushed so far back; the fi gures are now quite fi lled out. This time, the proposed theme was no longer spectacular in character. It was now aimed at inducing the inhabitants to be more concerned about cleanliness in the public spaces of the neighborhood. The chil-dren no longer had to illustrate, to account for something, but, rather, to propose, to convince. Also, the expressiveness of their drawings stuck much more closely to everyday lived experience. It no longer was a matter of representing a totality but, rather, of giving voice to a space that was familiar to them and that they drew as they were confi guring

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it every day. They were no longer required to fi ll in the space; they had to mobilize it.

Our interpretive essay on everyday life does not claim to resolve the contradictions that render urban life diffi cult. Nor is it trying to substi-tute itself for the kinds of investigations that have been conducted since the mid-sixties by researchers who are worried about the evolution of our world and who have taken great care to dismantle, in a lucid way, the mechanisms for the production of planned space while keeping in mind the psychological and social consequences such mechanisms can entail. But by repeating too often that the lived dimension is scoria, dross, a useless discarded by-product that cannot be assimilated by the present-day system of production and management of space, is one not likening [assimile] it to an insignifi cant remainder, something simply left over? One wonders whether this inhabitant power still exists, when it has been so well demonstrated time and again that it has been reduced, “dominated,” “co-opted.”

Perhaps it is sometimes necessary to shift the emphasis, to treat as not necessarily fundamental this chronologically primary and spatially dominant instantiated principle we would call the order that proceeds from construction to renting. Perhaps a commentary—however modest, however inaudible, however limited in its means as it might appear—ought to underscore, across the very, or too, real production of the built world and the preconceptions it induces, the tenacious persistence of a power of inhabitant expression. Would it not be fruitful to accept, fi -nally, that beside, before, and beyond an epistemological choice that has always made it its goal to focus back on [recentrer] representations and concepts, the lived experience of inhabiting might lead us toward the outlying [excentré] and the excessive, toward the empty and the polysemous?

What is most unforeseen and what is most diverting risks shaking the convictions and certainties of the order that reduces the powers of inhabiting. In this sense, three main directions begin to take shape, three surprises provoked by the evocation of an inhabitant expression whose discrete existence seemed to us not to signal the obsolescence of a now-censured power but, rather, to point to the possibility of another inter-pretation of the urban universe. So, this is not some full stop [point fi nal]

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that we shall be placing at the end of our essay but, rather, a cosmo-genetic point.2 Starting from this point, our understanding of the city would develop differently. We shall broach its movement in three ways.

An Inhabiting without Building

The concept of building and the reality it designates have disappeared or are on the way to disappearing. The kind of edifi ce that could be called an oeuvre, a work, has become a product of the commercial economy, an object to be fi lled in. In the past, an edifi ce indicated of what people, of what classes, or of what social castes it was the work. It seems that today the domesticity of the home and the monumentality of the pal-ace or of the temple have been reduced and assimilated into the concept of one’s “premises” [immeuble]. What is certain is that the disappear-ance of an act of building as implantation, as confi guration of space on the basis of the forms and functions of an immediate necessity (shelter against the cold, rain, wind, and sun), is characteristic of “advanced” technological societies in which the edifi ce becomes an object for sale. Reading an eminently enlightening yet still quite descriptive work that is lacking in theoretical pretensions such as Pierre Desfontaines’s L’Homme et sa maison suffi ces to shake up, in a healthy way, our universal convic-tions. There exist throughout the world some medium-sized towns that are still unscathed by the infl uence of urbanism and, especially, there are some countryside areas where architecture shows us that building de-pends on inhabiting, that it is constituted as a space of tensions in which functional necessities (shelter formed in accordance with the region’s cli-matic conditions) as well as symbolic instantiated principles (earth-sky, diurnal-nocturnal, near-far, indigenous-foreign) are given articulation.

So, contrary to the kind of constructing that produces abstract “housing-cells” dimensioned in “ratios,” building is directly expressive of inhabiting. It incorporates ways of being. It is itself a modality liable to variations, implying time; it is socially oriented (and not merely a sup-port for the juxtaposition of social elements) and open to tension and to confl ict.3 Building is already inhabiting; it is qualifying, in a lived way, a singular space and a singular time.

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Because both bring into play the same articulatory process, there is a connaturality between the act of building and that of inhabiting. In this sense, the proposition is also reversible. Inhabiting is confi guring space.And every inhabitant produces, without knowing it, an organization of space. Such an organization is ingenuous, but also indicative of a fun-damental power that architectural science merely exploits through the skills of its technical prowess.

If the power of building has been occulted and the term inhabitinghas become a doublet for housing, the play of transformations brought on by economic considerations is not the only thing at issue. The change that has been carried out has taken place through an objectifying rep-resentation of housing, one’s habitat becoming a housing-object. It has made it possible to think in terms of a standardized product constructed in a repetitive manner. Even more than that, this change has relegated the appearance of the habitat, properly speaking, to the end of a long series of distinct sequences that extends from conception (from projecta-tion, as one says in the world of urbanism) to the delivery of the prod-uct. Whence a limitation of respective responsibilities: each contributor (urbanist, architect, fi nancier, and then manager and owner) can avoid his own duty to respond and can hand over to the other “responsible parties” any discontented “occupant” who might contact him. Whence, also, the denial of all genuine mastery4 and the referral of the housing question back to some mysterious and fateful “social mechanisms.” It has become all too obvious that the process of construction always pre-cedes the process of inhabiting or housing. In other words, on the one hand, the ways in which one makes use of one’s housing have been pre-conceived as soon as the urbanistic and architectural project begins; on the other hand, the concrete act of housing is never taken into account in the production process as a whole. Reduced to a “being housed,” ex-cluded from the productive act, the lived experience of the inhabitant is ultimately handed over to the vagaries of the “housing market.” Thus, in the representations of the ideology of urbanism, what the economic and functional imperatives of production had implied from the start is treated merely as an unfortunate accident.

Recognition of inhabitant expression thenceforth entails an inevi-table corollary we must underscore, however utopian it might be. The

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process that goes from constructing to housing is grounded upon a split. The process that goes from inhabiting to building is grounded upon an organic correspondence. Cut off from building, inhabiting retains its power to confi gure and to imagine by foiling what is implanted as thetically real in our “modern” cities. In this sense, we will offer no backward-looking conclusions. Building is missing-in-action, not dead. And its potentialities are still exercised in a virtual way in the obscure confrontations between inhabitant expression and constructed space. We would say, rather, that the “modern” is what has just died; it is al-ready conceptuality, already fi xed in place. It is dead absolutely, that is, as soon as one lays down the fi rst stone, as soon as its fi rst object is sketched out, for it has rid itself of lived time. And rather than calling for a return to the past, we would prefer to grant, as a plausible out-come, self-construction.

But this outcome will remain an exotic dream for most inhabitants of high-density housing complexes. We are speaking about those for whom utopian syntheses are beyond their ken; those who do not have the power to manipulate easily discursive codes, be it only in order to subvert them; those who undergo or suffer the forms of fashion but hardly create them at all.

There is another consequence, more modest and more immediate. It is one that might benefi cially upset the instituted categories, if inhabi-tant power were recognized as a confi gurative force and a virtual poten-tiality of building and if the housing question were posed on the basis of lived modes of inhabiting rather than in the representation of an ob-ject to be fi lled in. To point out that every edifi ce is overdetermined on an everyday basis (that is to say, that all everyday lived experience con-vokes the other and the world in each inhabited site—and to refuse to represent this overdetermination as some sort of dysfunction, a seman-tic mix-up, or a defect in the perception of the “legibilities” of architec-ture): this is the sense in which an interpretation of everyday life, one attentive to its expressive features, might deconstruct the trivial and too convenient dichotomy that equally dismisses both urbanistic production and the inhabitants. If one no longer knows what building is, one will at least really have to ask oneself one day no longer, “What is housing?” in the sense of mere lodging but, rather, “What is inhabiting?”

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An Inhabiting without a “Why?”

This question, which has been examined concretely on a precise “ter-rain” following a method that is as attentive and faithful as possible to the myriad detours and the many moments of spatiotemporal practices, does not culminate in a system of primary causes. When it comes to ev-eryday life, to practices lived upon a group-housing space, the choice of one modal lane limits the transcriptions and betrayals of that at which observation aims. There really is not a tropism, but rather a similarity of nature, between the observed and the observation. The interpreter is to blend into the everyday and to refrain from making any premature ana-lytic divisions, any hasty abstractions, waiting upon and staying near to these expressions of everydayness, lingering amid what is intimate and familiar, and, fi nally, leaving to the narrative of “lived experiences” the expressive form that is peculiar to it, and without which it would have no meaning. Before looking for the “whys,” ought one not allow the “hows” to express themselves in the style that is peculiar to them?

It will, however, be surprising, and perhaps scientifi cally scandal-ous, that our comments would venture no further than this intermedi-ate zone. Not that the project would fail to culminate in a few proposi-tions, but that, speaking of inhabiting, that project “would never reach the end of them.” Settled into this intermediate realm, our change of scenery does not exit therefrom. Should it have found the causes of the “mechanism,” trivializing in the view of scientifi c knowledge, by inserting within some causal system these sometimes surprising and “savage”-looking everyday banalities? By refusing to stick to a formal ending, to the overall metaphorization of inhabiting into a “housing,” and by grasping modes of living other than through “why” questions, other than through categories familiar to the very actors who produce the built world, our investigation, which has privileged an approach to intermediate sites (walking paths) and a study of details, of accidents and irregularities, and of small variations over time, nevertheless ends up allowing a regulatory system of expression to appear, one that this investigation has not fi nished “touring around.”

Must one deduce from this that—setting aside the functional aspect

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(housing), which alone is taken into account in the listing of necessary causes (the economic, the political)—the everyday practices we have been tailing behind are pointless [gratuits] objects? Will one ascribe to them what Angelus Silesius said of the rose: “The rose is without a why”? Although the poetic nature of the act of confi guring space has become apparent to us, inhabiting has to be understood rather as a movement than as an aesthetic object. Yet, in any case, it is averse to the “why,” because the “why” no longer intends anything but representa-tions, whereas the “how” intends things.

In order to illustrate this radical difference in orientation and to sig-nal at the same time another opening indicated in the modal study of in-habiting, we must mention here the formidable question of needs, which for several years has cluttered up research in the social sciences and which barely conceals a return to the old debate between vitalism and mechanism. Are needs “natural,” signs of vital appetites, or else prod-ucts of social change conditioned by the relations of production? Do they refer back to a “deep-seated” desire that takes form in accordance with the conditions of the moment, or else are they historically created? The problematic of needs includes, in any case, a logic that is heavy with consequences:

It leads to resolving inequalities, deprivations, and contradictions engendered by capitalism through a vast welfare apparatus [ . . . ]. It does not suffi ce to “house” people; people must be able to “inhabit” an individual or collective space.5

This logic practically lays down the answer before the question is asked; and under its cloak, the most glaring needs are satisfi ed along the way. In the process, the power of the giver is reinforced and the necessity of his presence is confi rmed. Moreover, how are needs apprehended and interpreted? You look at the “masses,” the “users,” and, on the basis of social movements and their dynamic, you extract a social content: needs. Social life is abstracted into the notion of need, just as people’s practices are reduced to various functions. The abstraction of “function-ality” is inserted into a logic that is grounded on the relation of container to contained. Thenceforth, every sort of manipulation is, if not easy, at least possible. The logical presuppositions involved authorize a logistics,

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in the sense of an operational strategy, which includes anticipations of people’s use. The new conformism passes through the fi lter of needs:

The happy consciousness—the belief that the real is rational and that the system delivers the goods—refl ects the new conformism which is a facet of technological rationality translated into social behavior. It is new because it is rational to an unprecedented degree.6

The rehabilitation of a status for expression in the social sciences may invite one to think in another way, to cast into doubt a methodology that separates the content from the container, to advance an understand-ing that everydayness holds more than a “social behavior” obsessed by the search for its wants and its satisfactions, and to refer this occulting problematic back to those who are the masters of the question and who have, at the same, produced the answer.

There is a way of thinking that is expert in the mechanisms for a domineering sort of production of urban space. Such a way of think-ing will always keep one from recognizing that what inhabitant expres-sion expresses fi rst of all is itself. The logic of urbanistic thought grants only a transitive causality. The effect always has to be distinct from the cause, and the signifi ed from the signifi er. Thus, housing is represented as the product ad extra, the effect cut off from the cause, over which one no longer has any grasp. Thus, lived experience would be only the ac-cidental signifi er of much more general and essential instantiated prin-ciples. In this sense, short-circuiting the modal, the intermediate, and the unstable is equivalent to objectifying inhabiting, and it is so as much through the mechanisms of construction as through the ways of defi n-ing “housing-objects,” “short-term objectives,” and pairs of concepts of the need/satisfaction type by means of which one turns out “household objects” and those ridiculous “subjects” of use that are so many indi-vidual props for consumption.

The fi rst advantage of our lingering over the modalities of lived ex-perience and of our pursuing the discovery of them would be to dismiss such abstract objectifi cations that slice up, a priori, all concrete sociabil-ity and lead one to consider the instantiated principle of the collective as a collection of juxtaposed individuals whose unity would reside in the Establishment,7 with its cohort of (legal, economic, sociocultural, etc.)

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establishments. The second advantage of such an approach would be to deliver inhabitant expression to us in the immediacy of its tensions, of its confl icts, of its not yet reduced, not yet “resolved” possibilities.

An Irreducible Imaginary

The third surprise will come from the excessiveness, from the ambigu-ity, from the overfl owing nature of a rhetoric of lived inhabiting. “The fear of meaning—and especially of double meaning!—is the major ter-ror of our intellectual pedagogy,” Gilbert Durand points out.8 And if the imaginary appears to be the common ground of these excesses, of these double or multiple meanings, the resulting surprise could verge on perplexity. One will be surprised that an imaginary whose mischievous-ness, whose reveries, and whose outbursts can be accepted in a pinch as quite natural diversions—as escapades that, when all is said and done, actually favor the reproduction of the labor force—might overfl ow its confi nes and give itself out as the ground of the lived experience of in-habiting. It will be doubted that such a power to imagine—about which one knows only its momentary and fl eeting role as an intermediate fac-ulty in perceiving and knowing—might appear as the force by which we do not live the fragmentary as it is given to us. How could the abstract principle of homogenization not be the only way of reading identities and convergences of meaning? And how—opposite, or alongside, this thetic principle—could an imaginary persist in its irreducible power of expression and insist upon proceeding through homology rather than through clear-cut divisions and distinctions?

But does not such a surprise also conceal a fear? This would be the fear of the possible sudden emergence of a groundswell that no measur-ing stick succeeds in gauging and that no reason is certain to be able to contain.

The devaluation of the imaginary and the will to reduce its force barely conceals a vague, yet still disturbing, memory of the powers of which it is capable. For, in order to limit onself to the Western orbit, only fi ve centuries separate us from a culture in which the imaginary (phan-tasia, spiritus phantasticus, as was said at the time) had been recognized

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as the fundamental intermediary, on the near side of conscious percep-tion as well as on the far side of rational knowledge. It was not so long ago the key to the understanding of the world and of multidimensional man.9

Today’s rejection of an irreducible power of the imaginary manifests itself though the way in which the creative imagination is annexed and is, at the same time, reduced to the domain of productivity. The imagi-nary becomes an instrumental moment in the production of the edifi ed space. This moment, on which the most creative writers lay stress and whose brevity and limits they regret,10 brings into play the pregnancy of archaic space, the drive to play, the ornamental drive, and the drive for order.11 Crossed with the drive for imitation, these drives nevertheless deteriorate into divisions and fi xations: forms and functions are concep-tualized separately, and the force of the schematism becomes fi xed in set schemata. The form no longer is confi guring but, rather, posited in order to fi gure. For whatever they are worth, designers of urban space fi gure into their consumer product the image of a world that implies nothing other than fi lling in, contiguity, and distribution.

And yet, from the conceptual designer’s imaginary to the inhabitant imaginary, a spontaneous analysis would not be loath to underscore the unevenness, the deterioration. The conceptual design would exploit the imaginary all more actively as it produces a material reality that oc-cupies the space (and the ground of this space gives itself out as “real-estate” reality, “landed” reality) and as the use is anticipated, precon-ceived, implicitly or explicitly imagined when there is a “social project.” Among inhabitants, the imaginary would be liberated in a superfl uous sort of way in leisure (otium or opium?). While thus reduced and desic-cated, such an imaginary would nevertheless have more effective value than a merely suffered imaginary or one in which its activity is repre-sented as defenseless and contingent.

The study of everyday walks indicates, on the contrary, that there re-ally is much more creative movement, confi guration, and dynamic ten-sion going on in the humblest acts of inhabiting than in the very process that produces the contemporary built world. This points to an opening and to an investigative lead in which, on the basis of the lived experience of inhabiting, and not of conceptually designed housing, the imaginary

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functionally utilized in the production of laid-out and developed space might be confronted with an imaginary the inhabitant actually lives. A certain number of received values would then most likely be overturned, and this expressive power of an irreducible imaginary (one ignored for this reason by discourses on construction and housing) would appear as a cosmogenetic point.

In making the universe of everydayness begin on the basis of what is given, the world of manipulated technology is posited as the fi rst cause. And so, even the most lucid critics render those who no longer know how to inhabit responsible for those who no longer know how to build. Scru-pulous conceptual designers bow under the burden of an enormously bad conscience. Everything is still played out in terms of “knowing” and of “conscience.” It is said, “The world we have been given is bad. The forms in which the dominant powers are set are deadly but fated.”

In understanding everyday activity on the basis of its imaginary ground, the world begins in another way. It is seized as a structuration and not as structure, as functioning of confi gured forms and not as si-multaneous positing of preconceived functional forms. The inhabited world, with or against other worlds, is convoked and reactivated in the realm of the confl ictual and not in these falsely homogeneous “fi ll-ings-in” wherein each ends up representing himself in solitude and the expletive, as if one were mere “fi ller.”

The imaginary is, in short, the cosmogenetic point on the basis of which an inhabitant expression still exists and endeavors to fashion its world. It is the strategic point, too, from which the study of urban exis-tence could come to consider, in terms of force, movement, and expres-sion, what in received ideas are represented to us as forms, positions, and pure signitive relation. As Paul Klee said:

Nowhere, ever, is the form to be considered as achievement, result, fi nal term, but as genesis, as becoming, as essence in actu. The form as achieved appear-ance is a bad and dangerous specter.12

In offering this passage for the reader’s contemplation, we shall apply it to the end of the present work in two senses.

These formulations—namely, that the form would be formation and confi guration and that, on the other hand, “achieved appearance”

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would be a “dangerous specter”—sum up in an aphoristic way our intention here by giving a literally more operative sense (qua oeuvre,opera, opus) to the lived experience of inhabiting than to the production of the built world and by overturning the vice of making all too obvi-ous evaluations.

The same remark also applies to our own itinerary. Faithful to the nature of inhabitant expression, we have refused to give an end term [un terme] or a conclusion to it. We wanted only to propose a transitory and transitive way of formulating the question of inhabiting. The time of this writing and the modes of inhabiting we had described have already been altered. Here, as elsewhere, inhabitant expression is a far cry from having said its last word.

In this sense, the way that turns its back on defi nitive “terms,” on es-tablished relations, and on dogmas, the one that opens itself out toward the eccentric, the intermediate, and the ambiguous calls for another fu-ture as well as for other investigations. The initial, uncertain project has made its way, gained its ground, and its end is only temporary. What we have discovered in the lived experience of inhabiting, and the way in which we have done it, end up being brought together in the same idea of an oeuvre, a work that is already “along the way” and that calls for other variations. Let us understand in this sense another phrase drawn from the same text by Klee:

Through the identity of way and work, the work becomes articulated “along the way,” in passing from a uniform gait to varied gaits.13

Here we are already “along our way” at the invitation of everyday walks grasped in their movement, the rhythm of their gaits. Because they have the secret power to break up uniformity, because their varia-tions sidetrack and will still evade our certainties and our self-evident truths, the paths of expression do indeed seem to lead somewhere.14

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Appendix A

Synoptic Table

A formal conclusion would have been possible in the form of a synoptic table. We attempt a sketch of such a table here.

It seems to us that two powers, two different orders, are in con-stant confrontation with each other in everyday life. One of these es-tablishes itself through general representations (which are reproduced by the “user” and the “consumer”). The other one, which is buried and goes unnoticed, is rooted in the lived experience of the inhabitant.

The order of constructing-housing, which stretches from the layout and development of space to the delivery of housing, enjoins a repre-sentation of both the production of space and the usage of the spatial product. This representation is reproduced even in the general speech patterns of the inhabitants.

The order of inhabitant expression, or of inhabiting, subsists under the fi rst of these and is grounded on an active sense of inhabitant action.

On the one hand, the modalities of inhabitant expression and the representations of constructing-housing stand in contradictory relation to each other. (And one will have glimpsed in what sense these contra-dictions can hardly be “resolved.”)

On the other hand, the order of constructing-housing covers over that of inhabiting and reduces it in two ways:

• the constructed product is represented as bringing about housing usage;

• everyday details, modalities of lived experience, and the forces of inhabiting are reduced to representations that are conceptualiz-able and manipulable.

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This set of reductionist processes implies the convergence and the iden-tity, on the conceptual level, of the mode of producing and the mode of thinking producing and usage.

The foregoing can be read in two possible directions. Either:

• one takes the point of view of the reductionist order (the order of constructing-housing), and then the habitual process by which one buries the power of inhabiting can be rendered explicit. In that case, one must begin by reading the pages that inventory the principal categories of the reductionist order (odd-numbered pages of the table); or

• one “takes a plunge” and one takes the point of view of the order of inhabiting. The reading can then begin with the third principle of this order of inhabitant expression, since it is the most incon-ceivable one for the logic of the reductionist order (last even-num-bered page of the table).

Yet, every reading of the table in this second direction would show, in short, that the power of inhabitant expression remains irreducible and that, on account of this fact, no attempt to resolve the basic contradic-tions between the two orders is viable.

Let us note, fi nally, that the arrangement of the table, which is or-ganized into three series for greater “clarity,” by itself betrays a prob-lematic that does not succeed in ridding itself of the spatial paradigm cluttering up our thought. In this sense, inhabitant expression remains alien to the logic of such a confrontation, as well as to the metaphor of synoptic arrangement. Also, such a table interests us only to the extent that it manifests this ultimate disavowal.

Practical Hints

In the double-paged tables that follow, each numbered proposition stands in contradictory relation to the proposition bearing the same number on the facing page.

In italics, one will read the logical and ideological reductions the

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order of constructing-housing tries to apply to the noteworthy charac-teristics of the order of inhabiting. (The indication Reduction, which will be found on the even-numbered pages, refers one back each time to the text in italics that is to be found on the respective odd-numbered page and in the same row.)

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first series :

ORDER OF INHABITING

First principle: Inhabited space is lived partially, in a dis-crete way (with absences), and in a heterogeneous way. The representation of the globality of this space is imagi-nary in nature.

expressions of this principle

1. Globality takes on meaning in each concrete articulation of inhabiting, which convokes it and evokes it.

Reduction :

2. Inhabiting expresses itself through breaks, cuts, and opacities; also through ex-cesses and through overfl ows of the fragmented onto the constructed totality. In deforming the latter, it gives itself out as movement of confi guration.

Reduction :

3. The rhythm of everyday life comes from the eventful. Inhabited space is confi g-ured and marked by eventful memory.

Reduction :

4. Articulating the heterogeneous, inhabitant expression lives appropriation through the evocation or convocation of a confl ictual sociability. A space is appropriable only on the ground of its strangeness, its foreignness, its alienness.

Reduction :

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on homogenization

ORDER OF CONSTRUCTION-HOUSING

First principle: The space of the habitat is constructed only on the condition that there is a representation of ho-mogeneity. It is handed over to use as a rational and real totality.

operative procedures and reductions of inhabiting

1. The part has meaning only in its relation to the totality that “really” grounds it.

The moments of everyday life are reduced to partial uses, to territorial assignments related to the abstract identity of the total territory.

2. Housing depends upon a state of planning in which each part receives its rightful place and fi nds itself juxtaposed to the others by virtue of an abstract delimitation of boundaries and upon a ground of continuity.

Themes of transparency, of fusion, and of the opening of sites. Leveling of differ-ences through the metaphors of “audible” discourses.

3. In its system, which tends toward closure, planned space grants as an event only what is foreseeable, conceivable, and re-presentable.

Theme of the preconception of “social life.” Only what arises with at least a minimal form of organization is possible. In production itself, there is an absorp-tion of the overall and primordial event: How will produced space be inhabited when it becomes use-space?

4. Appropriation is conceived as juxtaposition of appropriated sites, as partition within homogeneity, and as repetition, in various parts, of the same relation of the subject to the object.

Themes of integration, of fusion, and of mixture. Identifi cation and establish-ment of a common denominator (spatial homogeneity) for all that can be alien (social differences, ethnic differences, differences in everyday practices) leads to a process of abstract assimilation that tends to give itself out as real.

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second series :

ORDER OF INHABITING

Second principle: Space is articulated through time.

expressions of this principle

1. Articulation of retention and protention. Convocation of the sensorial totality that qualifi es a multidimensional climate. Lived time confi gures space through the possibility of the project and upon a ground of absence.

Reduction :

2. — Movement of motor confi guration. — Appearance and disappearance of lived space. Reduction :

3. Articulated through time, space opens itself up to the possible, to the unforesee-able, to the imaginable, to repetition in difference, to motor anticipation, and to the pregnancy of variable atmospheres.

Reduction :

4. The raw material of a regulatory system of inhabiting appears in those modalities of lived experience that are one’s everyday ways of being in space according to the time.

Reduction :

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on abstraction

ORDER OF CONSTRUCTING-HOUSING

Second principle: Time is structured and mastered through spatiality.

definitions of space and reductionist corollaries of inhabiting

1. A space to be seen (perceived), capable of being put at a distance, always referable to in terms of spatial simultaneity.

— Reduction of tension through objectifi cation: distancing “on the opposite side”; self-reduction, always including a variable degree of the spectacular. The project becomes fi xed in an object.

— Reduction of absence through the fi lling in of spatial permanency; substantifi -cation of spatiality.

2. A thetic space: space to be “posited” through permanency.

— Reduction of confi guration into postures (stroboscopic representation);

— Reduction of the articulation of the movement to a pause and of the articula-tion between appearance and disappearance into representations of poses and positions.

3. A space of functional uses, grounded upon conceptual oppositions (leisure-labor, consumption-play, circulation-withdrawal).

The vacuities, equivocalities, and “unrealities” of a lived experience of inhabiting are made up for through a preformation of usage in accordance with the succes-sion of contiguous operations. Induction of a repetition of the identical, of an abstract anticipation of “social life,” and of a homogenization of the “social cli-mate.” Inductions are inscribed in the architectural forms and the codes of use. Re-ductions are conveyed through the abstract concepts of professional discourses.

4. The abstract representation of space yields spatiality as raw material.

— Reduction of modes into concepts;

— Isochronic reduction of lived time, through which each instant has to be equiv-alent to every other one.

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third series :

ORDER OF INHABITING

1. As analyzed in the situation of multiunit housing, inhabiting expresses itself through a clash between the lived and the given as conceived. As mode of inhab-iting, walking confi gurations are as much result as movement, initial meaning as ultimate meaning of this clash. They express inhabiting and inhabiting expresses itself in them.

2. Inhabiting alters the representations of given dualities in space and displaces their signifi cation without denying their existence (outside-inside, public-private, etc.). Inhabitant expression proceeds through resonances, echos, and pregnancies by which the inhabitant convokes the inhabitant universe, and vice versa.

3. Inhabiting can be grasped in its concrete movement only in the form of an expres-sion. Yet, more than a mere form, expression is given as the nature of the lived experience of inhabiting. In an investigative project, what is lived and what of it is expressed are inseparable. For, the memorable and the recountable are already inscribed in the lived confi guration of space, along with the forms and forces of sociability. Between the fact that, on the one hand, the lived experience of inhabit-ing can be grasped only through its expressions and, on the other, the very nature of the lived experience of the space of one’s habitat is a force of expression, there is no tautology as between two propositions. There is a mutual referral of mean-ings between different movements over time and in accordance with the modal variations through which they express something and express themselves.

Third principle: The order of inhabiting is grounded upon a ternary articulation between expression, expresser, and expressed.

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on binary division

ORDER OF CONSTRUCTING-HOUSING

Third principle: The productions, inductions, and repro-ductions implied in the fi rst two series are grounded on a logic of binary division. Divisions between cause and effect, container and contained, conceived and lived, out-side and inside, public and private, individual and social.

reductive effects produced by these abstract divisions

1. Reduction of the system of inhabiting to a conceived/lived split. Inhabiting under-stood as a housing consecutive to the production of constructing. The conceived-lived difference can be abstracted in various ways and be represented either as a necessity (causality of a variable nature, depending upon one’s analysis) or as a contradiction one underscores and attempts to reduce.

2. Reduction of movements to becoming and of forces to forms via:

— subject/object division, which privileges the point of view of objectifying knowledge;

— causal representation, wherein only one relation between two fi xed and defi -nite terms is conceived at a time;

— representation in terms of “contradictions” that dissolve the concrete modality through which contraries are lived.

3. Reduction of the lived experience of inhabitant expression through the split be-tween signifi er and signifi ed: the signifi cations apprehended (as much in the precon-ception as in the analysis of “social life” as it is given) are polarized around univo-cal meanings. They become incidental accessories of a representation of signifi eds that are regrouped into abstract concepts: “conception,” “realization,” “usage,” but also “social life,” “social project,” and “social confrontation.” In an investiga-tion of inhabiting, one applies the same process of division and abstraction: on the one hand, perception, on the other, memory; on the one hand, lived experience, on the other, signifi cation; on the one hand, the individual, on the other, the social; and, fi nally, the contained (“content analysis”), cut off from the container, becomes an abstract material.

(The third principle of the order of inhabiting is not reducible as such. Inconceiv-able in the dominant code of knowledge and of the production of space, it is re-duced into the modes that express it and is represented in a binary division that will never allow inhabitant expression’s own force to appear.)

189

Appendix B

Map and Toponymic Lexicon of the Arlequin Neighborhood

The Arlequin neighborhood is the terrain from which the illustrations of walking rhetoric have been drawn. This neighborhood was constructed between 1969 and 1972 in the New Town Priority Development Area1

of Grenoble, France.This neighborhood map will allow readers to visualize schematically

a quite peculiar kind of spatial organization. It represents the neighbor-hood at the ground level, with the most essential information concern-ing either the basic functions or the “landscaped” features of the space surrounding everyday strolls.

This lexicon provides defi nitions for the unusual terms that the neighborhood planners used to designate certain sites, often with new conceptions.

Toponymic Lexicon

gallery main pedestrian lane that passes underneath the buildings. In-cluding its various branches, its “linear” measure is nearly a kilometer.

mezzanines pedestrian landings that duplicate the layout of the gallery, connect to the elevators on this story situated right above street level, and lead to certain places that lie beyond yet are still neighboring the gallery (the roof level of the garages, el-ementary schools, park entrances)

ramp sloping segment of the gallery that corresponds to a rise in all the fl oors of the apartment complex

coves spaces bordering the gallery that are in the shape of the build-ings’ characteristic forms (hexagonal module)

190

passageways corridors for entry into apartments. These are sometimes quite long, about fi fty meters, and they regularly branch out into small lobbies that provide access to two or three front doors of individual apartments.

silos half-buried garages whose roofs serve either as gardens or as a location for an elementary school

mounds artifi cial hillocks installed in the park. They are fi fteen meters high, covered with grass, and almost hemispherical in shape.

lake a human-made expanse of water, one-half-meter deep, situated in the park

Community Center building and institution comprising the junior high school and neighborhood sociocultural activities

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Afterword

Walking Together, Three Decades LaterDAVID AMES CURTIS

To return to things themselves is to return to that world

which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always

speaks, and in relation to which every scientifi c schema-

tization is an abstract and derivative sign-language, as is

geography in relation to the countryside in which we have

learnt beforehand what a forest, a prairie, or a river is.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

But the thing is not really observable—there is always a

skipping over [enjambement] in every observation, one is

never at the thing itself.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible

I wanted you. And I was looking for you.

I wanted you. And I was looking for you all day.

But I couldn’t fi nd you. I couldn’t fi nd you.

You’re walking. And you don’t always realize it.

But you’re always falling.

With each step, you fall forward slightly.

And then catch yourself from falling.

Over and over, you’re falling.

And then catching yourself from falling.

And this is how you can be walking and falling

At the same time.

—Laurie Anderson, “Walking and Falling,” Big Science

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194

On a bright and brisk late September day in 2004, a quarter-century after he had featured the site in his book Pas à pas, Jean-Fran-çois Augoyard kindly offered me a tour of the Arlequin “new town” on the outskirts of his hometown of Grenoble. Having translated this book over the preceding months, I had already shaped in my mind a picture of this fascinating housing complex, about which you have read here. My preformed image of the site—an outgrowth of my act of translation—began to be confronted by another reality, the one formed as we strolled the grounds. Augoyard pointed out, off in the distance, the three main mountain ranges surrounding Grenoble, which I had known previously as the settings for Jean-Claude Killy’s 1968 Olympic exploits. Now, climbing one of the three “mounds” (artifi cial hillocks) described in his book, I realized for the fi rst time how the planners perhaps had fabri-cated them to mimic visually and physically the environing landscape, with its high peaks—a contextual point not brought out in Pas à pas.But as I struggled up a slope, I had to contend not only with the (mild) diffi culty of the ascent but also with how that ascent differed from how I had imagined it, each step unsure as I set one foot after the other on an anticipated but unaccustomed slant, the path being more a synthetic version of the winding Heidelbergian Philosophenweg than steps up a Mayan temple mount as I had fancied. Words like lake did not answer to my promenade past the small but not negligible man-made expanse of water set before me but rather troubled my vision and slowed my pace; and neither did the “silos” for cars, when I passed by, appear as crushingly high above my slightly bowed head as I had envisioned them in my translation, even though I already knew from the book that these and other ersatz terms devised by planners were surely misleading. Once we arrived at the “gallery” of this housing complex on International Style stilts,1 I was surprised to fi nd in the fresh breezes how open and airy it seemed in comparison with the overhang of the impression I was under until then. We never attempted what I had expected would be an infernal rise in one of the complex’s reputedly treacherous elevators, but when we did go up an apartment building stairwell, the “passageway” on the mezzanine level that opened out before me set me off balance as

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it seemed more luminous and less hazardous than I had thought it would be. Finally, I was stopped in my tracks by what was not there; the “Maison du quartier,” whose name I was still unsure of in transla-tion, no longer existed as it had three decades before, being the casu-alty, in the interim, of reconstruction plans and right-wing budget cuts about which Augoyard fi lled me in. I stood looking at the built confi gu-ration that now stands in its place, but looking for what could only be sketched out vaguely for me by a few choppy waves of the author’s arms as I sought to transform these rough gestures into a satisfactory transla-tion of a now-departed construction-function: “Community Center.”2

Just as I had laboriously retraced the steps of Pas à pas in translating the book, carefully attempting to set my own “wordprints” into each of the writer’s own and thereby hoping to re-create the same gait, make the same impressions, achieve the same depth, disturbing neither their sense of fl ow nor their appearance and yet fi nding myself trudging over markedly different linguistic ground while attempting to do so, so did I proceed hesitantly, almost trippingly, over an imagined yet physically real builtscape I was now traversing unsteadily for the fi rst time and yet had seen rather clearly in my mind’s eye for several months.

Whether he considers himself a great artist, a moonlighting writer,3

an occasional dabbler, a yeoman in the fi eld, a proletarianized intel-lectual, or a temporary wetware replacement for the future universal translation machine, the human translator is always faced with choic-es—pretty much all of them imperfect and not fully satisfactory. These choices are not only about the selection of individual words or phrases but also regarding the personality and voice of the author one is trans-lating: his vocabulary, phrasing, tone, pacing, and, last but not least, his background.

In the case of Pas à pas, the question of background is a particularly rich and varied one, retrospectively quite challenging to catch sight of in its breadth, for large swaths of postwar French intellectual history (such as that of urban studies, linguistics, rhetoric, and Structuralism, as well as of such thinkers as the existential phenomenologist Maurice Mer-leau-Ponty,4 the Marxist urbanist Henri Lefebvre,5 the deconstructionist


196

Jacques Derrida, and the philosopher of expression Gilles Deleuze),6

along with foreign infl uences and prewar precursors (the ontological phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and his student, the Freudo-Marx-ist critic of modern technology Herbert Marcuse—as Françoise Choay rightly notes in her introduction—along with the creator of modern linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure), defi nitely come into play.7 Like the rhapsode Ion in the eponymous dialogue written by Plato, the transla-tor must not only give the distinct impression of, but also endeavor as much as possible to achieve in fact,8 a complete understanding of the text under interpretation as well as of what the author of the text him-self knew and was thinking about—all of this rendered, however, in a context one step removed from the original linguistic setting.9

Now, such choices concerning infl uences—one’s understanding of what other discourses are also speaking through the text—also involve decisions on the translator’s part: determinations as to how and to what extent additional voices intrude upon, harmonize with, or simply ac-company the author’s own as well as proposed solutions as to how to give voice to them in another tongue. To take an illustrative example, Heidegger—author of “Bauen, Wohnen, Denken” (in English: “Build-ing, Dwelling, Thinking”)—certainly seemed to me, as he did to Choay, a key reference for Augoyard, who himself cites a passage from Being and Time about the temporal manners in which “Dasein goes along its ways.” Should Heidegger be deemed such an important infl uence that a major term in the book, habiter, must be translated as “dwelling” (habiter is indeed the term found in the French translation of Heide-gger: “Bâtir, habiter, penser”)?10 Besides the fact that such expressions as “dweller rhetoric” and “dweller expression” would seem even more clumsy than the distinctive ones ultimately chosen—“inhabitant rheto-ric” and “inhabitant expression” for the key terms la rhétorique habi-tante and l’expression habitante—it seemed to me that, while Heide-gger was still a prime reference, Augoyard’s urbane language could maneuver through the translation on its own, not entirely beholden to concepts from the Black Forest philosopher. Indeed, as a fi nal transla-tor’s note in the present volume points out, the last lines of Augoyard’s book pose a clear challenge to a key Heideggerian text—something that may become apparent to the English-speaking reader, however, only

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through knowledge of the French translation of the title to Heidegger’s fi rst postwar volume, Holzwege. (While making no claim to have com-pletely circumnavigated the topic at hand, namely, “everyday walks in an urban setting,”11 the author states with some conviction that he has blazed his own trails well enough and far enough to establish that “the paths of expression do indeed seem to lead somewhere.” The French title of Holzwege is Chemins qui mènent nulle part, Paths that lead no-where.) Moreover, dwelling evokes a lived state over time (associated by Heidegger with building and thinking), while inhabiting can, and does here, connote a mobile, dynamic, and reversible—though not necessar-ily symmetrical—relationship to home and neighborhood characterized not only by “numerous occasions for pauses and stays” within and be-yond one’s domicile but also by excursions and explorations, as well as by more or less typifi ed and set patterns of movement in and out of one’s dwelling, that relate also to practices offering silent but salient resistance to certain forms of building.12 Similarly, elsewhere in his tome Augo-yard conveys his skepticism about the “static architectural thought” of Le Corbusier, as expressed in the latter’s “modulor,” which had erected postures, not “gaits,” into paradigms for an inhabitant’s lived experi-ence of “everyday comings and goings.”

As it turns out, Augoyard himself has something to say about transla-tion. Near the outset, while reviewing possible leads, subsequently re-jected, for ways of investigating how one might account for quotidian strolls through parts of the city, he writes, “A topographical translation, like any interpretation based on continuities and contiguities, . . . seemed to us an improper way of accounting for spatial practices as they are lived day to day.” (Topography had at fi rst seemed likely to provide him with the analytic tools for which he was searching: “For a daily stroll, what is more metaphorical than a map?” The related fi eld of topology, it should be noted, was then in vogue in Structuralist circles.) This brief statement is in fact expressive of a broader viewpoint, for throughout the book Augoyard is more than suspicious of the one-to-one, univo-cal, linear correspondences of classical, Saussure-inspired Structuralism. Such an attitude might at fi rst seem surprising, since walking is such


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an apparently straightforward activity and a “step by step” approach, taken in a usual sense, would therefore seem particularly well matched here. Nevertheless, we shall subsequently arrive at the place where these steps, full of gaps and in their meandering succession, will be conceived in an entirely other manner.

As he already warned a few pages earlier, “there is always a ‘re-mainder’ in analytic operations that involve division.” His turning away from “topographical translation” leads him to assert that “daily strolls . . . belong to that class of overlooked practices that apparently cannot be co-opted by the commercial economy and that are, in the view of sci-entifi c knowledge, insignifi cant.”13 Augoyard opts for the less trodden road,14 for it offers him an alternative to the broad and well-worn path of a traditional scientifi c-analytic approach designed to discount any “remainder” that cannot precisely be resituated within clear-cut and well-established divisions. Indeed, discussing this nontopographical ap-proach to his chosen topic, he explains that

the referent for one’s walks is not the simultaneity of a planned spatial whole but, rather, at each moment of the stroll, the coexistence of the different instan-tiated principles involved in everyday life. The explication, the development in movement of this coexistence, resembles a sort of creation, and through this creation the space into which one has gone takes on this or that quality, de-pending on the occasion, but no longer has any permanency of its own (except in representation and on maps).

Augoyard goes so far as to talk, in chapter 2, about the “creative gait of lived space-time.” As will be fathomed later on, the imaginary plays a deeply original role in this creation not only of one’s gait but also of the shifting ground upon which that gait is expressed.

How, then, to account for this ambulatory invention of a lived world? Returning to the limits and drawbacks of topography, he asserts that, “better than topographical observation, oral expression has appeared to us to mimic quite closely the act of strolling.” Yet here we notice a key, and oft-repeated, gesture in Augoyard’s own expository move-ment, one that I have myself been at pains to re-create in translation. While conceptions of urban planning, the language of linguistics, and

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the terminology of rhetoric are integral moments of his overall exposi-tion, his forward motion through and beyond them is quite distinctive and thus worth retracing, for it is the movement itself, not the positions taken up in succession, that, according to my reading via translation, seemed most signifi cant.

Augoyard does state that “the analogy with graphic expression is unendingly striking.”

Just as a book is read in company with a motionless (re)writing and is written at the same time that it is read for oneself and for others, walking resembles a reading-writing. Sometimes rather more following an existing path, sometimes rather more hewing a new one, one moves within a space that never tolerates the absolute exclusion of the one or the other.

He follows up this statement, however, with another one: “This anal-ogy is to be pursued so long as it does not betray the lived quality that is of interest to us and so long as it does not reduce the traces of pedes-trian activity to a prosaic linguistic system.” Mimicry, resemblance, and analogies may indeed serve as temporary guideposts for understanding ambulatory orientation, but the poetic and the creative recover from the descent into the prosaic and the analytic and then overtake them with each new step. One is reminded here of the lyrics to Laurie Anderson’s Big Science song “Walking and Falling.”15 The tightly constructed for-mat of this book—which, despite an early dismissal of the idea that any “prosaic linguistic system” might account for the creativity of walking practices, could have misled one into thinking of it as straightforwardly “systematic” in conception—eventually comes into focus as a sort of endless rocking motion in a continually off-center forward movement, constantly falling, as if into indefi nitely deep holes, and then righting it-self in time for the next step.

Step by Step might as a consequence appear to some readers to em-body an early example of the “poststructuralist” texts that began to proliferate in the aftermath of Structuralism’s wholesale discreditation at the time of May ’68. Are we, more than a quarter century later, read-ing here (in translation) merely one more instance of a rather outdated fashion in Continental thought, now often characterized by undiscern-ing eclecticism and rampant irresponsibility, that has itself become


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increasingly discredited of late—without, however, much of anything substantial fi lling its shoes? Is this another irrelevant hodgepodge of the “French Ideology,” about which University of Minnesota Press author Cornelius Castoriadis wrote so discerningly?16

One facet of post-Structuralist thought, Jacques Derrida’s, does in-deed surface on several occasions in Augoyard’s book, with a half-dozen uses of the verb deconstruct and its derivatives as well as an enuncia-tion of the concept of “differance” (“this movement, as retention of the other as other in the same”).17 “Inhabitant activity,” Augoyard observes, “displays . . . properties [that] cannot be integrated into a systems model that tends toward closure. This is the resolutely disruptive function of everyday events and the fundamental role of spatial deconstruction.” “What is heard,” for example, “. . . covers over and deconstructs the visual realm, which ordinarily is predominant.” He goes on to assert that “the essence of collective life in an urban setting is to be defi ned not only through the lived experience of oppositions of one social group to another, but also by a constant tension between constructed spatiality handed over for use and the rhetorical deconstruction of this space, which is done in favor of the expression of styles of inhabiting.”

These mentions of deconstruction, it may be suggested, can be taken in stride. For, one notices that they are but one (though several times re-peated) step in a trajectory that includes other steps—as when Augoyard speaks of a “constant tension” of which the moment (or movement) of deconstruction is but one term. With the overturning of the usual terms of analysis employed to describe pedestrian movement, he asks, “If spa-tial totalities lose all meaning of their own and are but the occasional material and pretext for deconstruction, for derealization, what is the fi eld of reference for everyday action? What is the basic ground brought into play by expression, when laid-out and developed space fi nds itself relegated to an accidental modality?”18 It is rather in the elucidation of this “basic ground” and in the scrutiny of “modalities” that we might discover where the author is headed and how far he gets.

Early on, Augoyard hypothesizes that “it would be necessary . . . to post-pone for some time the repetition of our ‘why’ questions and to give free rein to the ‘how’—that is to say, to substitute a modal type of interpreta-

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tion for a causal type of explanation.” His “methodological approach” is therefore one “that has chosen the path of modal analysis (one oriented by the ‘how’ rather than by the ‘why’).”19 This “modal” emphasis on the “how” over the “why” can be said to be inspired by a phenomenologi-cal approach in general—which is characterized by description of expe-rience without reference to causality—and not especially by Derrida’s id-iosyncratic commentaries thereon in his discussions of Edmund Husserl. Indeed, the only chapter of Augoyard’s book with an epigram written by someone other than a poet (René Char and Francis Ponge) or an art-ist (Wassily Kandinsky) is the fourth one, which cites Merleau-Ponty’s early philosophical work Phenomenology of Perception (1945). There, the phenomenologists’ rallying cry, “Zu die Sachen selbst” (To the things themselves), is curiously repeated as a “return to things themselves.”20

What may be gleaned especially from Augoyard’s work is the op-portunity, and indeed the necessity, of closely following movement in words as well as in things and people. Merleau-Ponty’s odd return turns out to be disorienting, but also indicative of larger trends in postwar Continental thought. An existential phenomenologist should have un-derstood that such a “return” is, to say the least, exceedingly unlikely, if not downright impossible, in light of Repetition, a key early work by Søren Kierkegaard, the fi rst existentialist to have irrevocably chosen to build his shelter outside the Hegelian system. But it should have already been obvious to any philosopher who has read Heraclitus’s twelfth frag-ment, often loosely translated as “You can never step into the same river twice,” let alone his student Cratylus’s radicalizing reply that one can-not step into the same river even once.21 Indeed, at the other end of his philosophical trajectory, in the “Working Notes” to his posthumously published volume The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty in effect grants the failure of the entire phenomenological project: “But the thing is not really observable—there is always a skipping over in every obser-vation, one is never at the thing itself.” This implicit set of admissions—that one never gets “to the things themselves,” that one must inevita-bly “skip over” things in order to observe them, and that observation of things is itself somehow always (already?) defi cient22—trips up phe-nomenology at the level of its deepest, most underlying intention (inten-tionality and its object) while straddling unsuccessfully a key issue in its overall history but also offering itself to further refl ection.


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One cannot be “at the thing itself” via observation, for observation involves or entails a “skipping over” movement (enjambement). Now, in French, enjambement has two main senses. Enjamber means to stick one’s leg up, above, and beyond something, to step over it, to stride forward or stride toward, to span a gap. But enjambement also, signifi -cantly, has a literary meaning expressed in English by a direct borrowing from the French, spelled “enjambment” or “enjambement.” Wikipedia(q.v.) defi nes it as “the breaking of a syntactic unit (a phrase, clause, or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses. Its opposite is end-stopping, where each linguistic unit corresponds with the line length.” Moreover, in enjambment, “meaning fl ows from line to line, and the reader’s eye is pulled forward. Enjambement creates a feeling of accel-eration, as the reader is forced to continue reading after the line has ended.” Remarkably, we are witnessing here a mutual accompaniment of motion and meaning23 that might even drive us to think that under-standing comes in strides of movement rather than settles into fi xed positions.24 Such a discovery would be as profound as it is moving: the “point,” so to speak, is not at point A or point B but in the act of tra-versing from point A to point B, and beyond.25

Of equal signifi cance, and here we ourselves are trying to wend our way back to what might be taken as Augoyard’s own winding path through and beyond phenomenological description, Merleau-Ponty’s unconscious epitaph to phenomenology was jotted down in the “Work-ing Notes” at precisely the place where he was attempting to come to grips, though not very successfully, with the imagination.26 By way of contrast, after an initial mention of Derridean “differance” the imagi-nation becomes Augoyard’s point of departure for the fi fth chapter of his book. There, he endeavors to make good on his early promise that walking practices and the act of inhabiting would testify to a creative accomplishment and ongoing force of resistance not wholly reducible to an effect in the preplanned production of space.

In this fi nal chapter, “inhabitant expression” is treated as not only “incorporated,” in the Merleau-Pontean sense of embodiment, but also “grounded” in what Augoyard will call “the obscure and overfl owing aspect of the imaginary”—therefore, a ground that is as shrouded in darkness as it is slippery, unstable, and not confi ned to fi xed boundaries.

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“In anticipating action,” inhabitant expression “renders present what ‘really’ is not yet so.” This anticipatory capacity to bring into being what is not (yet) introduces the major themes of what have been, in Greco-Western thought, the repeated discovery and covering back over of the imagination since it was fi rst discovered, out of place, in the last book of the treatise Peri psuches. There, Aristotle says “Never does the soul think without phantasm.”27 Augoyard begins his own exposition with Kant’s (re)discovery of it in the Critique of Pure Reason—there, the lat-ter says, signifi cantly and mysteriously, “This schematism of our under-standing applied to phenomena and their mere form is an art hidden in the depth of the human soul, the true secrets of which we shall hardly ever be able to guess and reveal”—and with Kant’s subsequent hints at an elaboration in the Critique of Judgment. Kantian imagination, he says, connects “understanding and sensibility,” gives meaning to “the experience of the world,” and allows knowledge to have “concrete ap-plication.” For Augoyard, “the imaginable overfl ows the limits of . . . spatial ‘reality.’” For, “far from being a simple and passive reservoir of images, the imagination possesses an activity and a capacity for synthe-sis” that “literally outstrips the understanding.” Indeed, as Augoyard had himself found earlier and now summarizes here his discoveries, it is by “this same power that the acted and the suffered, sensation and motor function, the present and the absent are tied together in a pro-cess of articulation.” Instead of imagination, he “prefer[s] to designate henceforth such an instantiated principle by the word imaginary, which takes on a less restrictive meaning” by comparison.

As antecedents to his own exploration of the imaginary, Augoyard cites in a note the names Sigmund Freud and Gaston Bachelard, who “agree on this industrious circulation of the imaginary that defi es the ap-parent distinctions in whose name mental functions are doggedly sepa-rated from one another and our psychosomatic entity is torn asunder.”28

Such a “circulation” takes us back to Augoyard’s initial point of depar-ture: the expressive errantry of walking narratives. For him, however, “the power of the imaginary takes on coherency only at the end of our path.” And yet his approach will be crucial to the outcome: “Instead of a formal defi nition of the imagination, we have preferred a genetic defi -nition of the imaginary.” Closely accompanied along this path by Gilles


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Deleuze, Augoyard eschews “theoretical representations” of the role the imaginary plays in human expression, preferring (or enunciating the ne-cessity of) a detour through Renaissance articulations of imagination and expression. He concludes that “the imaginary is a domain, a fi eld of action and of passion that spans the whole of our existence in space and in time. We never leave its soil.” Signifi cantly, the word spans trans-lates here the French “traverse.” Augoyard is articulating, in a way, the mobile meaning-creating process of enjambement upon an ever-shifting imaginary ground.

Halfway through his Conclusion—in a section titled “An Inhabiting without a ‘Why?’”—Augoyard’s previously temporary “postpone[ment of] the repetition of our ‘why’ questions” (in order to pose “how” ques-tions that uncover the expressive creativity of walking practices) is waived in favor of a more long-term suspension, ascribed to the very nature of inhabiting.

Although the poetic nature of the act of confi guring space has become apparent to us, inhabiting has to be understood rather as a movement than as an aes-thetic object. Yet, in any case, it is averse to the “why,” because the “why” no longer intends anything but representations, whereas the “how” intends things.

It should be noted without delay that, had habiter been translated as “dwelling” instead of as “inhabiting,” the reader herself would have been stopped in her tracks and unable to proceed, no matter how long and how deeply she might have dwelt upon the possible meaning of the statement that dwelling could be encapsulated as movement. But why, we are tempted to inquire here, is it said that inhabiting resists “why” questions?29

Temporary postponement becomes indefi nite deferral as phenom-enological intentionality metamethodologically remakes an entrance: “the ‘why’ no longer intends anything but representations, whereas the ‘how’ intends things.” We have trod this ground before and found that we must skip over things in order to observe them:30 observation goes too far for phenomenological intentionality to live up to its motto, “To the things themselves,” and thus the latter ultimately falls short of its own mark. The justifi cation for this backtracking is itself methodologi-

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cally inspired by a certain view of phenomenology: the one in which “everyday existence in town” is to be investigated, as Augoyard says, “not as it is represented but as it is lived.” Whence this simple binary opposition between lived experience and representation?

The former term comes from the late Husserlian notion of the Lebenswelt (life-world) and is expressed in French as le vécu—a gen-eral term, meaning real-life or personal experience, given philosophi-cal import primarily by Merleau-Ponty as a way of talking about the subjective side of experience without appearing to indulge in the Car-tesian subject–object dualism he had sought to go beyond. The (wholly negative) understanding of “representation” stems here from another of Heidegger’s Holzwege texts, “The Age of the World Picture.”31 Des-cartes is considered the culprit by his having brought about this “age” in which “subjects” said to represent beings as “objects” triumph as part of an unquestioning technological attitude characterized by wholesale calculation.32 Curiously, in the penultimate published note to this 1938talk, when Heidegger envisions a time after this age has expired and the attendant overcoming of Western metaphysics is achieved, man will, he affi rms, no longer represent being as an object (“wenn er das Seiende nicht mehr als Objekt vorstellt”). If representation (Vorstellung) is, in-trinsically and always already, the placing of an object before a subject and a debased re-presentation in the form of a representational picture (Bild), as Heidegger claims, why does he have to add als Objekt?

It might seem that we are going too far afi eld, in a translator’s After-word, to concern ourselves with représentation’s obvious translation as “representation,” let alone with its usage in a third language not men-tioned directly in the translated text. Yet it may prove useful to provide the reader with authorial background information—that is, informa-tion on the author’s background, the steps he has taken previously as well as the voices he has heard along the way, and that continue to speak within him, even and perhaps especially when he is challenging one of those voices, as we may hear Augoyard doing vis-à-vis Heide-gger at the end of Step by Step.33 Indeed, the ambiguity or reduplication we found in Merleau-Ponty’s “return to the things themselves” and in what, for Heidegger’s “epochal” reading of Cartesianism, is the pleo-nasm “represented as an object” is itself repeated by Augoyard himself in his Conclusion—in a passage about repetition:


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If the power of building has been occulted and the term inhabiting has become a doublet for housing, the play of transformations brought on by economic considerations is not the only thing at issue. The change that has been carried out has taken place through an objectifying representation of housing, one’s habitat becoming a housing-object. It has made it possible to think in terms of a standardized product constructed in a repetitive manner.

If, for argument’s sake, one accepts Heidegger’s confl ation of objectifi -cation with representation as such,34 Augoyard’s phrase “an objectify-ing representation” is equally pleonastic. And it is just as necessary, for reasons we shall explore.

For Augoyard, this lived experience certainly includes intention (under-stood phenomenologically to embrace also protention and retention). He also accepts the vector of affect or feeling (“the present takes on an affec-tive tonality that differs according to whether the eventuality in question is imagined in a harmful or a favorable light”), even if inhabiting, as he said, is not to be envisioned especially as an “aesthetic object.”35 Repre-sentation, however, remains for him lived experience’s direct opposite: “Inhabitant expression lived in space and in time skips causal or rational sequences and does without streams of representations.”36 But once one has rediscovered the imaginary, can one completely “do without” repre-sentations (Vorstellungen) as well as images or pictures (Bilder)?

In Being and Time, Heidegger was in a less unilateral and restrictive mood, one more inclined to an open-ended ambulatory investigation that takes the Peripatetic Philosopher as its point of departure:

What has escaped notice is that the basic ontological Interpretation of the af-fective life in general has been able to make scarcely one forward step worthy of mention since Aristotle. On the contrary, affects and feelings come under the theme of psychical phenomena, functioning as a third class of these, usu-ally along with ideation [Vorstellungen] and volition. They sink to the level of accompanying phenomena. It has been one of the merits of phenomenological research that it has again brought these phenomena more unrestrictedly into our sight.37

But there, the imperative was to avoid the psychical in order to con-centrate on Dasein’s basic affective structure—care (Sorge)—to the

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detriment of considering the world also as will and representation. In inhabitant expression, “what is expressed (for example, avoidance or the seeking out of a qualifi ed site; ease of habitation or inhabitant mal-aise) refers back to the mode of expression. And in its way of confi g-uring the inhabited space, the mode of expression implies straight off what it endeavors to express.” Thus, intention (“avoidance or . . . seek-ing out”) and affect (“ease . . . or . . . malaise”) combine without dif-fi culty in imagination. But what of the representation (the “qualifi ed site”) itself?

“Let us,” Augoyard proposes, “be even more specifi c”:

Urban atmospheres are born in the crisscrossing of multiple sensations. In this immediate experience of the world, the rain, the wind, and the night hardly have any value of their own. What the inhabitant retains therefrom is the raininess, the windiness, the “fearfulness,” that is to say, the affective tonality. Thus, raininess (coldness, dampness, desire for shelter) will qualify the lived world in that very moment. An everyday ambiance takes on a consistency on the basis of a focusing, of a valuing of one element in the environment that will symbolize and reduplicate in an expressive way the atmosphere in which one is bathed.

So, we are to begin with “sensations” (aistheseis). The Merleau-Pontean thesis of the “primacy of perception” is reaffi rmed. In lived experience, it is especially an “affective tonality” that is retained, along with and via “focusing” (intention). Curiously, such “focusing” brings about a “symboliz[ation] and reduplicat[ion]” of the basic sensual affects (which supposedly came fi rst, though it is unclear how, before some intentional focusing, there would be any affects in the fi rst place). “There is,” says Augoyard citing Pierre Sansot, “a ‘reduplication’ of urban sites.” It is at this point that representation and image make their reappearance: “This color or that coldness will set the tone for all the rest of the sensations and will even enlist, as if by a never extinguished resonance, cultural images, social representations, and ideological refl exes.”38 The primary “sensations” and then a focus-induced “affective tonality” are said to, after the fact, “enlist” such Vorstellungen. The origin of representation, its co-originariness, is itself occulted.

“Here,” Augoyard, continues, “is one example from the world of sound”:


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North African music, which is heard rising up on hot summer nights and wakes up the inhabitants of one “cove” around midnight, often exacerbates feelings of expropriation. . . . But for certain inhabitants, an indulgent sense of satisfaction that “there’s a party” is awakened at the same time. And perhaps those people are lulled back to sleep with dreams of an unavowed exoticism.

The world of lived experience, an ever qualifi ed world, cannot be con-strued as a “world of sound” in general. In our everyday social world, “North African music”—a “social representation,” surely—is experi-enced just as directly as chirping crickets, grating elevator noises, or any of the other sonorous examples the author provides. Why this redupli-cation that is, at the same time, a denial of the equiprimordiality of (so-cial) representation and the latter’s inevitable reappearance as merely a secondary quality of lived experience?

In between Being and Time and Holzwege, Heidegger published an-other book. Castoriadis, the foremost contemporary philosopher of the imaginary, has commented:

No doubt it is to Heidegger, with his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics(1929), that we owe both the restoration of the question of the imagination as a philosophical question and the possibility of an approach to Kant that breaks with the somnolence and aridity of the neo-Kantians. No doubt, too, that Heidegger reintroduces in his turn and completely on his own—an impressive spectacle—the successive movements of discovery and covering back over that have marked the history of the question of the imagination. . . . Let me simply note here, with respect to the “recoiling” Heidegger imputes to Kant when faced with the “bottomless abyss” opened by the discovery of the transcen-dental imagination, that it is Heidegger himself who in effect “recoils” after writing his book on Kant. A new forgetting, covering-over, and effacement of the question of the imagination intervenes, for no further traces of the question will be found in any of his subsequent writings; there is a suppression of what this question unsettles for every ontology (and for every “thinking of Being”).39

No doubt, Kant himself “recoiled” from the principal and preponderant role he himself had attributed to the Transcendental Imagination in the fi rst edition of the Critique of Pure Reason and subsequently decided to suppress by backtracking in the second edition . . . because the “bottom-less abyss” would have otherwise eventually upset the ambulatory rou-tine of his daily constitutionals. Heidegger’s recoil movement in “The Age of the World Picture” is, by way of contrast, exceedingly reduplica-

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tive. The end of his eighth appended note reads: “Man as a representing subject [vorstellende Subjekt], however, phantasizes [phantasiert], that is to say, he moves [bewege sich] within the imagination [in der imagina-tio], insofar as his representing [sein Vorstellen] fancies [einbildet] being as the objective [das Gegenständliche] in the world as picture [in die Welt als Bild].”40 The “representing subject” is already a redundancy for Heidegger. Its act of representing would be quite literally, with re-spect to the world, that of a “picturing as picture” (als Bild einbildet). The overkill is fatal. For, it is only in a reduplicative language of pictur-ing, imaging, imagining, representing that Heidegger is able to critique the Cartesian dualism of the “representing Subject” and of that subject’s particular imaginary view of beings as separate objects. It is also disin-genuous, for the “insofar as” (insofern) slyly attenuates the otherwise overstated claim that representation is always and everywhere carried out in the form of objectifi cation. Notwithstanding the claim that the Greeks were (or we, once saved by a Heideggerian God, would be)41 at-tending to Being when allowing beings to appear as they are in a “clear-ing” via phantasia, we must walk away from this fl ight from representa-tion once it is recognized that observation never places us at the things themselves, that to go “to” them is also to go over and beyond them, and that the proclaimed “return” thereto has to itself be revisited.42

Thus, when Augoyard says, “spanning affectivity, feeling, and motor function, these same symbols [namely, graffi ti] produce imaginary reso-nances that are capable of mobilizing the presently lived act,” we fi nd that, at the very moment he articulates the imaginary in terms of a “span-ning,” he himself has returned in fact to the near side of the produktive Einbildungskraft (productive imagination) of Kant’s fi rst Critique, let alone the idea of a creative imagination at work from the outset. What is imaginary here is produced instead of producing, even when it is itself declared to be “capable of mobilizing”; its being is but that of acousti-cal “resonances” or pale visual copies. That is to say, these attenuated replicas would be of a secondary, merely reproductive, and enfeebled status in comparison with their sensational originals. It was the author himself, however, who had previously complained, near the start of his chapter on imagination, that in the history of thought the imaginary has often wrongly been “confi ned to the production of images.”


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It is not surprising, when one is struggling with a rough and formidable predecessor—as the municipally based Augoyard is with the woodsy Heidegger—that one might sometimes stumble or even on occasion be drawn backwards. Our goal is not to trip up our author but, rather, to see how he fares in this struggle, perhaps to lend him a hand here and there from the standpoint of elucidating problems of translation. There are indeed many gaps in Heidegger’s thinking, and it is understandable that Augoyard might eventually fall into a few of them. As Castori-adis remarks about Heidegger, “Here we have the bizarre spectacle of a philosopher talking interminably about the Greeks, and whose thought draws a blank in the place of polis, eros, and psyche.”43

What struck me as I translated this text was instead how well Augo-yard negotiates an intellectual terrain he was not, by far, the fi rst to cross. His fi nal chapter offers in fact an exceptional elucidation not only of the unsettled imaginary ground of the inhabitants’ expressive lived experience at the Arlequin housing complex but also of that ground’s (almost haunted) subterranean underside.44 There are a specifi city and a remarkable quality to these investigations, almost invariably backed up by narrative speech issuing from the residents themselves. As a former community and then labor organizer from the early 1980s, I very much regretted that I had not read Pas à pas at the time in order to have ben-efi ted from his example as a careful listener of his neighbors’ utterances and an attentive companion to them along their peregrinations. And he ends by situating the imaginary as a generative “cosmogenetic point,” thus hinting at a genuine ontological basis for this disturbing and dis-ruptive (one is tempted to say uncanny) human power within the uni-verse. The “cosmogenesis” of which Augoyard speaks in his Conclusion now inspires the original French editor of the book to talk pertinently in terms of an “anthropogenesis” as well.45

The absence, in this book, of an examination of psychical phenom-ena cannot, I believe, be attributed primarily to Heidegger’s Dasein-cen-tered philosophy but, rather, to Augoyard’s own stated and quite under-standable reluctance to add to or otherwise countenance a literature that attempts to analyze urban residents’ experiences in purely psychological terms. Surely he is correct that residential housing and comportment are social phenomena that cannot be reduced to psychical contents. Instead,

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Augoyard appeals directly to Freud, among others, when he delineates the “industrious circulation of the imaginary.”46

Similarly, a certain doubt as to the pertinence and benefi ts of “sci-entifi c” studies is evident in this tome. No doubt, some of this distrust-ful attitude can be traced back to Heidegger’s (and his student Mar-cuse’s) views on technological thinking, as well as to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, with its critique of the abstractness of “every scientifi c schematization.” Indeed, a certain conception of “lived experience,” seen as opposed to Cartesian geometrico-scientifi c thinking, nearly dis-places the study of “everydayness” at several points in this work. “Daily strolls,” for example, reveal “overlooked practices . . . that are, in the view of scientifi c knowledge, insignifi cant.”47 And of “the descriptive study of everyday comings and goings,” he says, “we are hardly talking here about a sociological study in the scientifi c sense of the term.” Yet, at the same time, Augoyard’s language expresses a certain science-based rhetoric that cannot be overlooked and should not be misrepresented. I have, for example, carefully and closely translated some phrases that in the original French bordered on scientifi c jargon, yielding “nychthem-eral cycle” and “auditory apparatus,” whereas “night and day” and “hearing” would have been the more appropriate “everyday” expres-sions. There are, I believe, professional reasons involved in this complex self-articulation vis-à-vis the sciences. A philosopher by training who became the author of a French state thesis on urbanism that was turned into a volume edited at a prestigious Paris publishing house, Augoyard navigates between a healthy distrust for a purely objective, technical ap-proach to the study of people’s everyday activities, on the one hand, and a need to communicate, in a way viewed as legitimate, with an audience still often imbued with such an approach, on the other. We may note that the circumstances surrounding this complex self-articulation con-tinue today, for he was subsequently named a director of research at the French National Center for Scientifi c Research (CNRS) and became a founder of its CRESSON (Research Center on Sonorous Spaces and the Urban Environment) unit, whose Architectural and Urban Ambiances group he leads at the Grenoble School of Architecture. Still today, Augo-yard directs scientifi c research and student theses with an eye toward illustrating what traditional scientifi c approaches leave out and what an


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attentive study of people’s actual everyday activities and experiences in an urban environment (especially acoustical ones)48 might reveal. One could recap this admirable endeavor with Aristotle’s acute observation that it is not the expert maker of an object, but the user thereof, who is the best judge of its utility.49

Eros as well as gender considerations do appear largely absent from Step by Step. Surely, “the body of inhabitant expression” is a genderedone that, in its everyday walking practices, leans on sexed anatomical differences, especially a different confi guration of the hips, as well as on socially instituted responses to and expressions of power in relation to erotic life and relations. In a city located in a Western country, especially one situated as Grenoble is in the Alps, this body is a clothed one, too. Rereading through the published narrative extracts, one is struck by the consistently expressed concerns of female walkers, from the prob-lem of fi nding places to rest and sun themselves outside without feeling watched too closely to a sense of imminent danger that is articulated more often (to judge from the available testimony) than is the case with their male counterparts. Augoyard takes passing note of these differ-ences but does not highlight them or provide any specifi c thematic treat-ment that would account for such basic and relevant variations.50

In this case, however, the void could easily be fi lled, I believe, by an honest application of what Augoyard himself teaches us about the need to be attentive to everyday walks—and here, especially, in rela-tion to the aforementioned “nychthemeral cycle.” By the early 1970s, “Take Back the Night” marches had already been organized by women in several European countries as a response to precisely these sorts of concerns about freedom of movement.51 The fi rst such event on Ameri-can soil had just taken place in San Francisco in 1978, a year prior to Pas à pas. It was not until 2003 that a specifi cally French version of this trend made its appearance—based, as a matter of fact, to a large extent on the cares of women and girls in outlying housing projects who are faced with (often violent and threatening) traditional and often specifi -cally Muslim male attitudes toward their comings and goings, as well as toward their attire and behavior. This movement took the name “Ni putes, ni soumises” (Neither whores nor submissive) and eventually mo-bilized a well-attended national demonstration in the wake of grass-

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roots organizing and consciousness-raising efforts in largely immigrant and second-generation communities. It would be interesting to apply Augoyard’s interview practices and investigative tools to a site-specifi c sampling of participants in these marches in order to see how their ev-eryday walks may or may not have been transformed thereby.

The polis issue is a bit more complicated. On the one hand, for un-derstandable reasons he himself articulates at the start of his book, Augoyard’s micromethodology opts for a study of inhabitant narratives in only one strictly delimited part of the city, not the municipality of Grenoble as a whole. On the other hand, it is a municipally instigated housing policy, concretely instantiated in actually constructed architec-tural forms and expressing a certain ideological conception of planning and building with national and global implications, that Augoyard per-tinently presents as being challenged by “users’” real walking practices, now rendered explicit and examinable through carefully scrutinized fi rst-person participant narratives.

A bit of extratextual historical background information Augoyard shared with me may be of assistance. Similar to what happened in Bur-lington, Vermont, where a democratic socialist–led election coalition eliminated an entrenched political machine in 1981 and instituted com-munity-trust housing along with many other innovative reforms, the conservative political forces that had ruled Grenoble in the postwar pe-riod were overturned in 1965 by a Socialist-led coalition spearheaded by community associations that sought to reenergize the city via a num-ber of new municipal measures, including the creation of the Arlequin complex. It was a time of policy experimentation; and the Arlequin, combining in one large housing project lodgings adapted to a variety of income levels, was planned as one of the city’s showcases. Indeed, Augoyard reports that the Arlequin, begun in the late 1960s and com-pleted in the early 1970s, was viewed as a “utopian” creation designed to manifest and to support a broader effort to change society. From its inception, the author lived there with his wife and child. His knowledge-able, innovative, open-ended method of interviewing fellow residents made him an active participant-observer who was willing to experiment


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with the latest theoretical techniques and trends in order to bring out, in great detail, confl icts between users and their built environment as well as to reveal an elemental power to resist and to reshape to which the in-habitant practices thus gathered and discussed bear witness.

Augoyard does address political considerations directly in his Con-clusion—in fact, immediately after his declaration that “inhabiting is averse to the ‘why,’” as methodologically contrasted there with more fecund “how” questions. “In order to illustrate this radical difference in orientation and to signal at the same time another opening indicated in the modal study of inhabiting, we must mention here the formidable question of needs. . . . The problematic of needs includes . . . a logic that is heavy with consequences.” To illustrate these consequences, Augo-yard quotes an astute comment from former Unifi ed Socialist Party (PSU) presidential candidate and future prime minister Michel Rocard that perfectly illustrates the “being housed” versus “inhabiting” dichot-omy so central to the author’s argument: “It leads to resolving inequali-ties, deprivations, and contradictions engendered by capitalism through a vast welfare apparatus. . . . It does not suffi ce to ‘house’ people; people must be able to ‘inhabit’ an individual or collective space.”52 In relation to the logic of needs, Augoyard summarizes the results of his own inves-tigations and explores their broader political implications:

This logic practically lays down the answer before the question is asked; and under its cloak, the most glaring needs are satisfi ed along the way. In the process, the power of the giver is reinforced and the necessity of his presence is confi rmed. Moreover, how are needs apprehended and interpreted? You look at the “masses,” the “users,” and, on the basis of social movements and their dynamic, you extract a social content: needs. Social life is abstracted into the notion of need, just as people’s practices are reduced to various functions. The abstraction of “functionality” is inserted into a logic that is grounded on the relation of container to contained. Thenceforth, every sort of manipulation is, if not easy, at least possible. The logical presuppositions involved authorize a logistics, in the sense of an operational strategy, which includes anticipations of people’s use.

It is here that Marcuse’s critique of “the new conformism” and, more generally, of the misdeeds of a “technological rationality” gone wild makes its explicit appearance in Step by Step.

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These critical political considerations are extratextual, however, in the sense that they cannot be gleaned directly from residents’ narratives but rather from a certain reading thereof that brings in formulations not expressly articulated by participants themselves in their narratives. As a category for study, “everyday life” allows one, via narratives thereof, to explore inhabitant practices down to the level of “the tiniest gesture made,” detecting therein and sketching therefrom a concrete overall form of resistance to a modern objectifying rationality that both upsets one’s usual way of conceiving such a rationality and overthrows that rationality’s own usual conceptions.53 Here is how Augoyard expresses this opportunity made possible by his modal methodological study of everyday lived experience:

The study of everyday walks indicates . . . that there really is much more cre-ative movement, confi guration, and dynamic tension going on in the humblest acts of inhabiting than in the very process that produces the contemporary built world. This points to an opening and to an investigative lead in which, on the basis of the lived experience of inhabiting, and not of conceptually designed housing, the imaginary functionally utilized in the production of laid-out and developed space might be confronted with an imaginary the inhabitant actually lives. A certain number of received values would then most likely be overturned, and this expressive power of an irreducible imaginary (one ignored for this reason by discourses on construction and housing) would appear as acosmogenetic point.

And yet narratives of “everydayness”—especially when opposed (per-haps too unrefl ectively) to refl ective thought and, more generally, to “rationality”54—do not easily lend themselves to a sustainably artic-ulated political response, and in any case not to one the participants themselves have actually articulated in their narratives.

Augoyard is not the fi rst to have faced this dilemma. The Ameri-can “Johnson-Forest Tendency”—led by Trinidad-born revolutionary C. L. R. James and Leon Trotsky’s former secretary Raya Dunayevs-kaya, and which became the Detroit-based Correspondence group—published The American Worker in 1947. This narrative written by an autoworker pseudonymously designated as “Paul Romano” and accom-panied by a political-intellectual analysis from “Ria Stone” (the political activist and trained philosopher Grace Lee Boggs)55 was later translated


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into French and serialized by the Socialisme ou Barbarie group in the fi rst eight issues of its review (March 1949 to January 1951). It was Merleau-Ponty’s former high-school philosophy-class student (and later his literary executor) Claude Lefort who proposed, in Socialisme ou Barbarie’s eleventh issue (November 1952), a phenomenologically in-spired method for analyzing worker narratives. This programmatic text, “L’Expérience prolétarienne” (Proletarian experience), is quite instruc-tive. As the historian of the group Stephen Hastings-King reports,

Lefort, in keeping with the group’s anti-Leninism, argued that only work-ers could know, and write about, their experience. Lefort’s essay posed the theoretical questions to be addressed by Socialisme ou Barbarie’s projected collection, publication and analysis of autobiographical worker narratives. He situated these questions relative to two exemplary texts: Paul Romano’s “The American Worker” and Eric Albert’s “Témoinage: La vie en usine.” Lefort used these narratives of worker shop-fl oor experience . . . as primary data in a phenomenological investigation of “the proletarian standpoint.” The goal of this investigation was the isolation and description of the “signifi cations” or games that structured proletarian comportment. The full project would have relied upon phenomenological procedures (reductions) that were never carried out because, despite the solicitation for writings which frequently appeared in Socialisme ou Barbarie (as well as in related projects like Tribune Ouvrière), workers simply did not write.56

In relation to this precursor effort, Augoyard can be said to have made two positive advances. First, in the related fi eld of working-class habita-tion and habitat, he discovered and developed a way of soliciting signif-icant numbers of fi rst-person participant narratives of everyday strug-gle.57 Second, his application of literary techniques of analysis fostered a critical and refl exive approach to these narratives while he himself remained an engaged participant-observer. Noting the rhetorical basis for any recounting of even the “tiniest gestures,” the author of Pas à pas highlighted a feature that had remained obscure or underthema-tized in Socialisme ou Barbarie’s uncritical take on workers’ narratives as straightforward and transparent accounts unencumbered by the me-diated labor of writing or recounting.58 And fi nally, Augoyard’s move-ment-centered elucidation of narratives of everyday walking practices brought out homologies between words and actions without ever reduc-ing one to the other or prioritizing one over the other.

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A few words should also be written about Augoyard’s theme of everydayness in relation to its theoretical precursors as well as to its political implications. In a French postwar context, the obvious ini-tial reference is to Lefebvre’s three-volume Critique of Everyday Life,the fi rst volume of which appeared in 1947. This effort started out, in part, as a critique of Being and Time’s conception of the “everyday-ness” (Alltäglichkeit) of the “they”’s ontologically unaware fallenness. Lefebvre, a Marxist philosophical-sociological critic of both rural and urban life, sought to unmask the everyday alienation inherent in a city-scape inundated with rural outcasts and transformed by urban capital-ism. Owing in part to this critique, Lefebvre exercised an infl uence on Situationist International members from 1958 until 1962, “when there was,” as Not Bored! editor Bill Brown explains, “a nasty falling-out.”59

Raoul Vaneigem’s 1967 text The Revolution of Everyday Life neverthe-less testifi es to an ongoing Situationist interest in this theme, linked, as in Lefebvre’s work, to the category of lived experience—but with a con-notation to “everydayness” that seems more positive and actively in-volved in political and social struggle:60 “Revolution is made everyday despite, and in opposition to, the specialists of revolution. This revolu-tion is nameless, like everything springing from lived experience. Its ex-plosive coherence is being forged constantly in the everyday clandestin-ity of acts and dreams.”61 Nonetheless, it would be exceedingly diffi cult to trace a direct line between Situationist dérive and what we have called the “expressive errantry of walking narratives” studied and revealed in Augoyard’s work. And both of the operative terms in Situationist “psycho-geography” seem alien to Augoyard’s anti-psychological and anti-topological methodological practice. Nor do either a philosophy of desire or any grand pronouncements fi gure in Pas à pas, whereas Vanei-gem took the time to declare: “The complete unchaining of pleasure is the surest way to the revolution of everyday life, to the construction of the whole man.”62 What Augoyard contributes is a positive and precise understanding of the role of everyday struggle, as exemplifi ed in peo-ple’s actual walking practices within a preplanned built environment. And this is precisely what Michel de Certeau picked up and borrowed in his book The Practice of Everyday Life. The already established author de Certeau nevertheless turned down a request to preface Augoyard’s


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maiden volume before publishing, one year later, his own tome, which was indebted to Augoyard’s groundbreaking thesis and which received greater attention.63

A fi nal contextual note. When I visited the Arlequin with Augoyard in September 2004, it was a quite different place from the way it was twenty-fi ve years earlier. With the intervening installation of a right-wing municipal government, the extensive set of social programs, ser-vices, and amenities that were conceived as an integral and ongoing part of this showcase housing project had been cut drastically in the interim, just as residents had feared. The “power of the giver” has withdrawn along with the welfare-state giver. Vandalism was on the rise, Augoyard reported, and had become more invasive and irrational—door locks, for example, fi lled with glue, necessitating purchase of new locks—to the point where the Augoyard family, who had been contemplating this move for nearly a decade, fi nally decided to move out. (My tour began at their new home in a low-rise apartment building at the edges of the Arlequin’s grounds. What is notable is in fact how long they lived at this housing project that was the inspiration for Augoyard’s fi rst book, be-fore moving out when their child became an adult.) Always a signifi cant presence, the North African and Muslim communities had grown, and there were signs of fundamentalism—though, Augoyard observed, such signs are fl eeting and ambiguous: the head of household who might one day be wearing a long beard could and sometimes did cut it off and switch allegiances the next. The general municipal neglect of such out-lying housing projects, the widespread discrimination suffered by im-migrant and second-generation communities in France, and the poor overall economic situation of left-out segments of the population in a deindustrializing Western country had been evident and were taking their toll for many years. Finally, the situation exploded into violence across France in the fall of 2005, with mass car burnings, confronta-tions with police and other authorities, and extensive vandalism often aimed at symbols and buildings of the state.

What are the methodological tools that might be employed today for someone who wishes to address the situation at Arlequin or in other poor and working-class communities in France and elsewhere while still giving direct voice to participants and offering pertinent analysis of their

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experiences and ongoing self-activity? In what ways might the method-ological contributions and, more important, investigational leads offered by Step by Step help to advance such an endeavor? It goes beyond the confi nes of a translator’s afterword to prescribe for the reader what she should make of what has been read in the present volume. For my part, I have confi ned myself to offering what might be pertinent background information while conveying the problems a translator faces and the re-fl ections he has had in the actual practice of making a text available to persons who will now themselves attempt to inhabit this text critically in another language within the International Republic of Letters.

My thanks to Catherine Porter, for recommending me for another col-laboration with the University of Minnesota Press; to my editors there, fi rst Carrie Mullen and then Jason Weidemann, for their support and their patience; to Beau David Case, for his exemplary librarian research skills; to the Augoyard family, for their hospitality and helpful sugges-tions; to Françoise Choay, for her continued participation in a book project she fi rst made possible more than a quarter-century ago; and to Alex Gezerlis, whose kindness and generosity are matched by his keen and critical eye for my literary weaknesses.

This translation is dedicated to Clara Gibson Maxwell, my compan-ion on the road of life, whose dancing and choreography continually teach me the meaning of an existence in movement.

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Notes

Foreword

1. [Grands ensembles: Large-scale high-rise public housing projects that were built with a sense of urgency at the periphery of major French metropoli-tan areas during the 1960s in order to provide living quarters for an infl ux of generally low-income families from a variety of backgrounds.—Trans.] 2. See, in particular, chapter 7 (“Walking in the City”) of Michel de Cer-teau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1980), trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110. 3. See “Sensorial Hyperboles and Anticipations” in chapter 4. 4. On the nontrivial character of walking and of taking steps in their two-fold relation to man’s animality and to his specifi city as a speaking being, it might be intriguing to make reference here to a little known text written by Honoré de Balzac, “La théorie de la démarche” (Theory of the step). This ar-ticle, published in the August 15, 18, and 25 and September 5, 1833, issues of the review Europe littéraire (and republished by Échoppe in 1992), contains in embryo the ideas, developed by François Delsarte between 1833 and his death in 1871, that constitute the theoretical basis for the school of American modern dance founded by Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis (see Ted Shawn’s Every Little Movement: A Book about François Delsarte, the Man and His Philosophy, His Science and His Applied Aesthetics, the Application of This Science to the Art of the Dance, the Infl uence of Delsarte on American Dance [Pittsfi eld, Mass.: Eagle Printing and Binding Co., 1954]). 5. Pas à pas could be read as a sort of counterpoint to and complement of the analysis Günther Anders offered in the fi rst volume of Die Antiquierheit de Menschen (Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1956; First Part, “Über die Prometheis-che Scham”), which Augoyard had not yet read at the time. 6. See the fi rst page of Step by Step.

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7. See the third paragraph of the Conclusion (emphasis added). 8. See “Arteries” in chapter 1. 9. See “An Irreducible Imaginary” in the Conclusion.

1. Arteries, Impasses, Side Streets

1. Medam, La Ville-Censure. 2. Ibid., 172. See also, apropos of these examples of hypertely, Simondon’s Du mode d’existence des objets techniques. 3. Let us cite just three of the many works that have offered assessments of these issues: Choay, L’Urbanisme, utopies et réalités: une anthologie; Castells, La Question urbaine; and Medam, Conscience de la ville. 4. We have heard this attitude voiced often enough and its written expres-sion can be found in Françoise Lugassy’s Le Discours idéologique des architectes et urbanistes. 5. See the analyses of and connections between works made by Henri Lefe-bvre in The Production of Space, 364ff. 6. We shall cite only the henceforth classic analysis of Henri Lefebvre in Critique of Everyday Life, as well as the meticulous and little known analyses of CRESAL (Centre de Recherche et d’Études Sociologiques Appliquées de la Loire, Saint-Étienne) brought together in various research papers, such as Pro-duction de l’espace urbain et idéologique (1972); Le Fonctionnement de la mo-bilité résidentielle intra-urbaine (1974); and Les Processus d’évolution des grands ensembles (1974). 7. See François Ascher’s thesis, Contribution à la critique de l’économie ur-baine: Essai d’analyse économique de la production d’un élément urbain: le cadre bâti. 8. Such as that of Françoise Lugassy, Jacqueline Palmade, and Françoise Couchard, Contribution à une psychologie de l’espace urban: La Dialectique du logement et de son environnement. Étude exploratoire. 9. Research papers in applied psychosociology that are most aware of this methodological problem write their conclusions in the conditional. 10. Απορια (aporia): a deadlocked or embarrassing situation that, in Pla-tonic thought, brings up new questions. 11. “Travers” in Émile Littré’s Dictionnaire de la Langue française. 12. We are referring here to our detailed methodological study in our thesis, “Le Pas: Étude de la vie quotidienne dans un habitat collectif à travers la pra-tique des cheminements.” 13. See Janet, L’évolution de la mémoire et de la notion du temps.

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14. In this neighborhood, the place-names are often unexpected or puzzling. A lexicon of these names can be found in Appendix B.

2. An Inhabitant Rhetoric: Figures of Walking

1. The high-density housing complex known as l’Arlequin, in Grenoble, France, in 1975. 2. We have borrowed the names of fi gures from the classical catalog of tropes or from fi gures of language. 3. As Ferdinand de Saussure designated the originary reality of language (Course in General Linguistics, 9). 4. [The reference, of course, is to Roland Barthes’s “Le Degré zéro de l’écriture,” a series of articles fi rst published in 1953; see now Writing Degree Zero and Elements of Semiology, trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (Lon-don: Jonathan Cape, 1984). —Trans.] 5. [The name of the bar, “Bar-bu,” is a play on words, meaning both bar where one drinks and bearded. A somewhat comparable name in English might be something like the “Bearddrinker.” —Trans.] 6. We emphasize: “paths” and not “shortcuts.” 7. “Digression” in Émile Littré’s Dictionnaire de la Langue française. 8. At the Arlequin complex, the “streets” are arranged under the buildings. 9. These “passageways” are very long corridors that provide access to the apartments. 10. Several inhabitants have told us how, on a Sunday, they have “shown” the Arlequin Gallery as a sort of curiosity to their friends, “who laughed a lot.” 11. In the strictly linguistic sense, “Polysemy [ . . . ] is an essentially syn-chronic notion. Through polysemy, language obeys the law of economy; it is able to reuse several times the same sign while making its signifi ed vary [ . . . ]” (Peytard and Genouvrier, Linguistique et enseignement du français, 207). 12. “The practical necessities of communication require that the linguistic form be constantly and on all levels redundant” (Martinet, Éléments de linguis-tique générale, 179). 13. The fi rst among the Aristotelian classifi catory principles open to the momentary. 14. [Translation of Figure 9:

Isabelle—The week of the 13th to the 19thmondayMonday morning:


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I left the “2000” apartment complex to go to the junior high; I was afraid of getting there late. XXXXX I was with a girlfriend. I was very hot.

I left the junior high to go to a girlfriend’s home at number 60.I reentered the junior high, passing by number 90 with XXXXX 5girlfriends XXXXX and I XXXXX went out again with a girlfriend to go to my home at number 170.

We were sad; for once I went on the Market -Pla^ce to take a short-

cut and took the gallery ramp until number 170. I went back to the junior high without any enthusiasm with my girlfriend. I left; I was sick to my stomach for having eaten so fast. I went home, and on the way I met a lady friend of my mother—

Monday afternoon:I went to the junior high school at 2 o’clock, (I didn’t really want

to go there). I left at 3 o’clock, and I went with a girlfriend to do some sewing; to do that, I went in front of number sixty, -and number seventy. I left at 6:30 p.m., myself, and I went home, happy.]

15. Excerpt from an interview cited as an example of digression, in the “Per-itopism” subsection of the “Elementary Figures” section in this chapter. 16. Sansot, Poétique de la ville, 27. 17. Hillocks laid out within Arlequin Park. 18. “Hyperbole” in Émile Littré’s Dictionnaire de la Langue française. 19. The hyperbole lived in one’s walks proceeds like the fi gure of amplifi ca-tion discussed in On the Sublime 11.1 by “Longinus”: “elevated expressions fol-low, one after the other, in an unbroken succession and in an ascending order.” 20. A joyous sort of barbarism, it would seem, and here we would fi nd an-other moment of the barbarous, analyzed as an imaginary type of inhabiting in Alain Pessin and Henry-Skoff Torgue’s thesis “Villes imaginaires: Introduction à l’imaginaire urbain” [and now available in book form from Éditions du Champ Urbain (Paris, 1980)—Trans.]. 21. Émile Littré’s Dictionnaire de la Langue française: “Synecdoche: fi gure by which one takes the genus for the species, the species for the genus, the whole for the part, or the part for the whole. . . . Example: ‘the billows’ for ‘the sea’. . . . In metonymy, I take one name for another one; in synecdoche, the most for the least, the least for the most.” 22. See ibid. 23. See anaphora, in the “Figures of Redundancy” subsection of the “Com-binatory Figures” section in this chapter. 24. See the analysis of the hyperbolic mode, in the “Figures of Redundancy” subsection in this chapter.


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25. From quite far away and in a very modest manner, there is a sort of dragon geography as found in the Chinese system of feng shui. 26. Here we have the transfi guration of the neighborhood, the image of which is refl ected in the water of the lake, the colors of the buildings thus mix-ing with the greenery of the park. Such a landscape is seen only from the height of the “big mound.” 27. One may reread the page from her notebook that was reproduced for our study of metabole, above, in the “Figures of Redundancy” subsection in this chapter. 28. Very heavy and categorical intonation. 29. Our most recent research, which bears on other urban fabrics (old neigh-borhoods, single-housing units, squares of nineteenth-century buildings, boule-vards), has in no way contradicted these conclusions drawn from an analysis of multiunit housing. 30. See, in particular, Jakobson, “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,” 53–82. 31. Jakobson, “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics,” 358. 32. Ibid., 357. 33. In the sense of communication theory. 34. Insistence on the plural within the singular, which characterizes the sta-tus of narrative. Mutual presupposition of the I and the You. No narrative with-out a narrator and without a listener. See Barthes, “Introduction to the Struc-tural Analysis of Narratives” (1966), 281–82. 35. See ibid., 282. The problem “is to describe the code by which narrator and reader are signifi ed throughout the narrative itself.”

3. An Inhabitant Rhetoric: The Code of Appropriation

1. The history of rhetoric shows a progressive disassociation between knowing-how-to-fi gure and the life of speech. Among the Ancients, these two instantiated principles were very closely connected. Yet in the course of a long process of theorization that begins with the arts of thinking of the Renaissance, starting from Petrus Ramus (and the thought of the Port Royal School) and cul-minating in César Chesneau sieur du Marsais (seventeenth century) and Pierre Fontanier (eighteenth century) and, fi nally, on to linguistics and psychoanalysis (stylistic devices–fi gures of the Unconscious), rhetoric seems “to lose its voice.” However, another line of descent exists, a popular, political, or strategic lineage of “savage rhetoric” that is conscious of the lively power of speech; one only has to listen to the voices of charlatans and grifters, as well as to electoral rhetoric, in order to be convinced of this.


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2. See the famous debate about the rhetors in Plato’s Gorgias. 3. See the comparative study of everyday life across four adjacent neigh-borhoods, Situations d’habitat et façons d’habiter, by Jean-François Augoyard and Alain Medam, a planning-construction research paper. 4. Stairwell numbers, or segments of the building-neighborhood. 5. The hexagon is the archetypical shape that determines all the angles. 6. The “Video-Gazette” is the name of the sector of activity that manages the neighborhood’s closed-circuit television system and is responsible for local-access programming. 7. The “Video-Gazette”—“a sort of spider,” the inhabitants say. Although not occupying much room of its own, it is nevertheless said to have the power to branch out into each home via the strange infl uence of cable transmissions. 8. [The phrase no man’s land appears italicized in English in the original French. —Trans.] 9. See the “Figures of Redundancy” subsection of the “Combinatory Fig-ures” section of chapter 2. 10. See the “Figures of Symmetry” subsection of the “Combinatory Fig-ures” section of chapter 2. 11. See the “Polysemous Figures” subsection of the “Elementary Figures” section of chapter 2. 12. [Traditionally, children in France have had Wednesday and Saturday af-ternoons off from school. —Trans.] 13. Heading in this direction, we bring together two statements by Ray-mond Ledrut: (1) “The connection between social differentiation in the city and the partitioning of space is more or less solid. Local groupings and other groups are often entirely distinct. This is the case of contemporary cities” (L’Espace so-cial et la ville, 339); (2) “The fi eld of urban experience is not a fi eld of signifi ca-tions that belongs to a city in itself, to clearly distinct people in the city, or even to mechanical relationships between two protagonists who are external to each other. This experience is that of a time, and it fi nds itself structured by every-thing that more or less defi nes this time” (Les Images de la ville, 13). 14. The “park” does not forsake complicities between the concept of na-ture, on the one hand, and the concept of man who has rediscovered a “self” invested with universality, on the other. Such complicities are sealed together in a residual ideology that is preromantic and romantic origin. 15. See the fi gures of avoidance in the “Elementary Figures” section of chapter 2. 16. “Here the appearing and functioning of difference presuppose an origi-nary synthesis not preceded by any absolute simplicity. Such would be the origi-nary trace. Without a retention in the minimal unit of temporal experience,


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without a trace retaining the other as other in the same, no difference would do its work and no meaning would appear. It is not the question of a constituted difference here, but rather, before all determination of the content, of the puremovement which produces difference. The (pure) trace is differance” (Derrida, On Grammatology, 62 [I have corrected a simple grammatical error—confusion of singular and plural—in Spivak’s translation. —Trans.]). 17. See the “Polysemous Figures” subsection of the “Elementary Figures” section of chapter 2. 18. See the “Figures of Redundancy” subsection of the “Combinatory Fig-ures” section of chapter 2. 19. See anaphora in the “Figures of Redundancy” subsection of the “Com-binatory Figures” section of chapter 2, and paralipsis, in the “Elementary Fig-ures” section of chapter 2. 20. See the question of dialectical movement, which was left hanging at the end of the “Differentiating Appropriations” section of this chapter. 21. See the Hegelian concept of Aufhebung, which is constitutive of dialecti-cal movement. 22. To “mix up [confondre]” space is to scramble its geometrical appearanc-es—but also to greet them with derision. 23. See, in particular, staggered polysemy, in the “Polysemous Figures” sub-section of the “Elementary Figures” section of chapter 2.

4. The Body of Inhabitant Expression

1. As in forests, the existence of animals is read on the basis of the network of traces of their passing: “tracks [passées].” 2. See the epigraph to the present chapter, drawn from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Preface to his Phenomenology of Perception (1945), ix, and this book as a whole. 3. We need several words to designate what the German language says in a single word: Stimmung. A substantivized adjective would come rather close. This would be the term climatic, which we shall sometimes employ. 4. See Sansot, Poétique de la ville, passim. (And the term passim will never have been so adequate; for, in order to apprehend what the atmosphere of urban sites might be, something quite other than a dogmatic formula is needed there; what is needed here is at least a book, and between each word, the weaving of a fi ne internal necessity that, in its discretion, is the opposite of seeming and a model of making-appear.) 5. Let us understand this term in the strong sense it had during the Renais-


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sance (in the Latin word character), namely, a striking, lasting quality, a printed sign, which is never random and which gives access to the thing intended. 6. Text reproduced in the “Figures of Redundancy” subsection of the “Combinatory Figures” section of chapter 2. 7. A careful analysis would note that, in the drawings framing this page, the junior high school is not to be found there at all, but only the residential buildings and the crossing areas. 8. “There’s basically the wind . . . [laughter] against one’s face! From num-ber 130 to number 140, one’s really facing an air current.” “That wind! . . . especially in winter, it’s another restriction. I heard an old lady say that she was afraid to go out in the winter, because she was scared about being bowled over by the wind. A gust of wind like that, on elderly people who easily lose their bal-ance, that can be dangerous!” “On account of the wind, people are in a hurry; and even more so in the winter, with the cold; except in a few areas, where you have some respite.” 9. We understand this term phantasm simply in the sense it had in an old litany of the Catholic ritual that was used for conjuring away the fantastic and demonic manifestations of the night: “Ab omnia phantasmata liber nos Dom-ine”; something unreal that is posited at the same time as it is exorcized. 10. “When it rains, I don’t look at anything. I could care less! At that point, I don’t know anyone any longer!” one inhabitant exclaimed. 11. Sansot, Poétique de la ville, 18 and 29. 12. “Let us go further: in a city, one never knows what refl ects and what is refl ected, what is the sound and what is the echo, who or what has night fever, whether it is the lights of the city or the busy passersby” (ibid., 13). 13. It is a matter of a signal rather than of a landmark [repère]. In confor-mity with the theory of the legibility of urban forms—a theory that still seems to be in fashion—the designers wanted the bearing-fi nding or locating [repérage]function to be operational. But what could the “urbeme,” the unit of signifi ca-tion of a language (in the strict sense) of urban affairs, possibly be? (See the ar-ticles by Raymond Ledrut, “Parole et silence de la ville,” Richard Fauque, “Pour une nouvelle approche sémiologique de la ville,” and Marion Segaud, “Anthro-pologie de l’espace: catalogue ou projet?” in Espaces et Sociétés. 14. If we are to believe certain architectural discourses, color is supposed to cancel out what would otherwise be the opacity of concrete facades. 15. Let us recall the etymology: “bel vedere,” or having the lovely view, is possible only from a distance that leaves the object untouchable. 16. It would be like that fi ctional sailor’s story, which a rich merchant wants to live out himself and make someone else live out, but which, once lived, disin-tegrates into death and incommunicability. There is no longer any story (see the


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wonderful 1967 made-for-television medium-length fi lm by Orson Welles, The Immortal Story, which was based on a short story by Isak Dinesen). 17. A fragment from one interview: “On a photograph of the gallery, [ . . . ] it’s hard to fi nd one’s apartment. There are three postcards about the New Town [ . . . ]. It’s really quite something. The lake is bluer than blue. [Bursts of laugh-ter.] And the building refl ected within it! Oh, I really had a laugh!” 18. Here are a few expressions we have heard: “The colors? How to say it? . . . I don’t like the bands; I prefer the rungs.” “The buildings altogether . . . it smells like concrete!” “I don’t like the pointy tops to the junior high school. I like the school from the lake with its honeycomb pattern; it stings less” (the al-lusion is here to the roofs on the junior high school, which are in the shape of asymmetrical pyramids). 19. We have often pointed out to the inhabitants that the total route of the gallery covers a good kilometer. Everyone has expressed surprise or incredulity, so much can the lived experience of everyday time be alien to topography. “This even implies that the pathways we take towards desevered entities in the course of our dealings will vary in their length from day to day. . . . As Dasein goes along its ways, it does not measure off a stretch of space as a corporeal Thing which is present-at-hand; it does not ‘devour the kilometers’; bringing-close or de-severance is always a kind of concernful Being towards what is brought close and de-severed. A pathway which is long ‘Objectively’ can be much shorter than one which is ‘Objectively’ shorter still but which is perhaps ‘hard going’ and comes before us as interminably long” (Heidegger, Being and Time, 140). 20. For the critique of refl exology, we refer the reader, on the one hand, to the works of embryologists (George Ellett Coghill, Leonard Carmichael, and Adriaan Kortlandt) and ethologists (Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, Peter H. Klopfer), and, on the other hand, to Kurt Goldstein (The Organism: A Holis-tic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man), as well as to Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception). [One of the best argu-ments against refl exology is to be found in the opening pages of the fundamental and too neglected work of Erwin Strauss, Vom Sinn der Sinne (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1935), which, on this theme and on that of the interdependence between feeling and moving, has broadly inspired perceptual psychology, phenomenol-ogy, and ethology—Author’s note, 2004.] 21. See the fi gure of bypassing in the “Elementary Figures” section of chap-ter 2. 22. There is a strangeness to the return trip, where identity wavers from the fi rst step onward: “That night I set out for home. I did not get far. But it was a start. It is the fi rst step that counts. The second counts less. . . . Then I followed more or less the same paths we had taken on the way out. But paths look differ-


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ent, when you go back along them” (Beckett, Molloy, in Molloy. Malone Dies. The Unnameable, 165–66). 23. See the “Polysemous Figures” subsection in the “Elementary Figures” section of chapter 2. 24. These are the ironic ups and downs of a technological medium that is lived in contradiction to the elevator’s function; through it, we rediscover the vertical dimension that is essential in human motor patterns (Binswanger, “Dream and Existence”). 25. “Identität von Weg und Werk.” See Klee, The Thinking Eye: The Note-books of Paul Klee, 168. 26. See the fi nal, fantastic short story, “The Aleph,” published in The Aleph and Other Stories, 1933–1969. 27. On the illusion of spatial simultaneities, see the third rule of the code of appropriation at the end of the “Territorial Appearance” section of chapter 3. 28. “Does this Aleph exist in the heart of a stone? Did I see it there in the cellar when I saw all things, and have I now forgotten it? Our minds are porous and forgetfulness seeps in; I myself am distorting and losing, under the wearing away of the years, the face of Beatriz” (Borges, “The Aleph,” 30). 29. See the beginning of the “From Figures to Code” section in chapter 2. 30. See the experiment in continuous reportage (seven months running) that was attempted by an American television network on the Loud family in 1971and the commentary Jean Baudrillard offers in “The Precession of Simulacra,” 28ff. 31. Nor does this defi nition depart from the quite numerical notion of “mea-sure.” The preferable defi nition (in the sense of a seizure of limits via confi gura-tion, rather than formal division) will be the one that presided over the art of Gregorian modal music: sequences of bursts (arsis) and rests (thesis); death and birth of the impulse (ictus). 32. It would be the essence and also the secret of time, if we are to believe Anaximander’s statement (sixth century BCE) as reported by Simplicius in his Physics (24.13): “And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens ‘according to necessity; for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of time,’ as he describes it in these rather poetical terms” (Kirk, Raven, and Scho-fi eld, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts,117–18). 33. See the fourth rule of the code of appropriation in the “Differentiating Appropriations” section of chapter 3. 34. One female inhabitant from number 60 says, “The little bit of the neigh-borhood I frequent, it’s mine.”


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35. “I don’t often look through the window [ . . . ]. Or else, just like that, while passing by it, because the neighborhood is also a bit my home.” Another female inhabitant says, “You see, I bring my chair close, like that, near the bal-cony, to knit. Notice that I don’t see very much, because I’m small and because the plant stands are high. But I keep contact with the outside. And the view isn’t unpleasant.” 36. See the expressions of some inhabitants, reported earlier: “this isn’t a spot,” “I wouldn’t live there.” 37. Some sites in the Arlequin neighborhood that planners foresaw would be used as meeting places, sites of collective gravitation (because on the walls have been painted the words “pole 1,” “pole 2”), remain obstinately deserted. 38. We speak of the power of the body in the sense of the evaluation of what it can do (in terms of limits, but also in terms of dynamic capacity). It seems to be of fundamental importance to weigh this evaluation before any ethology of inhabiting, as well as before any production of habitat, just as Spinoza weighed it at the start of his ethic of “feelings” (that which affects), in his Ethics (in Com-plete Works, Part 3, 277ff.), which proposes some quite valuable prolegomena to the study of existence in concrete situations. 39. As structural grammar becomes with Noam Chomsky “generative and transformational grammar” (Syntactic Structures). Can one imagine a genera-tive and transformational development plan and architecture?

5. On the Imaginary Ground of Inhabitant Expression

1. [In the French translation of Kandinsky, what in English appeared as “uncontrollable force of nature” appears as “une force qui défi e les calculs.” —Trans.] 2. [In French, the meanings of discrete and discreet overlap in one word: discret. —Trans.] 3. This power to produce syntheses is analyzed in the famous pages from Kant where he deals with the Schematism (Critique of Pure Reason, 121ff.). 4. See the section “An Articulatory Process” in chapter 4. 5. “This schematism of our understanding applied to phenomena and their mere form is an art hidden in the depth of the human soul, the true secrets of which we shall hardly ever be able to guess and reveal” (Critique of Pure Rea-son, 123). 6. Kant, Critique of Judgment, Including the First Introduction, book 2,“Analytic of the Sublime,” 91ff.). 7. The spiritus phantasticus (a term that is nearly untranslatable, because


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it includes ideas that are for us so different, such as those of imaginary power, divine fi re, and breath of life) manifests itself in two ways. On the one hand, it animates; it is the breath that gives life to all things and makes signifi cations speak. On the other hand, in the form of the subjectum, the fi eld that supports all existence, or else in the metaphorical form of the atrium or the combinatory fi eld of second-order signifi cations (interpretorial reproduction of the immedi-ate meaning of things), it grounds. See our master’s thesis, “Imagination et Na-ture chez Giordano Bruno,” a 124-page mimeographed document. 8. See in particular Giordano Bruno’s “La Cena de le Ceneri.” 9. So as not to weigh down our argument, let us simply recall the extreme importance that, in a kind of thinking that is familiar to us, Sigmund Freud and Gaston Bachelard granted to this industrious circulation of the imaginary that defi es the apparent distinctions in whose name mental functions are doggedly separated from one another and our psychosomatic entity is torn asunder. 10. The concrete forms by which one evokes the possible in the present pick up on various traits of everyday life that are already present in fi gures and appro-priations—whence the numerous references to narratives already quoted. This fi nal reading, which seeks out the ground of expression, will briefl y recall those “traits” of everyday style, along with their most representative expressions. 11. See the “Polysemous Figures” subsection in the “Elementary Figures” section of chapter 2. 12. Mechanical ventilation system for the apartment complex. 13. See Yves Bardin’s short fi lm Quand les poules auront des dents (When the hens will have teeth). The fantastic and murderous invasion of ferocious hens who take over the Arlequin begins in this fi lm with eggs hatched in the un-derground areas of the gallery. This fi lm is available at “Grenoble-Information-Animation,” Grand Place, Grenoble, France. 14. Cf. the narrative of one mother. In one stairway, someone shot at her son with a rifl e. The evidence seems quite convincing: the cake pan he was carrying now strangely resembles a colander. In this case, the horrible persists through eventful marking. 15. See the “Polysemous Figures” subsection in the “Elementary Figures” section in chapter 2, and the “Appropriation via Dislocation” section in chap-ter 3. 16. See the Second Rule of the Code of Appropriation at the end of the “Ter-ritorial Appearance” section of chapter 3. 17. See the cascade of exclusions of which the Community Center is the site in the “Differentiating Appropriations” section of chapter 3. 18. Let us recall the two logical traditions that, each in its own way, have articulated Western philosophy, depending on the different connotations they


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give to the modality of the possible: the tradition of paired values: true or false (see the dominant scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the Port Royal Logic, Leib-niz); the tradition of unpaired values: true, false, neither-true-nor-false (this tradition, which has always inspired mistrust, stretches from Epicurus to Jan Lukasiewicz). 19. Durand, Les Structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire: Introduction à l’archétypologie générale, 68. 20. We are thinking here of several practices that stretch from the damag-ing of urban sites to the ironic inversion of their functional signifi cations. We refer to the analyses of André Micoud in his mimeographed research report, Les Nouvelles Formes du refus de la ville (Saint-Étienne: Centre de Recherche et d’Études Sociologiques Appliquées de la Loire [CRESAL], 1976), and those of Jacques Ion and Jean Nizey, in Les Processus d’évolution des grands ensembles(Saint-Étienne: Centre de Recherche et d’Études Sociologiques Appliquées de la Loire [CRESAL], 1973). 21. If one wanted to draw up the logic of everyday life, it would no doubt be necessary to begin with the covariant of nonexclusive disjunction, replacing the “either/or” of the logic of the excluded middle with the “and/or.” This logic of the imaginary has been launched in the fi eld of axiomatic research. See the various works of Stéphane Lupasco, and in particular Logique et contradictionand Les Trois Matières. 22. Lalande, “Symbole.” 23. Durand, Les Structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire, 38. 24. See, respectively: (1) “The Poetic Idiom” at the end of chapter 2; (2)“Conclusion in the Form of a Bifurcation” at the end of chapter 3; (3) “An Ar-ticulatory Process” at the end of chapter 4; and (4) “Three Powers of the Lived Imaginary” in the present chapter. 25. Let us refer here to the most memorable source in the history of linguis-tics, Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics. 26. Ibid., 67–69 and 69–70. 27. Such thinking is scandalous because it is grounded upon a philosophy of immanence. In his Ethics, Spinoza abandoned the concepts that would immedi-ately denote a status for expression. This status appears only through an almost initiatory reading, the second reading Gilles Deleuze reconstitutes in his Expres-sionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (1968). 28. There is nothing fortuitous, or even contradictory, about the fact that one would have to go back to the Renaissance to fi nd an openly declared the-ory of expression and that, in the same age, a dominant mode of thinking-producing was fi rmly constituted on the basis of a certain way of representing space. At that time, methods of combination bore upon a quite precise status for


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signifi cation. Signifi cations—each one referring to the others—made up the way of understanding a cosmic order that expressed itself on its own, as well as a way of making that order reexpress itself, and yet that order still had to be con-voked through the medium of streams of signifi cations-expressions. The break occurred during the second half of the Renaissance. The methods of thought production and of fabrication (Ars) were little by little led astray and turned into pure operative instruments subsumed under a binary structure that went on to disjoin identity and difference, which would be split up, the “I think” andthe world. The triad of expression disappeared like an outdated metaphysics. The representation of space from which the “arts of thinking” drew strength was fl attened into “res extensa,” into representational space, the manipulation of which no longer convokes anything expressive, but simply some immediately benefi cial divisions in which the heterogeneous disguises itself as homogeneous. Cf. the remarks of Françoise Choay: “I am more and more convinced that in the West, the great break in urban development and design occurred at the end of the fi fteenth century. Before . . . no planning. Not that the urban space in-cluded no organization, but such organization was the product of a set of social practices and not that of a specifi c practice, which is itself the fruit of a break performed on the level of refl ection upon the urban object” (interview in Me-tropolis, 67). 29. Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, 333. 30. Ibid., 335. 31. Beckett, “The Expelled,” 33.

Conclusion: A Cosmogenetic Point

1. We offer, in an appendix, a synoptic table that sketches out the varieties of this reductive process. It is a formal account of the contradictions and reduc-tions that occur between the order of building-housing and the power of inhabi-tant expression. 2. We use this expression that was favored in the Bauhaus aesthetic. The pictorial metaphor evoked here seems illuminating. The universe of inhabitant expression is engendered on the basis of discretely lived point-like experiences, just as the world of forms tightly bound in the “canvas” is born of a simple graphic gesture or of a colored point. 3. On the question of this necessary involvement of tension in the act of building, the reader is invited to read and reread the pages of Georges Braque’s Cahiers. [A later, bilingual edition appeared as Illustrated Notebooks, 1917–1955.—Trans.]

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4. See our analysis of the process of conception-production of a high-den-sity housing complex: “Des opérationnels autour de l’Arlequin.” 5. Rocard, “La France en quête d’un avenir.” 6. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 84. 7. See chapter 1 of Medam’s La Ville-Censure. 8. Durand, Science de l’homme et tradition: Le Nouvel Esprit anthro-pologique, 143. 9. In the sense in which the one-dimensional false consciousness denounced by Herbert Marcuse as representation of a destiny of productivity did not yet carry weight. 10. Cf. the bitterness and regrets of a frustrated creativity, quite well ana-lyzed in Lugassy’s work Le Discours idéologique des architectes et urbanistes. 11. See Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychol-ogy of Style, originally published in German in 1908. 12. For this passage, we have borrowed the French translation given by Henri Maldiney at the University of Lyon in 1969 [and then retranslated it into English; for the available English translation, which differs somewhat, see The Thinking Eye: The Notebooks of Paul Klee, 169.—Trans]. 13. Ibid. [English translation again somewhat altered to refl ect the French translation from the German.—Trans.] 14. [It should be noted, for the reader of the present French-to-English trans-lation, that the 1962 French translation of Martin Heidegger’s 1950 volume, Holzwege (literally: wood trails; a recent English-language translation has Off the Beaten Track), was titled Chemins qui mènent nulle part (paths that lead no-where), and thus is the opposite of what Augoyard affi rms concerning the paths of expression at the close of his book.—Trans.]

Appendix B

1. Zone d’urbanisation en priorité (ZUP).

Afterword

The ambulatory dialogue between author and translator, broached on that crisp fall day in Grenoble and continued in the present text (placed most appropri-ately as an Afterword), has been pursued in an exchange available on the au-thor’s professional Web site, www.cresson.archi.fr/sbs.html. 1. I make explicit here my American prejudice against the International

N O T E S T O A F T E R W O R D

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Style, which was reinforced by my 2000–2001 residency at Taliesin West at the invitation of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. 2. This experience was the reverse of the one Laurie Anderson drolly de-scribed in her eponymous song from Big Science (1982) depicting disorienta-tion in a future-dominated builtscape: “Hey Pal! How do I get to town from here? And he said: Well, just take a right where they’re going to build that new shopping mall, go straight past where they’re going to put in the freeway, take a left at what’s going to be the new sports center, and keep going until you hit the place where they’re thinking of building that drive-in bank. You can’t miss it. And I said: This must be the place.” This song includes a sly comment on fi ctionalized landscaping reminiscent of the Arlequin’s mounds: “You know. I think we should put some mountains here. Otherwise, what are all the charac-ters going to fall off of?” I know not whether Anderson ever read Jean Baudril-lard on simulacra, but it is known that she studied Merleau-Ponty at Columbia with Arthur C. Danto. 3. Like Proust (translator of John Ruskin) or Paul Auster (translator of Pierre Clastres). 4. But not even a hint of infl uence, so far as I can tell, from the existential-ist philosopher of an absolute freedom Jean-Paul Sartre, who also wrote on the imagination. 5. The University of Minnesota Press originally took an interest in trans-lating Pas à pas as an outgrowth from its publication of Lefebvre’s The Urban Experience. 6. There is in Step by Step one late, and quite intriguing, reference to the death of modernity: “Building is missing-in-action, not dead. And its potentiali-ties are still exercised in a virtual way in the obscure confrontations between in-habitant expression and constructed space. We would say, rather, that the ‘mod-ern’ is what has just died; it is already conceptuality, already fi xed in place. It is dead absolutely, that is, as soon as one lays down the fi rst stone, as soon as its fi rst object is sketched out, for it has rid itself of lived time. And rather than call-ing for a return to the past, we would prefer to grant, as a plausible outcome, self-construction.” Postmodernism, however, seems absent from the present vol-ume. Jean-François Lyotard’s volume on the postmodern condition, La Condi-tion postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir had only come out the same year Pas à pas was published; nonetheless, the term had already existed for decades and was popularized two years earlier in Charles Jencks’s The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. And the “plausible outcome” of “self-construction” seems rather alien to postmodern concerns, being reminiscent, rather, of Cornelius Castori-adis’s 1975 major work The Imaginary Institution of Society (trans. Kathleen Blamey [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998]), even though Augoyard, himself work-


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ing on the imagination at the time, had not read this volume. Because of similari-ties of concerns and an overlap of themes between Augoyard and Castoriadis, I have often referred to the latter’s work while translating and refl ecting upon the former’s. It is indeed fascinating to witness these two intellectual trajectories developing at the same time within the context of postwar French thought. I have been helped in my examination of Augoyard’s work by Castoriadis’s own reading of Yves Barel, another author whose work developed in parallel with his during the 1970s: see Castoriadis’s “Complexity, Magmas, History: The Ex-ample of the Medieval Town” (1993), in The Rising Tide of Insignifi cancy (The Big Sleep), available online starting at: http://notbored.org/RTI.html.

Neither does Michel Foucault’s name make an appearance. Augoyard’s microscopic study of appropriations and counterappropriations—themselves couched in Saussurean terms of mutually generated difference based on the ar-bitrariness of the sign but being, most proximately, of Lefebvrean provenance—might nevertheless make one think of that theorist of micropowers. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine Foucault, champion of powerlessness, speak-ing affi rmatively, as Augoyard does, about “the power of the imaginary.” 7. Not to forget a wealth of premodern and early modern infl uences: as Augoyard notes, his master’s thesis was written on the topic “Imagination and Nature in Giordano Bruno.” Those who would take Step by Step to be merely a clever text in urban studies or a microanalysis of a particular housing complex would miss a great deal of the philosophical intent and import of this quite re-markable volume. 8. A nearly impossible, not to say infi nite, task, given the complexity and overlap of the multitude of referrals involved. 9. In French, interprète can mean both “performer” (like Ion) and “inter-preter-translator.” Nevertheless, to the extent that one can say that a translation is an artistic re-creation of voices and signifi cations in another tongue, the term interpretation, with its merely hermeneutic overtones, seems quite inadequate and inappropriate. 10. In a “Tribune libre” for the December 28, 2005, issue of the Commu-nist newspaper L’Humanité (“Bâtir la ville: le désir de civilisation”), Jean-Paul Dollé proposes an amalgam of Heidegger (Dollé cites “Bâtir, habiter, penser”) and Lefebvre (he also mentions “the production of space”) as a frame for dis-cussing the fall 2005 riots in France. Yet, in contrast to Augoyard, he fails to take as his point of departure the self-articulating position of the inhabitant-user of this space. 11. Augoyard explains in chapter 2: “In any case, one never makes a com-plete tour around the everyday as it is lived.” This apposite claim to, or admission of, nonexhaustiveness is made on several occasions. It is to be noted that “An


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Essay on Everyday Walks in an Urban Setting” is the proper English transla-tion of the book’s subtitle. A compromise subtitle, “Everyday Walks in a French Urban Housing Project,” was settled on for the present translation. 12. “To dwell” has been reserved, instead, to translate demeurer and its de-rivatives, as in “the possibility of dwelling, of coming to a stop” plus “city dweller” for citadin, and for Choay’s use of the term habiter when discussing it in relation to Heidegger. Also, “dwelling” connotes meditation on allegedly pro-found matters, while “inhabiting” indicates a mobile bodily practice. 13. The author wisely added “apparently” with regard to walking prac-tices’ assumed resistance to co-optation. For, along with malls (centres commer-ciaux), a major urban planning and design contrivance popularized in France, as elsewhere, since this book was originally published, has been the deploy-ment and proliferation of voies piétonnes, “pedestrian ways” (generally desig-nated in the States as “walking streets”) devoid of cars that funnel pedestrians and foster shopping in an environmentally more friendly setting, thereby “de-mocratizing” (to use an abusive, journalistic term) and further commercializing the experiences of the Baudelairean dandy and Walter Benjamin’s fl âneur. (See, on an early-twentieth-century artistic transfi guration of these two nineteenth-century pedestrian fi gures, Giovanna Zapperi’s “Marcel Duchamp’s Dandyism: The Dandy, the Flâneur, and the Beginnings of Mass Culture in New York dur-ing the 1910s,” translated by me and available at http://www.artsetsocietes.org/a/a-zaperri.html.) 14. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference” (Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”). As we shall soon see, however, even this mutual exclusion is, according to Augo-yard, to be avoided: “Sometimes rather more following an existing path, some-times rather more hewing a new one, one moves within a space that never toler-ates the absolute exclusion of the one or the other.” 15. Augoyard immediately and enthusiastically recognized the Anderson lyric reference when I mentioned it to him; he was familiar with the song on ac-count of his son Erwan, now a fi lmmaker. 16. See mentions of the “French Ideology” in “Social Transformation and Cultural Creation” (1979), from Castoriadis’s Political and Social Writings,vol. 3 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 304, as well as in “The Movements of the Sixties” (1986), from his collection World in Fragments(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 51. The obvious reference here is to Marx and Engels’s attack on the irrelevancies of their contemporaries in The German Ideology. 17. An early indication of the limits of a deconstructive approach to walking practices is perhaps contained in the very citation of Derrida’s concept of “dif-ferance” (note 16 to chapter 3): “It is not the question of a constituted differ-


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ence here, but rather, before all determination of the content, of the pure move-ment which produces difference. The (pure) trace is differance.” It is unclear how such a hypostatized notion of “purity” can account for the messy everydaynessof such movement practices. 18. There are two further mentions of deconstruction. 19. This modal methodological approach, he acknowledges, “comes up right away against a major diffi culty”: people’s tendency to forget. The investi-gator addresses this problem by asking a “how” question—“How do you walk through your neighborhood; what trips do you take?”—in a protentional rather than retentional mode (the interviewees are to provide their answers only after a suitable lapse of time and after having had the actual experience with this ques-tion in mind). Of note, the protentional/retentional terminology stems origi-nally from Edmund Husserl’s 1928 work Phenomenology of Internal Time-Con-sciousness (based on his 1905–10 lectures) and is an extension of his method of intentional analysis, derived from the “intentionality” thesis developed by his teacher Franz Brentano. 20. In fact, in Husserl himself, this call was already articulated as a “going back” (“wir wollen auf die ‘Sachen Selbst’ züruckgehen”). 21. Plato Cratylus 401d (on Heraclitus) and Aristotle Metaphysics 1010a13–15 (on Cratylus). Perhaps Heraclitus’s most famous fragment begins “All things fl ow” (panta rhei). 22. A questionable, but key, thesis in Merleau-Ponty concerns “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences.” This 1946 talk, fi rst pub-lished in French in 1947, forms the eponymous text for The Primacy of Percep-tion and Other Essays, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univer-sity Press, 1964). 23. In French, sens means both “meaning” and “direction,” an overlap of signifi cations exploited in particular by Merleau-Ponty, as Stephen Hastings-King points out in his 1999 Cornell University history PhD dissertation, “Ford-ism and the Marxist Revolutionary Project: A History of Socialisme ou Barba-rie, Part I,” 192. 24. Of course, movement here is to be taken in its Aristotelian sense of change or alteration, of which there are four species, and not limited to its Gali-lean sense alone of local movement. Lest it be thought that I am making a fetish of movement, allow me to recommend, by way of contrast, the work of the late post-Surrealist artist, sculptor, and writer Pol Bury, including his book Les Hor-ribles mouvements de l’immobilité (Paris: C. Martinez, 1977); see also my trans-lation of André Balthazar’s text for one of Bury’s catalogs: “Pol Bury or Mur-mured Slowness,” in Pol Bury. La lenteur murmurée (Paris: Galerie Louis Carré, 2004), 9–11.


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25. One wonders why Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy was not an appropriate reference for Augoyard. 26. Merleau-Ponty’s May 1959 Working Note, titled “Transcendence of the thing and transcendence of the phantasm,” begins as follows: “The transcen-dence of the thing compels us to say that it is plenitude only by being inexhaust-ible, that is, by not being all actual under the look——but it promises this total actuality, since it is there. . . .

“When we say that—on the contrary—the phantasm is not observable, that it is empty, non-being, the contrast with the sensible is therefore not absolute. The senses are apparatus to form concretions of the inexhaustible, to form ex-istent signifi cations——” And here, still couched in the language of Husserlian phenomenology, is what follows the statement just quoted, about things not re-ally being observable: “What we call the sensible is only the fact that the indefi -nite [succession] of Abschattungen precipitates——But, conversely, there is a pre-cipitation or crystallization of the imaginary, of the existentials, of the symbolic matrices” (The Visible and the Invisible followed by Working Notes [1964], ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis [Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968], 191–92). What Merleau-Ponty describes in static or fi xed terms as “concretions” and “precipitation or crystallization” could have been rearticu-lated in mobile terms by extending his metaphor of “enjambment,” meaning-creation through ongoing strides. I believe that Augoyard’s book points in this direction. 27. Aristotle Peri psuches 431a17. See Castoriadis’s “The Discovery of the Imagination,” in World in Fragments. Although he does not present this history as thoroughly and profoundly as Castoriadis does, Augoyard is quite aware of these multiple rediscoveries and successive cover-ups: “Several times in the his-tory of thought, the imaginary has been considered neither as one of the lower faculties, archaic in origin and confi ned to the production of images, nor as too confused a faculty to be able to attain the empire of reason, too uncultivated and too uncontrolled in its sudden appearances to be a bearer of truth. Each time our ‘imaginary’ capacity has been taken into account as a whole, it was in order to point to its operative function: imagining is the power to connect. The imagi-nation is the medium par excellence.

“Thus, Kantianism—which, two centuries ago, did not immediately preoc-cupy itself with the instantiated principle of the imaginary—nevertheless con-ferred upon it the threefold role of reproducing, synthesizing, and creating.” And Augoyard, author of that Giordano Bruno thesis, offers precious indica-tions as to the historical role of the imagination in Renaissance thought, about which Castoriadis has not written (at least in the extant and posthumous work published so far). On the other hand, with the introduction of anticipationas origin of the realization of the real via the imaginary (“render[ing] present


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what ‘really’ is not yet so”), the entire basis (ground) for Augoyard’s afore-mentioned “protentional” method of interviewing inhabitants is itself tossed up into the air. 28. He also footnotes the work of the philosopher and social theorist Gil-bert Durand, founder, in 1966, of the University of Grenoble II’s Center for Re-search on the Imaginary. Augoyard explained to me that the mention of Durand in his thesis (and subsequently in his book) was a late addition made after he had learned that Durand would be on the thesis committee. 29. This consistent denigration of the “why” is particularly perplexing in light of Augoyard’s insistence that, “however unremarkable our ways of inhab-iting might be, they would never depart from a climatic pregnancy that never leaves them totally ‘unmotivated.’” It is perhaps understandable that the author wishes to view inhabiting not only as “movement” but also as motivated. (The “power of the imaginary,” however, would more plausibly opt, rather, for a present participle with future implications—motivating—although the imagi-nary’s interpenetration of action and passion would militate instead for past and present participles combining in an ongoing Stiftung, Husserl’s German word for “institution.”) And he wishes to challenge Saussurean linguistics, which is based, by way of contrast, on linearity and the arbitrariness of the sign: “expres-sion is never carried out according to an arbitrary relation and does not unfold in a single dimension.” But what, we may ask, is the sense in saying that inhab-iting is motivated (taken here by Augoyard to mean the opposite of “arbitrary”) and yet eschews the “why”? Augoyard is battling against Saussurean-based Structuralism, and he thereby becomes a champion of expressive creativity. But he has yet to reach the vista where the risky possibility of positing the “why” and the metanecessary arbitrariness of creation themselves combine in, as well as fl ow from, an unmotivated, self-positing (indeed, self-instituting) imaginary that alters itself not just in time but as time. And yet this is precisely what his “cosmogenetic point,” in his Conclusion, could itself eventually generate. 30. The ambulatory act of “skipping over” is not to be confused, of course, with the high-fl ying bird’s-eye or God’s-eye view (pensée de survol) Merleau-Ponty rightly criticized. 31. One fi nds the lived experience/representation opposition often in Mer-leau-Ponty’s work, too. The denigration of representation, in this case tied even more directly to causality, also may be found in a passage from Deleuze that Augoyard quotes: “What is expressed is sense: deeper than the relation of cau-sality, deeper than the relation of representation” (Gilles Deleuze, Expression-ism in Philosophy: Spinoza [1968], trans. Martin Joughin [New York: Zone Books, 1990], 335). 32. In the sixth part of his 1637 Discourse on Method, Descartes does in-deed talk about “represent[ing] my life as in a picture,” and the terms représen-


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tation and tableau (but also imagination) do appear a number of times in this and other Cartesian works. For his part, Heidegger provides no textual evidence of his own here. 33. See also the May 1960 Working Note “‘Visual Picture’ ‘representa-tion of the world’ Todo y Nada,” where, in a line of descent from Heidegger’s “The Age of the World Picture,” Merleau-Ponty seeks to “generalize the critique of the visual picture into a critique of ‘Vorstellung’” (The Visible and the Invis-ible followed by Working Notes, 252). This he does even after his admission that “one is never at the thing itself”! 34. Heidegger could just as easily have understood Vor-stellung to mean a “putting forth” of images, their “placing in advance,” instead of a static and objective “setting before” (a subject). Many German vor- words have the for-mer two senses. See “Merleau-Ponty and the Weight of the Ontological Tradi-tion,” in World in Fragments, 282, where Castoriadis speaks of “a representa-tion in the ‘active’ sense . . . that is not placing-something-in-front-of-someone but rather is that by which and in which every placing and every place exist, originary positing starting from which every position—as ‘act’ of a subject or ‘determination’ of an object—has being and meaning.” Such an understand-ing and acceptance of imaginary representation could rejoin the meanings of enjambement explored earlier and inspired by Augoyard’s movement-oriented method. 35. When this phrase was fi rst cited, it seemed that the operative word was “aesthetic,” but now it appears that what is being contested especially is “objecthood”—which would be condemned for representationalism. That is to say, Augoyard has no objection in principle to aisthesis, so long as the feeling of inhabiting is understood as movement. 36. Here, “skips” and “does without” are translations for the French phrase faire l’économie de. Augoyard goes on to state the important points that, in the imaginary realm establishing the ground for real life, neither set theory nor iden-titary logic operates and that the individual can be opposed to or considered separate from the social sphere only via abstraction: “there is nothing about [in-habitant expression] of a ‘relation’ of part to whole or of a ‘relation’ of the in-dividual to the ‘socius.’” Despite the dubious Heideggerian pronouncement that “representation” would somehow be absent from “lived experience” (instead of their being, thanks to the imaginary, mutually interpenetrative), we can see that, as with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, what is truly being contested is subject–object dualism and a specifi c representational reduction of things, people, and processes to inert and manipulable objects: “the same goes for rationalizing ex-planations that would yield on the one hand the subject, on the other hand the object, on the one hand knowing, on the other hand the world in itself.” The


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genuine topic at hand for Augoyard is an elucidation of the imaginary via in-habitant expression: “To the extent that everyday life can fi nd meaning qua ex-pression, the imaginary proposes itself as the essential referent to which the mo-ments of inhabiting, and all the spaces inhabited, relate. The imaginary weaves beneath each present lived experience a ground the imaginary immediately gives to it as world.” 37. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1928), trans. John Marcquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York and Evanston, Ill.: Harper & Row, 1962), 140 (emphasis added). If we take Heidegger’s early talk of Vorstellung and add thereto his mentions of “affective life” and “volition” (the latter in its most general sense as the distinctly human form of intention and desire), we have, in Castoriadis’s terminology, “the three characteristics of the for-itself, which were fi rst sifted out as distinct elements during the fi fth century B.C.E. in an-cient Greece. Everywhere there is the for-itself there will be representation and image, there will be affect, there will be intention; in ancient terminology: the logico-noetic, the thymic, and the orectic. This goes for a bacterium as well as for an individual or for a society” (“The State of the Subject Today,” in World in Fragments, 146). 38. This “never extinguished resonance” also seems to be of Merleau-Pon-tean provenance. 39. Castoriadis, “The Discovery of the Imagination,” 215–16. 40. Heidegger, “Die Zeit des Weltbildes” (1938), in Holzwege (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1977), 106. 41. “Only a God Can Save Us” is the 1976 title of the posthumously pub-lished interview Der Spiegel conducted with Heidegger a decade earlier. 42. In fact, Augoyard’s characterization of the imaginary’s “industrious cir-culation” provides us with the key dynamic phrase for following these otherwise paradoxical movements of redundancy and repetition. The best work on this question is that of the Italian philosopher Fabio Ciaramelli; see my translation: “The Self-Presupposition of the Origin: Homage to Cornelius Castoriadis,” in Thesis Eleven 49 (May 1997): 45–67. I thank Ciaramelli for pointing me to Heidegger’s “The Age of the World Picture” and helping me to orient myself in relation to that text. 43. Cornelius Castoriadis, “The ‘End of Philosophy’?” in Philosophy, Poli-tics, Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 15. 44. Let it be noted that Arlequin, the name of this housing project, is French for “Harlequin”: the traditional comic character of pantomime theater. Augoyard’s book is not without its own humor. And the hexagon form of the Arlequin’s basic architectural design recalls France’s general hexagonal shape.


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(France is often referred to as “the Hexagon.”) In many ways, Step by Step is a lively and witty critique of an entire French way of thinking about building, housing, and residing. 45. In the time of the polis, political terms and cosmological terms cre-atively intertwined and interpenetrated within ancient Greek philosophy. See Jean-Pierre Vernant’s 1962 book The Origins of Greek Thought (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982). To account for cosmogenesis as well as an-thropogenesis, philosophers, historians, and poets created cosmogonies and an-thropogonies. On the latter, see Castoriadis’s “Aeschylean Anthropogony and Sophoclean Self-Creation of Man” (1991), in Figures of the Thinkable (Includ-ing Passion and Knowledge), available online starting at: http://notbored.org/FTPK.html. 46. In light of the originary redundancy of representation, it might be worthwhile to examine more closely a phrase from Freud. Despite his scientistic leanings as a medical man and a nineteenth-century offspring of the Enlighten-ment, Dr. Freud managed not only to integrate the imagination (via phantasy) into his psychoanalysis but also to place it, at least implicitly, at the center of his concerns. When he writes of the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz des Triebes—rep-resentation’s representative of the drive—he is providing a useful justifi cation, in metapsychological terms, not only for representations and for representing as Vorstellungen and Vorstellen but also for representation as re-presentation in representation of an a-representational drive. (In “Logic, Imagination, Refl ec-tion” [1991], now in World in Fragments, Castoriadis provides the references in Freud as follows: Gesammelte Werke, 10:285 = Standard Edition, 14:186. Al-though Castoriadis knowingly described this phrase as “limpid,” I do not believe that he ever explicitly explored the signifi cance of its startling redundancy.) 47. Here and elsewhere I have heightened the point by translating savoir as “scientifi c knowledge” in order to contrast it with familiar knowledge (connais-sance). In French, after all, a savant is a “scientist.” 48. Augoyard is himself an accomplished musician, his wife a former dancer. He is the editor of La qualité sonore des espaces habités/Sound Quality in the Living Environment (bilingual acts of a March 1991 colloquium; Greno-ble: CRESSON, 1992), and the coauthor, with Henry Torgue, of À l’Écoute de l’environnement. Répertoire des effets sonores (Marseille: Éditions Parenthèses, 1995). Today, he directs the “Ambiances, ambiance” series at Éditions à la croisée. His volume Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds, also ed-ited along with Henry Torgue, with a Preface by R. Murray Schafer and trans-lated by Andra McCartney and David Paquette, was just published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2006. 49. Augoyard offered the example of a student of his who spent months studying how people actually go into and out of a commercial center’s revolving


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and fi xed doors, noting how such practices differ from the designer’s theoretical anticipations thereof. 50. When I raised this issue with Augoyard near the end of my tour of the Arlequin complex, he readily admitted that there was a point to what I was say-ing but it was not possible to analyze these narratives from all perspectives—a point he had already rightly made in general in his book, and that is in fact a basic principle of his “step-by-step” approach that makes no pretense to offer-ing a general overview. 51. We fi nd at http://crisis.vianet.on.ca/march.htm the following excerpt from a “Take Back the Night” statement: “Women are often told to be extra careful and take precautions when going out at night. In some parts of the world, even today, women are not allowed out at night. So when women strug-gle for freedom, we must start at the beginning by fi ghting for freedom of move-ment, which we have not had and do not now have. We must recognize that freedom of movement is a precondition for anything else. It comes before free-dom of speech in importance because without it freedom of speech cannot in fact exist.” Given that this statement is itself an instance of speech, the hier-archization between freedom in movement and freedom in speech seems im-plausible. Yet we should remain attentive to the salutary emphasis on the im-portance of unencumbered and unthreatened pedestrian movement that this statement articulates. 52. Rocard, it may nevertheless be noted, made this astute comment in April 1974, just as he was preparing to leave the autogestion (self-management)-in-spired PSU, with its legacy of post–May ’68 politics, so as to lead a minority of its members to join the regrouped French Socialist Party. 53. Similarly, in a 1974 interview summarizing the work of the postwar French revolutionary group Socialisme ou Barbarie (1948–67), Castoriadis de-clares apropos of workers’ gestures: “The history of modern industry, however, is not only the history of great pitched union battles; it is also and especially the history that unfolds eight hours a day, sixty minutes per hour, sixty seconds per minute in production and apropos of production; during each of these sec-onds, each gesture of the worker has two sides to it, one that conforms to the imposed production norms, the other combating those norms. Effective output is the result of the struggle that unfolds upon this terrain. Labor power, there-fore, has no defi nite use value that one might grasp independent of this struggle and its effects” (“‘The Only Way to Find Out if You Can Swim Is to Get into the Water’: An Introductory Interview,” in The Castoriadis Reader, ed. David Ames Curtis [Malden, Mass., and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997], 18). A de-cade earlier, in the third point of his programmatic text “Recommencing the Revolution,” Castoriadis had already articulated such gesture analysis in terms of everydayness: “Certainly, society today still remains profoundly divided. It


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functions against the immense majority of working people. In their everyday lives, these people express their opposition to this society with half of each one of their gestures. The present crisis of humanity will be able to be resolved only through a socialist revolution. But these ideas run the risk of remaining empty abstractions, pretexts for sermons or for a blind and spasmodic activism, if we do not strive to understand how society’s divisions are concretely being real-ized at the present hour, how this society functions, what forms of reaction and struggle laboring people adopt against the ruling strata and their system, what new kinds of revolutionary activity related to people’s concrete existence and struggle in society and to a coherent and lucid view of the world are possible under these conditions” (ibid., 107). 54. In Step by Step’s quotation from One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse ex-plains that this “new conformism” is “new because it is rational to an unprec-edented degree,” instead of examining (through people’s involved everyday struggles against it) the irrationality inherent in modern bureaucratic-capitalist rationalization processes. 55. See Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography (Minneapo-lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). 56. Hastings-King, “Fordism and the Marxist Revolutionary Project,” 176. 57. These oral and written narratives that Augoyard obtained are not at all to be confused with detached and isolated individual responses to the usual “sci-entifi c survey” questions. 58. This is one of Hastings-King’s critical conclusions about the limitations on Socialisme ou Barbarie’s use of workers’ narratives: in neither Lefort’s 1952programmatic text advocating phenomenological analysis of such narratives (via eidetic variation) nor in subsequent efforts by the group to solicit, publish, and employ such texts did it succeed in controlling for these texts’ rhetorical origins. In later life, Lefort published a collection of essays whose aim was to come to terms with the political aspects of literary texts and the literary aspects of politi-cal texts; translated into English by me as Writing: The Political Test (Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 2000), this book strangely makes no explicit reference to his earlier efforts in “L’Expérience prolétarienne.” 59. See Brown’s insightful review, “Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space,” Not Bored! 30 (February 1999): 65–76, also available at http://www.notbored.org/space.html. 60. In a 1957 Socialisme ou Barbarie text that forms the second part of a three-part series “On the Content of Socialism,” Castoriadis had already ar-ticulated this more positive understanding of the everyday: “Socialism aims at giving a meaning to people’s life and work; at enabling their freedom, their cre-


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ativity, and the most positive aspects of their personality to fl ourish; at creat-ing organic links between the individual and those around him, and between the group and society; at reconciling people with themselves and with nature. It thereby rejoins the most basic goals of the working class in its daily struggles against capitalist alienation. These are not aspirations about some hazy and dis-tant future, but rather the content of tendencies existing and manifesting them-selves today, both in revolutionary struggles and in everyday life. To understand this is to understand that, for the worker, the ultimate problem of history is an everyday problem. To grasp this is also to perceive that socialism is not ‘na-tionalization’ or ‘planning’ or even an ‘increase in the standard of living.’ It is to understand that the real crisis of capitalism is not due to ‘the anarchy of the market’ or to ‘overproduction’ or to ‘the falling rate of profi t.’ Indeed, it is to see the tasks of revolutionary theory and the function of the revolutionary orga-nization in an entirely new way. Pushed to their ultimate consequences, grasped in their full strength, these ideas transform our vision of society and the world. They modify our conception of theory as well as of revolutionary practice” (The Castoriadis Reader, 51; emphasis in the original). As a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie for a brief period during 1960–61, Situationist International founder Guy Debord was certainly familiar with the contents of this key programmatic text, which accords a positive centrality to everyday life and struggle. 61. A translation (by John Fullerton and Paul Sieveking) of this celebrated text, the counterpart to Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (also from 1967), is now available online, for example, at http://www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/vaneigem/rel/roel.html, which is where I found this and the following Vaneigem quotations. 62. The following Vaneigem quotation from The Revolution of Everyday Life allows us to gauge the full distance between that book and Augoyard’s Step by Step: Everyday Walks in a French Urban Housing Project: “The revolution of everyday life will blot out ideas of justice, punishment and torture, which are notions dependent on exchange and fragmentation. We don’t want to be judges, but, by destroying slavery, masters without slaves recovering a new innocence and gracefulness in living. We have to destroy the enemy, not judge him. When-ever Durruti’s column freed a village, they would assemble the peasants, ask which were the Fascists and shoot them on the spot. The next revolution will do the same. With perfect composure. We know there’ll be no-one to judge us, nor will there ever be judges again, because we will have gobbled them up.” Here we see what can result when someone else’s “everyday lived experience” is fetishized into an excuse for not thinking on one’s own and for not exercising responsible judgment. 63. A point Augoyard reiterated to me several times.


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255

Index

abandonment, 17, 28, 153; and abstention, 151

absence, 16–17, 28, 62, 70–73,128–34, 142–43, 156, 166, 182,184; of conjunction, 72, 74,128; of connections, 67–70, 72,161; fi gured, 129; -in-abeyance, 132; and the present, 59, 113,128–29, 131–34, 137–39, 156,161; prolonged, 102; pure, 28;“really,” 117; symbolic, 35; of symmetry, 61; transitory, 131

abstractness, 19–20, 23, 66, 80,127, 132–34, 161, 166–67,169, 172–75, 183, 185, 187;originary, 109

abstract observer/subject, 21, 23accidents, 7, 34–35, 41, 45, 54, 59,

70, 118, 135, 143–44, 146–48,153–55, 166, 172

acted: and felt, 131; and suffered, 71, 113–14, 117, 122, 125, 138,156, 158, 161

activity, 3, 17, 19–20, 23, 25, 34,57, 82, 124–25, 127, 133,147; daytime, 142; feverish, 54; fragmented, 7; impromptu, 19; and passion, 155; social, 151; sociocultural, 190;

spatiotemporal, 26, 57; and submission, 25

activity areas, 56, 82, 87, 91activity coordinators, 89, 151actors, 88, 172; expressive, 27adolescents. See young peopleadults, 29, 35, 52, 54, 61, 86, 89,

100, 144“advocacy planning,” 10aesthetics, 123, 154, 173; Bauhaus,

234n2affectivity/the affective, 21, 120, 133,

147, 156afternoon, 49, 69, 72, 96, 226n12age group, 52, 68, 87, 99aggregates, 89, 92, 99, 102, 111,

166; collective, 90; social, 100–101, 110, 145

Agora, 86–87air, 119–20, 142, 150, 228n8. See

also wind“Aleph,” the, 128, 230n26, 230n28Algerians, 91, 104, 145. See also

North Africansalien, 94–96, 109, 118, 126, 131,

139, 145–47, 153, 169, 182–83alternation(s), 27, 29, 58, 141–42;

symmetrical, 72ambiance, 116, 120, 133

I N D E X

256

ambiguity, 34, 40, 82–83, 120, 175,178

ambivalence, 41–42, 45ambulatory confi gurations, 5, 29, 35,

40, 48, 67, 78, 112, 115, 141,156, 158, 165

amplifi cation, 51, 57, 101, 104, 106,141, 224n19

anamorphosis, 77, 121, 167anaphora, 55–56, 95, 106, 108, 113,

148Anaximander, 230n32anticipation, 48, 57, 97, 99, 102,

106, 109, 117, 122, 124, 126,128, 133–34, 137, 174, 176;abstract, 185; of avoidance, 78; motor, 127, 133, 156, 184;mutual, 78

anxiety, 43, 66aporias, 15, 222n10appellation, 64, 80–90, 92; common,

87; functional, 82–83; offi cial, 85–86; private, 89; singularized and particularized, 83–84. See also names/naming

apprehension: of places walked, 81;of space, 67, 90

approach, 3–5, 13–14, 18–19,37, 56, 59, 75, 87, 104, 161,163–64, 172, 175; asymmetric, 61; sidelong, 6

appropriable, the, 16, 79, 94, 98,110, 122, 152, 182; un-, 16, 86

appropriations, 7, 16, 31, 58, 71,73, 79, 82–90, 94–113, 146,152–53, 161, 182–83; act of, 61, 83–86, 88, 113, 161,232n10; alien, 95, 109; code of, 77, 79, 90, 94, 97, 101, 105,109–13, 147, 155, 158, 162,

230n27, 230n33; collective, 97, 103, 107; combative, 57;competing, 98; defi nite and limited, 83; dialectic of, 96,102, 109, 111; differentiating, 97–98; via dislocation, 106, 108,145; dynamic of, 79; everyday, 109; failure of, 93; force(s) of, 102–3, 105; memorable, 86; partial, 99; positive, 94;power of, 93; projected/project of, 109, 153; pseudoconcept of, 111; sensorimotor, 162;shared, 84; of space, 9, 12, 16,44, 83, 90, 111; total, 99. See also counterappropriations; differentiating appropriations

arbitrary, 85, 158–60architects, 9–10, 144, 170architecture, 9–10, 23–24, 40–41,

58–59, 84, 120, 122, 127, 129,132, 135, 143–44, 150, 166–67,169–71, 185, 228n14, 231n39

Aristotle, 223n13Arlequin (high-density housing

complex in Grenoble, France), 22, 26, 42, 45, 55, 57, 60, 64,66–67, 82, 85, 87, 117, 120,123, 140, 149, 151–52, 167,189, 223n1, 223n8, 223n10,224n17, 231n37, 232n13

arteries, 9, 14articulation, 17, 72, 75, 105,

113–14, 129–34, 138, 153,155, 158–59, 162, 169–70, 178,182, 184–85, 187; concrete, 132; motor, 130; of movement, 74; sensorimotor, 136, 162; of walking, 27, 83

artistic, 128, 154

I N D E X

257

Arts of thinking, 51, 225n1assimilation, 122, 157, 183asymmetry, 47, 61asyndeton, 62–63, 67–74, 109, 112,

114, 128, 133, 137, 155–56,158–59

atmospheres, 17, 35, 48, 67, 108,116–18, 120–24, 127–28,130–31, 133–34, 139–40, 150,153, 156, 159, 227n4; everyday, 116–17, 140; variations in, 152,184

attitudes, 23, 123, 129, 134; bodily, 127; social, 78

attraction, 55–56, 64, 108auditory. See hearingautomobiles, 39, 47, 61, 91, 126autonomy, 74, 154, 162avoidance, 15–16, 24, 28–29, 33–35,

40, 45, 63, 77–78, 90–91, 95,98–99, 116, 125, 131, 137, 141,147, 160; absolute, 28; delayed, 108; false, 33, 39; by variation, 34, 37, 40

Bachelard, Gaston, 232n9bakery, 82, 118Bar-bu (bar), 31, 33, 35, 104, 223n5Bauhaus, 234n2bearings, 64; taking one’s, 60, 83,

108, 124, 228n143Beckett, Samuel, 164becoming, 177, 187behaviors, 5, 31; social, 174belonging, 88–89, 93, 97besieging. See siegebifurcation, 33, 45, 47–48, 50,

58–59, 64, 109, 126binary: distinctions, 163;

division, 187; principle of

noncontradiction, 160; structure, 234n28

body, 12, 114–15, 123–24, 127,132–34, 136; of expression, 116; of inhabitant expression, 134, 136, 158; its structuration, 12; before knowledge, 116;lived, 132; powers of, 133–34,229n19, 231n38; signifying and signifi ed, 112

Borges, Jorge Luis, 128boundaries. See limitsbreakdowns, 33, 41, 61, 74, 95, 104,

111, 130, 136, 143, 156, 178,182; in architectural forms, 127;catastrophic, 45; in narratives, 33, 69, 74; in punctuation, 68;unforeseen, 39. See also rupture

Brownian motion, 136Bruno, Giordano, 162, 232nn7–8building, 8–11, 17, 24, 26, 41–42,

58–59, 61, 64, 66, 72, 78, 90,109, 115, 117, 121–22, 128,132, 134, 144, 163, 167–72,176–78, 225n26, 226n4; act of, 170, 234n3

building-housing, 234n1burst (élan), 131, 230n31. See also

forward bound; impetusbusinesses, 18; local, 167butcher’s shop, 82, 144bypassing, 28, 31, 33–35, 37, 39, 48,

63, 78, 147–48, 229n21; usual, 35. See also passing by

café, 35, 56, 104, 108, 150calmness, 49, 58, 90, 120, 144Carmichael, Leonard, 229n20Carroll, Lewis, 63cars. See automobiles

I N D E X

258

Cartesian era, 51cartography. See mapscatastrophe, 45, 107, 143causality, 6, 12–14, 18–19, 25, 112,

164, 172; transitive, 174causal links, 10–13, 18, 146, 157,

172; basic, 9; deep-seated, 12–13; and effects, 18, 174, 187;effi cient or circumstantial, 12;essential or formal, 12; fi rst, 177;general, 4, 9, 159; necessary, 5,14, 173; primary, 11, 172

centering, 55certainties, 6, 155, 159, 168, 178change of scenery (dépaysement), 3,

27, 84, 158, 164, 172Char, René, 7characters, 118, 123, 129, 153, 155,

228n5; climatic, 117; common, 129, 153; preperceptual, 116

charting. See mapsChesneau, César, 225n1children. See young people choice, 37, 58, 63–64, 78, 163, 172;

deliberate, 151; spontaneous, 45Chomsky, Noam, 231n39chronogeneses and chronotheses, 131chronometry, 95, 105, 133–34; non-,

105, 113circuits/circulation, 9, 60, 79, 82,

106, 131, 136, 140, 157, 185; of the imaginary, 139, 232n9

citizens, 8city, the, 3, 7–10, 14, 21–22, 24,

135, 156, 164–65, 169, 171,226n13, 228n12

city dwellers, 8, 22civilization, 10, 72, 118class(es), 13, 166, 169; social, 78climates, 41, 49–50, 67, 71, 95,

116–25, 127–28, 130, 134,

140–41, 147, 149, 156–57, 159,164, 169, 184, 227n3; originary, 21; social, 151, 185

climbing. See scalingclosure, 93–94, 102, 105, 127, 132,

183code(s), 6, 44, 72, 76, 78–79, 84,

90, 110–11, 113, 166, 225n35;discursive, 171; of effects, 110;graphic, 15; of knowledge, 187; meta-, 110; production, 11; rhetorical, 110; ruling, 11;social, 110, 155; system of, 23;two signifi cations of, 110; user, 11, 185. See also appropriations: code of

Coghill, George Ellett, 229n20coincidentia oppositorium, 138cold, 119–20, 169, 228n8collective space, 7, 9, 103, 163, 173collectivity, 13–14, 17, 19, 25, 29,

75, 78, 80–81, 84–88, 90, 92,94, 97–99, 103, 105, 107–10,117, 121, 139–42, 158–59, 174,231n37

color, 41, 66, 88, 120, 123–25, 149,151–53, 156, 225n26, 228n14,229n18, 234n2

combination(s), 26–27, 50–52, 54,58–59, 62–64, 72–74, 233n28;axis of, 73

combinatory process, 27, 34, 50, 52,58, 61, 63–64, 74, 101, 113,130, 232n7

coming and going/returning, 39, 47,49, 59–62, 66, 75, 79, 96, 106,135, 229n22

commerce, 11, 19, 169communication, 11, 43, 107; through

sympathy (Einfühlung), 129communication theory, 51, 225n33

I N D E X

259

Community Center, 55–56, 58–59,64, 85, 87, 92–94, 99–100, 149,190, 232n17

community of meaning, 5, 24, 62, 75competition, 27, 42, 48, 63, 98, 101composition, 27, 51–52, 127,

135, 161; eurhythmic, 130; of plenums and vacuums, 59; re-, 52; visual, 125

conceived space, 134, 166conception-production, 153, 235n4concepts, 34, 147, 168–69, 174,

185; abstract, 134, 185, 187;genesis of, 154; pseudo-, 111

conceptuality, 8, 17, 22, 126, 128,154, 163, 170–71, 176–77,179–80, 183, 185–87; and the lived, 187

concrete (building material), 35, 39,88, 124, 145, 148–50, 166–67,228n14, 228n18

conducts, 3, 5, 31, 40, 48, 63,103, 121, 123, 125–27, 139;everyday, 156, 158; expected, 93;spatial, 34, 40; spatiotemporal, 37; urban, 154; of one’s walks, 48, 51, 55, 75

confi guration, 26–27, 40, 76, 78, 80,112–13, 115, 126, 128, 133–35,153, 161–62, 167, 171, 176–77,182, 184–85, 230n31; atopic, 108; of everyday sites, 112; of inhabitant space, 78, 130, 162,166; lived, 186; pedestrian, 111;sensorimotor, 134; of space, 128,156–57, 159, 162, 166, 169–70,173, 184, 186; spatiotemporal, 110; walking, 186

confl ict, 12, 43–44, 103, 110, 169,175, 177, 182

confrontation, 34, 100, 120, 131,171, 179–80; social, 187

conjunctions, 67–68, 133, 155, 157,163; absence of, 72, 74, 128;coordinating, 68

connecting route, 14, 18connections, 63, 67–68, 73–74,

132–33, 136–39, 154–55, 157,161; absence of, 67, 70, 72, 161;fundamental, 137; imaginary, 157; staggered, 43

connotation, 50, 86, 88, 106; and denotation, 114

consensus, 87, 99constraints, 9–10, 17, 165;

functional, 8; operational, 11;physical, 43; social, 20–21, 43

constructed product, 170, 179constructed space, 74, 108, 110, 156,

171constructing-housing, 179–81, 183,

185, 187construction, 4, 10–11, 168–71, 174,

177, 183, 187, 226n3; self-, 171consumers, 4, 8, 11, 19, 176, 179consumption, 7, 18, 103, 174; and

play, 185containers, 8, 14, 17, 134; and

contained, 8, 114, 173–74, 187“content analysis,” 14, 187contextual analysis, 28–29, 34,

42, 47, 50, 63–67, 71, 73, 75,108–9, 150; spatial, 64, 108–9,112; spatiogeometric, 107

contiguities, 15–16, 68–69, 105,176, 185; expressive, 68; spatial, 128, 133, 157

continuities, 15–16, 35, 68, 129–30,136, 183; chronological, 157;spatial, 68

contradiction, 13, 87, 101, 136–37,

I N D E X

260

146, 150, 160, 168, 173,179–80, 187, 234n1; basic, 180;non-, 160

contraries, 146, 153, 160–62, 187;coincidence of, 131, 161

convenience, 49, 55, 120conversation, 43–44convocation, 6, 19, 50, 54, 82–83,

149–53, 156–57, 159–62, 171,177, 182, 184, 186, 234n28

co-optation/unco-optable, 19, 154,168

corporeal being. See bodycosmic, 157, 234n28; micro-, 6cosmogenetic point, 165, 169, 177counterappropriations, 16, 91,

93–95, 98–102, 104–5, 107,109–10

countryside, 87, 115, 169coves, the, 28, 84–85, 121, 189;

“blue,” 124creation, 17, 35, 64, 86, 95, 105,

121, 123, 138, 144, 176,235n10; artistic and technical, 154; historical, 173; ongoing, 151

crisscrossing, 31, 120crossing areas, 15, 35, 56, 59, 65,

83, 85, 88, 90, 123, 125–26,134, 228n7

“crushed,” feeling of being, 35, 42,44, 125, 127

culture, 10, 120, 175. See alsosociocultural

cutting across, 29, 35cutting through, 31, 34, 63

daydreaming, 11, 75, 98decoding, 89, 110deconstruction, 107, 109, 135, 171;

rhetorical, 110; spatial, 102

deferred polysemy, 48deformation, 74, 109, 121–22, 128,

134, 139, 153, 163, 167, 182delays, 18, 55, 108–9, 113, 135, 148Deleuze, Gilles, 163, 233n27,

234n29denotation, 28, 86–87, 114; and

connotation, 111derealization, 24, 107–9, 111–12,

121, 128, 134–35, 141, 144,153; of space, 109, 112, 137,140, 155–56, 158

desertion, 28, 116, 144, 231n37Desfontaines, Pierre, 169design, 11, 24, 29, 41, 50, 56, 66,

81, 85, 132, 153, 176, 228n13,234n28; conceptual, 176–77

design plans. See planned spacesdestiny, 45, 93, 107, 151,235n9destructuration, 110details, 3, 7, 15, 19, 23–24, 51, 66,

68, 71, 131, 154, 160, 172;everyday, 23, 179

detours, 3, 18, 24, 56, 60, 83, 107,148, 172

development, 4, 8–9, 11, 16, 29, 35,41, 84, 108, 134, 156, 161, 165,231n39, 234n28. See also laid-out and developed

development plans. See planned spaces

diachronism, 50, 98dialectic, 96, 98, 101–2, 105, 109,

111, 227nn20–21diastole and systole, 56, 95differance, 105, 227n16; time of, 136difference(s), 48–49, 51, 56, 58,

98, 101, 104–5, 113, 129, 131,183–84, 226–27n16, 234n28;ethnic, 183; qualitative, 97; play

I N D E X

261

of, 117; and similarities, 40, 78;social, 107, 183

differentiating event, 102, 105differentiation, 25, 78, 81, 98–99,

101–2, 105, 110, 118–19, 162;of atmospheres, 121; of climates, 118, 127; de facto, 109; among groups, 104–5; lack of, 87; lived, 131; multiple, 141; project of, 96; via rejection, 88; social, 85–86, 226n13

digression, 19, 31, 34, 37, 39, 66,95, 126, 224n15; forgotten, 39;lived, 39

din. See noisedirectedness, 13, 21direction, 16, 19, 31, 37, 39, 45,

47–48, 54, 59, 61, 64–65, 80,95, 127–28

discontinuity, 68–69, 73, 112, 129,133, 135, 137

discretion, 79, 110, 123, 136–38,166, 168, 182, 227n4, 231n2,234n2

disjunction: exclusive, 25, 35, 147,155, 160; nonexclusive, 25, 43,122, 233n21; true-or-false, 147

dislocation (non-lieu), 106, 108, 112,145. See also nonplaces

disorganization, 62, 110dissymmetry, 59–61, 95; everyday, 61distance, 33, 98, 145, 185, 228n15;

ironic, 88; spatial, 125divergence, 24, 29, 33, 55, 61, 63, 66divisions, 14–15, 69, 99, 109, 176,

187, 234n28; abstract, 187;clear-cut, 175; excessive, 107;formal, 230n31; of Meaning, 111; spatial, 96

dogs, 54, 59, 91; and children, 100

domesticity, 7, 17–19, 61, 82–83, 95,123, 132, 143–44, 169

domination, 7–8, 168, 174, 177drawing(s), 14, 48, 126, 167, 228n7dread, 106, 141dreamers, 108, 121. See also

daydreamingdrive, 157; for imitation, 176; for

order, 176; ornamental, 176;to play, 176; subjective and assimilative, 157

dualisms, 114, 163–64, 186Durand, Gilbert, 175dwelling(s), 120–22, 129–30, 132,

143dysfunctions, 10, 171

ease, 82, 93–94, 96, 160; and unease, 55, 94, 96, 124

eccentric, the outlying, 168, 178economics, 4, 7–8, 10–14, 19, 166,

169–70, 173–74economists, 78“either/or,” 25, 233n21elderly, 141, 228n8elementary fi gures, 27–29, 33–34,

37, 40, 50, 52, 58, 62–64,94, 130. See also bypassing; digression; paratopism; peritopisms

elevators, 35, 43–45, 49, 54, 60, 83,85, 106–8, 121, 127, 144–45,148, 150, 189, 230n24

ellipsis, 28, 51, 84emphasis, 114emptiness, 16, 168enacted fi gures/process, 17, 20, 28; in

lived time, 132; in the present, 20encoding, 110encounter, 78, 95, 109, 119,

I N D E X

262

131, 152; with the other/with others, 125, 153; sudden, 68;unexpected, 149; unpleasant, 98

envelopment, 40–41, 71, 106,117–18, 120, 122, 128, 156,159, 161–63

environment, 66, 82, 107, 120, 157epic mode, 75, 120Epicurus, 233n18epistemology, 6, 138, 166, 168equivalencies, 74, 88, 114, 153, 185;

principle of, 73equivocality, 23, 40, 47, 80, 185; of

meanings, 45errancies, 5, 54, 81, 158error, 57, 123escalation, 57. See also scalingestablishment, the, 100, 174–75ethnic differences, 78, 121, 183ethnological methods, 5ethology, 229n20, 231n38eventful marking, 147, 232n14eventful memory, 105, 182eventfulness, 104–5, 113, 153; and

the everyday, 146, 149–50, 161,182

events, 33, 35, 82, 88, 103–5,146–49, 164, 183; cyclical, 149;derealization of, 112; and the everyday, 102, 149; exceptional, 146; favorable, 149; harmful, 144; imagined/imaginary, 147,150; irruptive/irruptive force of, 103–4; “little,” 149; overall, 149; singular, 108; striking, 116;unforeseen, 75, 105, 147, 149

everyday actions, 7, 13–14, 17, 19,85, 97, 109, 135–36, 154–55,159, 173, 177, 183

everyday life, 4–6, 9, 14–17, 19–21,23–26, 34, 40–42, 48, 51, 61,

66, 68–69, 72–73, 79, 83, 98,101, 104–5, 112–13, 115–18,120–22, 128, 130, 132, 136–37,139, 146, 148–49, 151, 153–58,160–64, 166–68, 171–72, 174,177, 179, 182–84, 226n3,232n10, 233n21

everyday sites, 112everyday space, 12evoking, 37, 68, 88, 107, 118, 132,

140, 142, 144, 146–47, 149,152–53, 156, 163, 168, 182;dramatic, 107; of the future, 151,156; and the imaginary, 108, 140145, 148–49, 152, 157, 159;of the possible, 143, 146, 153,156–57, 232n10; of time, 103,113

exaggeration, 57–58, 77exceptional, the, 39, 51, 105, 146,

149, 155excessiveness, 50, 57, 74, 95, 100–

101, 107, 111–12, 114, 122–23,148, 156, 159, 168, 175, 182

excluded middle, 233n21exclusion, 25, 28–29, 67, 74, 90, 93,

98, 99–101, 232n17exhaustiveness, 28, 52, 54; illusory,

26exoticism, 5, 121, 171expansion, 152; and contraction, 61,

95expectations, 93, 104, 137, 147–48explanation, 12–13, 25, 48, 60,

110–11, 136; causal, 9, 12, 14,18–19; rationalizing, 157

explication, 17, 55, 58, 121, 161–63,180; and complication, 162–63;and implication, 161–62

expressed, the, 6, 77, 114, 159–64,186; paradoxical status of, 163

I N D E X

263

expressers, 114, 159–63, 186expressing oneself. See self-expressionexpression, 4–6, 20, 26–28, 31, 37,

39–43, 50, 59, 62–63, 67–73,75, 77, 110–12, 114–16, 132,135, 140, 157, 159–64, 167,171–72, 175, 177–78, 186,232n10,234n28; abortive, 116;ambulatory, 67; direct, 23,26; discrete, 136; discrete and scattered, 123; everyday, 15, 132,136, 149; exaggerated, 57; excess in, 114; graphic, 25; imaginary, 107; its context, 63; lexical, 27;rhetorical, 77; signifi cations-, 234n28; spatiotemporal, 27;status of/for, 114, 159, 161–63,174, 233n28; theory of, 158,161, 164, 233n28; “they say,” 140

expressionism, 58, 114expropriation, 121

facades, 24, 84, 123–25, 238n14factor analysis, 13falling, 144–45far away, 48, 123–24, 167; and

nearby, 123, 126–28, 131–33,156, 169

fascination, 33, 39, 55–56, 66, 75,106, 108–9, 130, 148, 153

fashioning, 58–59, 103, 105, 140; of space, 77–78, 124–25

favorableness, 98, 143, 147, 149,153

fearfulness, 43–44, 106, 119–20,141, 144, 151–52, 175, 228n8

feelings, 20, 122–23, 126, 128, 131,134, 156, 231n38; vague, 42

female inhabitants, 29, 49, 54, 60,64, 68, 85, 88, 95, 103, 106,

119, 122, 124, 151, 228n8,231n35

fi ghts, 33, 103–4, 147fi gures, 26–28, 72, 77–78, 115,

128, 161, 176, 232n10, 233n2;ambulatory, 156; complex, 34;meta-, 63, 74; rhetorical, 52,128; walking, 26, 34, 47–48,75, 78, 94, 98, 101, 108, 111,113–14, 123, 125, 148–49, 155,162, 225n1

fi ller, 85, 177“fi lling in,” 4, 9, 17, 40, 74, 94,

168–69, 171, 176–77, 185fl ight, 119–21focusing, 65, 71, 120Fontanier, Pierre, 225n1forces, 24, 86, 92, 99, 101–2,

105–6, 108–9, 131, 134, 138,145–48, 151, 154, 175, 177; of appropriation, 103; confi gurative, 171; of expression, 101, 136,160, 186; and forms, 137,158, 186–87; of the imaginary, 109, 138, 140, 149, 154; of inhabitant expression, 179,187; of negation, 109; of the possible, 145; relations of, 101;rhetorical, 111; shadowy, 143;unforeseeable, 135

foreign. See alienforesight, 48, 59, 61, 103, 124, 126,

134, 149, 156, 183forgetfulness, 19, 37, 39, 69, 95,

128, 134, 230n28formation, 124–25, 143, 168,

176–77, 185–87, 234n2forward bound (élan), 158fragmentation, 7, 9, 16, 68, 73,

105, 137, 156, 166, 175, 182;spatiotemporal, 108

I N D E X

264

free fall. See fallingfrequentation, 7, 15, 33–35, 37, 43,

65, 82–84, 90, 109, 124, 131,141, 144, 149, 152; spatial, 79,90; willingly, 40, 119

Freud, Sigmund, 232n9functionalism, rational, 61functionality, 6, 8–9, 12, 19, 42,

50–51, 54, 56, 73, 82, 110, 125,135, 143, 150, 155–56, 165–66,169–70, 172–73, 176–77, 185,189, 233n20

fundamental fi gures, 27, 62, 84,99, 158; of walking rhetoric, 133, 152. See also asyndeton; synecdoche

fusion, 183future, the, 97, 125, 150–51, 156,

178

gaits, 31, 80, 129–31, 178; creative, 64; spatial, 128; uniform, 178;varied, 50, 178

gallery, the, 28–29, 33–35, 37,41, 45, 49, 55, 59, 61, 64–65,70–71, 75, 83–85, 87, 92–93,95–96, 99, 106, 119–20, 124,126, 141–44, 150, 156, 189,223n10, 224n14, 229n17,229n19; “commercial,” 55, 64;its ceiling/cover, 39, 41–42, 124;its fl oor, 35, 42, 156; its layout, 37, 50, 65, 189; mechanical, 142; street-level, 142, 189;outside, 42; under, 41–42, 95,143, 167; underground areas of, 232n13

gangs, 87, 90, 96, 99, 104, 106, 141gaps (écarts), 4–6, 31, 33, 37, 68–69,

77, 111, 130, 133, 141

garbage, 8, 35, 86, 92, 141, 143–44,152, 156

gaze, 28, 124genesis, 154, 157, 177; chrono-, 131;

morpho-, 104geometricality, 11, 15–16, 24, 34,

37, 74, 108, 125, 127, 227n22;spatio-, 31, 107, 109

gestures, 14, 23, 126, 131, 157, 167,234n2

getting lost, 7, 39, 54, 60, 70, 82,141

globalizing, 17, 62, 73, 152–53, 160,166, 182; climatic, 157; sensorial and imaginary, 156

goals, 52, 130; immediate, 75;unavowed, 55

Goldstein, Kurt, 229n20gossip, 106graffi ti, 145, 156graphics, 15, 25, 71, 81–82, 167,

234n2grass, 29, 31, 91, 98, 125, 127, 167,

190gratuitousness, 19, 31, 52, 55, 75“gray days” (griseurs), 121, 164Grenoble (France), 22, 140, 189,

223n1Gro, the, 56. See also supermarketground, 67, 70, 132–33, 135–36,

138, 140, 142, 155, 159, 162,166, 171, 173, 175, 182–83,185–87; of absence, 128, 184;common, 122, 136, 139–41,143, 148, 153, 155, 162,175–76, 178, 182–83, 232n7;of continuity, 183; of expression, 140, 232n10; of the imaginary, 135–36, 140, 145–46, 153, 155,157, 161, 177; of possibility,

I N D E X

265

148–49. See also inhabitant expression: ground of

groups, 91–93, 97–98, 100–101,104–5, 110, 166, 226n13;occupying, 93, 101; social, 25, 87–89, 110, 166. See alsosubgroups

gymnasium, the, 37Gypsies, 33

habitat, 3, 9–10, 12, 98, 104, 122,129, 134, 142, 163, 170, 183,186, 231n38; collective, 11, 163;-object, 24; technological, 154;urban, 8

halts, 31, 113, 116, 121–22, 124,129–31, 133, 158; full, 163,165, 168

harmfulness, 91, 144, 147, 153hearing, 96–97, 99, 106–9, 121,

132, 141, 146–48, 183hearsay. See rumorHegel, G. W. F., 227n21heightening. See amplifi cationhell. See infernal, thehere: and now, 131, 161; and there,

125hesitations, 31, 47–48, 81–82, 88heterogeneity, 16, 132–33, 156, 166,

182, 234n28hexagon, 189, 226n5high, 57, 150; and low, 131, 133; on,

124, 126–27high-density housing complex, 8,

22–23, 45, 78, 98, 108, 166,171, 223n1, 235n4

“holes,” 35, 37, 59, 68, 70–73, 126,128, 131, 133; -trips, 72

home, 7, 9, 12, 52, 56, 60, 69,169, 231n35; arriving/leaving/

returning, 34, 39, 49, 52, 59, 69,75, 83, 99, 119, 123, 130, 150,224n14, 229n22; “at,” 42, 52,58, 79, 82, 94–96, 100, 117;private, 108; single, 78, 108

homeyness, 144homogeneity, 16, 45, 68, 78, 98,

109, 133–34, 136, 153, 175,177, 183, 185, 234n28; spatial, 183

hoodlums. See gangshooligans. See gangshorizontal dimension, 17, 122, 137,

147, 164, 167; and vertical dimension, 127

horror, 144, 151, 232n14“housed,” being, 9, 93, 111, 170housewives, 49, 69, 149housing, 11, 13, 61, 121, 166,

170–74, 177, 179–81, 183, 185,187; -cells, 169; conceptually designed, 176; delivery of, 179;multiunit, 186, 225n29; -object, 171, 174; single-unit, 225n29.See also constructing-housing

housing complexes. See high-density housing complex

“how,” 18–20, 172–73; of appropriation, 16

hyperbole, 56–58, 95, 105–6,108, 114, 123, 130, 148–49,224nn18–19, 224n24

hypertely, 222n2

Idealism, 138identifi cation, 88–89, 93, 102, 105,

110, 145, 162, 183; delayed, 109identity, 25, 71, 93, 102, 104, 117,

164, 175, 185, 229n22; abstract, 183; and difference, 234n28

I N D E X

266

ideological order, 4, 10–11, 120,140, 166, 170, 180, 226n14;diffuse, 149

image patterns, 107–8, 137–38;cultural, 120; visual, 148

imaginable, the, 87, 107, 109, 137,139, 149, 152, 156–57, 166,184

imaginary, the, 17, 45, 106–9, 113,135–59, 162, 166, 175–77,182, 224n20, 232n9, 233n21;collective, 108, 135; convocation of, 149–51, 153, 157, 159, 161;devaluation of, 175; everyday, 152; evocation of, 139, 148–50,157, 159; irreducible, 175–77; its dynamism, 139, 146, 148, 158;lived, 137, 148, 154–55, 157;and the real, 34, 147–50, 154;suffered, 176; visual, 147

imagination, 137–38, 154–55, 157;creative, 176; formal defi nition of, 137, 155; its dynamic aspect, 138

imagining, 108, 137, 142, 151, 153imagining power, 139, 153, 158,

176, 232n7immediacy, 18–19, 116, 120, 126,

133, 150, 157, 160–62, 175;lived, 116; sensorial, 117

immobility, 120, 127, 136impasses, 12, 15; exemplary, 14;

theoretical and methodological, 14

impetus (élan), 148. See also burst; forward bound

impregnation. See pregnancyimpressions, 7, 41, 49, 55–56, 68,

72, 75, 103, 105, 116, 122–23,140, 148

incidental, the, 4, 101, 104, 118,154–55, 166, 187

incorporation. See bodyindetermination, 48indifference, 48, 72, 74, 85, 122,

134, 149individual, the, 9, 12–13, 98, 103,

140 174; and the collective, 19,25, 80, 139, 173; and the social, 79, 97, 187; and the “socius,” 157

inductions, 64, 185, 187infernal, the, 44, 107, 142–43, 145,

149, 152inhabitable, the, 121–22, 126,

133–34, 152inhabitant activity, 102, 179inhabitant content, 17inhabitant expression, 14, 18, 112,

114–15, 129, 132, 134–37, 147,150, 153, 155, 158–60, 163–64,166, 168, 170–71, 174–75,177–80, 182, 186–87, 234n2;ground of, 135, 153, 155, 159;lived experience of, 152, 157,159, 177, 187; power of, 166,168, 180, 234n1

inhabitant power, 111, 114, 164,168, 171

inhabitant practices, 78, 129, 132,164

inhabitant rhetoric, 23, 75, 77,111–12, 115, 129, 135, 158–59

inhabitant stochastics, 136inhabited space, 11, 16, 24, 72, 78,

94, 111, 117, 130, 145, 157,160–61, 164, 182–83

inhabiting, 7, 9–10, 17, 24, 92, 115,118, 121–22, 128–29, 133–35,147, 152, 156–57, 169–74,

I N D E X

267

176–87, 224n20, 231n38;activity of, 114, 124, 129,147, 153, 155–58, 163, 170;and building, 169–71; without building, 169; everyday, 20, 147;lived experience of, 126, 158,162–64, 168, 175–76, 178,185–87; modalities of, 18, 143,157, 160–62, 171, 178, 180,186–87; modal study of, 173;powers of, 168, 180; practice of, 18; styles of, 40, 62, 110, 129,139, 152, 157; time of, 164;ways of, 103, 117, 134, 136,152, 159, 161, 166; without a “why,” 172

initiates, 29, 82–83, 88injury (injuria), 121inside, the, 87, 119, 127, 186–87insignifi cancy, 6, 134instant, 184; lived quality of, 116,

126, 128–29, 133instantiated principles (instances),

4, 13, 17, 27, 34, 42, 63,66–67, 75, 79–81, 106, 109,136–39, 149, 158, 168, 174,225n1; heterogeneous, 57, 132;imaginary, 108, 155; irrational, 155; symbolic, 169. See alsocollectivity; combinatory process; elementary fi gures; imaginary, the; individual, the; motor act; play; social dimension; spatial appearances

instating (mise en état), 131, 134intactness. See totalityintention, 63, 97, 141, 173intermediate forms, 14, 18–19, 65,

172, 174–75, 178

intervals. See gapsinterviews, 11, 13, 20–21, 26, 28,

58, 60, 64, 68–69, 72, 121, 149irony, 47, 52, 61, 88, 112, 230n22,

233n20irrational, the, 55, 60, 114, 154–55irreducible, 175–77, 180irruptions, 96, 103–5, 132, 148, 150,

154; accidental, 7; threatening, 143

isochronisms, 185; everyday, 61

Jansenist morality, 123junior high school, 35, 56, 82, 99,

119, 147, 190, 224n14, 228n7,229n18; its entrance, 33, 87–88,90, 96; its lobby, 58

juxtaposition, 67, 169, 174, 183

Kandinsky, Wassily, 135, 231n1Kant, Immanuel: Kantianism,

137–38, 231n3kids. See young peopleKlee, Paul, 128, 177–78Klopfer, Peter H., 229n20knowing, 157, 175, 177knowledge, 14, 25, 77, 82, 89,

115–16, 138, 154, 159, 166,187; objectifying, 187; rational, 123, 176; received, 156. See alsoepistemology; science

Kortlandt, Adriaan, 229n20

labor, 185labor force, 175labyrinthine movement, 39, 49, 54,

106, 141, 144, 151laid-out and developed: paths, 29,

127; space, 4, 8, 15–16, 22, 57,62, 109, 112, 114, 130, 133,

I N D E X

268

135–37, 139, 163, 177, 179;spatiogeometric context, 107

lakeside, 58, 65, 67–68, 75, 85,149–50, 190, 225n26, 229n17

landmarks, 55, 59, 64, 80, 228n13;spatial, 83

landscape, 66, 71, 81, 88, 92,115, 126, 167, 189, 225n26;everyday, 78; striking, 120;surrounding, 133; toponymic, 81

language, 21, 26–27, 51, 62, 67, 80,88–89, 99, 114, 116, 223nn2–3,223n11, 228n13; everyday, 79; of initiates, 88; parallel, 88; poetic, 73; prose, 74; and walking, 26

language theory, 73leaps. See gapsLe Corbusier, 129Ledrut, Raymond, 226n13Lefebvre, Henri, 222nn5–6left and right, 37, 45, 47–48, 59, 70,

72, 126legibility. See readabilityLeibniz, 233n18leisure and relaxation, 7, 18–19, 52,

58, 69, 176, 185light, 75, 116, 120, 228n12limits, 15–16, 80, 93, 101, 109–10,

123, 127, 137, 145–46, 158,183, 230n31, 231n38; fi xed, 146; indefi nite, 156; spatial, 110,156; territorial, 17, 93, 96–97,126, 132

linearities: continuous, 68; rectilinear, 80, 133, 143, 157, 159–60;straight, 60; unbroken, 15

linguistics, 26, 51, 73–74, 81,159–60, 225n1, 233n25; its paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes, 27; meta-, 80, 88

lived experience, 3–5, 16, 18–22, 27,34, 57, 65–67, 71–72, 81, 83,85, 89, 113, 117, 122, 131, 140,146–48, 152, 154, 161, 164,168, 172, 174, 179, 184–87; of the atmosphere, 108; corporeal, 123; everyday, 51, 121, 132,163, 171; of everyday time, 229n19; and the given, 186;narrated, 15; of one’s habitat, 104; of oppositions, 110; of space, 74

lived space, 5, 107, 166, 184; -time, 64, 158

location, 82, 94, 228n13;cartographic, 80

lodging, 7, 9, 12, 69, 83, 86, 92, 95,108, 117, 119, 127, 130–32,143, 171

logic, 27, 173, 180, 232n18; of binary division, 187; of everyday life, 233n21; of the excluded middle, 233n21; of the imaginary, 155, 233n21; organizational, 8; of repetition, 8; of serial articulation, 17; spatial, 48; of urbanistic thought, 151

“Longinus,” 224n19Lorenz, Konrad, 229n20Lukasiewicz, Jan, 233n18

machines, 14, 43, 142–43, 148,232n12

magnifying. See amplifi cationmaintenance, 44, 61, 151–52malaise: inhabitant, 9–12, 160;

urban, 4, 14management, 23, 81, 168, 170manipulation, 173, 177, 179maps, 15, 17–18, 51–52, 59, 67, 79,

86, 91, 113, 146, 189

I N D E X

269

marketplace, 35, 41, 54, 87, 92,99, 103–4, 121, 149–50, 191,224n14; creation of, 87, 103

marking, 102, 104–5, 115; boundary, 15, 80; of sites, 35, 105; spatial, 17. See also eventful marking

mastery, 9, 170, 185; of space, 3, 165meaning, 138; 111, 163–64;

everyday, 16; lived, 121; proper, 114; unique, 114; univocal, 187

mechanical. See machinesmediations, 13, 75, 116, 125,

160–62; lived, 14; spatial, 19memorable, the, 20–21, 71–72, 81,

86, 104–5, 111–12, 116, 130,186

memories, 8, 20, 50, 68, 70, 103,105–7, 113, 118, 132–33, 137,187. See also eventful memory

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 115,227n2, 229n20

metabolic process, 52, 54–55, 95,113, 119, 148

metamorphosis, 26, 37, 48, 95, 108,145

metaphor, 17, 73, 172, 183metathesis of quality, 48, 50–51, 91,

96, 106meteorology. See weathermethodology, 4, 12, 19, 27, 174,

222n9metonymy, 24, 73, 224n21mezzanines, 28, 37, 39, 44, 54,

66–67, 70, 96, 108, 144, 152,189

modal analysis, 5, 18–19, 110, 162,173

modalities and modes, 6, 14, 18,20, 160, 162, 172, 174, 185,186–87; accidental, 135; of appearance, 137; concrete, 187;

general, 20; of life/living, 146,172; lived, 157, 162, 171; of lived experience, 5, 174, 179,184; of meaning, 40; of the possible, 233n18; of thinking-producing, 163, 180, 233n28

modes of production, 8, 10, 69, 72,180

modulor, the, 129moments, 5, 90, 124, 223n13;

irruptive, 105; of inhabiting, 157;lived, 128, 156, 160

monotony, 70monumentality, 41, 58, 169;

ephemeral, 121mood, 21, 48, 50, 85, 116; of the

imaginary, 107; of trips, 60more and less, 64–65, 84morning, 17, 49, 52, 54, 71, 100,

118–19, 164; “lousy,” 119motility, 127motor act, 34, 37, 83, 116–18, 122,

124–28, 130, 133–34, 138,156–57, 184; lived, 126; sensori-, 116, 133–34, 136, 162, 230n24

mounds, 54, 57, 65, 67, 75, 83–84,98, 108, 125, 130, 149, 190,225n26

movement, 5, 15–17, 23, 25, 94,96–97, 105, 111, 113, 126, 129,131–32, 173, 177–78, 185–87,229n20; code-producing, 111;confi gurative, 80; creative, 176;expressive, 62, 112; lived, 128;overall, 68; perpetual, 113; in space, 26

music, 103, 116, 121, 131, 230n31

names, 41, 64–65, 70, 99, 111;act of, 89; codes of, 90; loss of, 70; private, 90; of spaces, 81;

I N D E X

270

vague, 92. See also place-names; toponyms

narratable, 20–21narratives, 15–22, 24–29, 35, 37,

40–42, 45, 48–49, 51–52,54–57, 61, 64, 66–71, 75,78–81, 87, 91, 101, 103–4,115–16, 122, 126, 129–32, 137,139–41, 145, 152–53, 158, 160,164, 172, 186, 225nn34–35,232n10, 232n14; breaks in, 33,68; conduct of, 20–21, 24, 26;economy of, 68

natural world, 120, 148, 150, 173,226n14; anti-, 118

necessary, the: and the gratuitous, 19;and the playful, 25

needs, 6, 173–74negation, 106, 109–11neighborhoods, 5, 7–9, 15, 18, 20,

23, 28, 35, 58, 60–61, 67, 71,81–82, 84–88, 90–91, 95–96,103–5, 117, 123, 127, 131–32,139–40, 150–53, 166–67, 189,225n26, 226n3–4, 230n34,231n35; mixed, 8; new, 165–66;old, 225n29; outer limit of, 123;rest of, 66, 97, 127, 152, 156;unfrequented parts of, 134; as a whole, 16, 81, 87–89, 91–92,103–4, 118, 152

neologisms, 27, 89; collective, 86, 88Neoplatonism, 138New Town, 54, 57, 85, 92–93, 123,

140, 151, 167, 189, 229n17Nicolas of Cusa, 162night, 28, 33, 39, 49, 104, 118,

120–21, 143–45, 147, 150,152–55, 164, 228n9, 228n12;and day, 49, 51, 75, 96, 99, 106,120, 140–43, 154–55, 169

noise, 39, 44, 49, 96, 103, 107–8,117, 120, 132, 141, 145, 148

nonplaces (non-lieux), 85, 108, 119,133. See also dislocation

North Africans, 91–92, 96, 120,145–46. See also Algerians; Tunisians

number 10, 60number 20, 60number 30, 33number 40, 65number 50, 69, 71, 92, 96, 118number 60, 37, 48, 59–60, 65, 71,

81, 224n14, 230n34number 70, 37, 224n14number 80, 59number 90, 47, 224n14number 100, 45, 47, 81number 110, 39, 48, 59number 130, 81, 92, 228n8number 140, 228n8number 150, 42number 170, 33, 224n14numbering, 81–82; graphic and

chromatic inscription of, 81

objectifi cation, 124, 129, 170, 185,187; abstract, 174

objectivity, 100observation, 5, 12, 20, 40, 79,

101, 172; abstract, 21;cinematographic, 129; direct, 26, 106; everyday, 107; self-, 21;topographical, 19; of walks, 136

observational neutrality, 21obstacles, 29, 34–35, 37, 49, 57, 78,

87, 99, 126occupation, 90–94, 99, 101, 152,

158, 166, 170, 176; extended, 96; imminent, 91; permanent, 91;territorial, 100

I N D E X

271

odors, 49, 96, 118, 121, 125, 141,143–44, 146, 229n18

off-track, 5, 85, 146Olympic Village, 68, 191opposition, 33–34, 78, 98–99, 100,

102, 108, 110, 129, 138, 185oral expression, 15, 19–20, 50, 68ordinary life, 3, 135, 146–47; and the

alien, 145–46organization, 8, 10, 61–64, 67, 82,

94, 183; of space/spatial, 110,156, 170, 189, 234n28

orientation, 24, 58, 61, 66, 97, 128,130; dis-, 60

other, the, 75, 78–81, 91–93, 99,105, 119, 122–23, 125, 131,140, 153, 164, 171

outside, the, 42, 50, 95, 98–99, 119,127, 132, 186–87, 239n35

outsiders, 16overabundance, 50–51overdetermination, 112, 117, 171;

qualitative, 112overfl owing (déborder), 56, 66,

73, 83, 87, 97, 112, 123, 134,137–38, 148, 156, 158, 175,182; of meaning, 128; of the senses/of sensoriality, 123, 125,128

overloading, 57–58, 114overwhelmed, feeling of being, 42,

123ownership, 110, 170; social, 90

paralipsis, 33, 39, 106, 108, 227n19paratopism, 29, 31, 33–34, 37,

39–40, 55, 87, 95park, the, 54, 58–60, 65, 67, 84,

87–88, 92, 98–99, 103, 108,123–25, 149, 152, 189–90,224n17, 225n26, 226n14

particularities, 3, 5, 21, 153, 161;contradictory, 101; and the general, 139; lived, 24; modal, 162; spatial, 73

particularization, 64–66, 83–84;contrary, 101; of space, 99

partitioning, 183; functional, 73,166; of space, 99, 226n13

passageways, 37, 42, 49, 54, 57,60–61, 68, 70, 84–86, 92,118–19, 143, 146, 167, 190,223n9

passing by, 39, 93–94, 99, 104, 118,228n12, 231n35

passing through, 37, 50, 65, 120,125–26

pathic, the, 66, 117, 121paths, 7, 13, 15, 18, 24, 26, 29, 31,

33–34, 54, 59–60, 64, 66, 68,79, 104, 123–24, 126, 132, 141,161, 164, 172, 223n62; charted, 127; end of, 139; existing, 25; of expression, 178; new, 25; paved, 31; “semi-wild,” 29; “wild,” 29,127

pauses, 113, 122, 129, 131, 135,185; and movement, 131–32;and poses, 129; and stays, 56

pedestrians, 15, 17, 26, 28–29, 34,40, 45, 48, 73, 75, 78–80, 101,108, 111–12, 115, 189

perceptions, 20, 25, 99, 123–24,126, 137, 154, 171, 175, 185,187; conscious, 176; pre-, 116;tactile, 125

periphrasis, 33–34, 85; imprecise, 116

peritopisms, 29, 33–34, 40, 55, 95permanency, 17, 91–96, 102, 105,

110, 117, 185; and accidental, 34; spatial, 95, 97, 111, 185

I N D E X

272

perplexity, 40, 47, 83, 175persuasion: art of, 77phantasia, 175phantasmagoric, 154phantasms, 11, 92, 120, 228n9phenomenological approach, 78,

229n20pillars, 45, 47–49, 59, 144place-names, 79–90, 223n14planned spaces, 3–5, 8–10, 17, 29,

41, 50, 81, 85, 108, 126–27,135, 153–56, 158–59, 165–66,168, 183, 226n3, 231n38,234n28

planners, 28, 52, 189, 231n37Platonic thought, 222n10, 226n2play, 25, 31, 34, 50, 52, 54, 66, 92,

126, 176, 185pleasure, 35, 39, 41, 49, 52, 55, 58,

61, 65, 98, 103, 120, 127, 142,150, 153, 164

plural forms, 6, 23, 26, 160, 225n34;discrete, 138; limitless, 121; lived, 24; of meanings, 114; and the scattered, 5, 114

poetics, 5, 25, 52, 54, 65, 67, 69,73–75, 120, 149, 158, 173;everyday, 75; of narration, 75; of space, 55; and the useful, 25

political economy, 11political scientists, 78politics, 8, 10, 88, 140, 173, 225n1polysemy, 40–41, 47–48, 50, 64, 88,

112–13, 127, 140, 146, 154,159, 168, 223n11; simultaneous, 48. See also staggered polysemy

Ponge, Francis, 23, 25Port Royal: Logic, 233n18; School,

225n1possibilities, 15, 17, 27, 64, 71, 97,

131, 134, 136–37, 139, 141,145–53, 156–57, 161, 175, 183,232n10, 233n18; absent, 156;condition of, 63, 73, 97, 110;convoked, 149–50, 157; evoked, 143, 146, 152–53, 156–57;imagined, 108, 139, 147, 149;and the lived, 139, 151

postponement, 18, 55–56postures, 43, 61, 129, 185; of attack,

56powers, 4, 112, 114–15, 123, 125,

133–34, 137–41, 145, 149, 154,156, 162–63, 168, 170–71,175; of appropriation, 93; of the body, 133–34, 231n38;of building, 170; buried and unnoticed, 163; to confi gure, 133, 171; of connection, 137–38;to deform, 134, 163; to develop, 134; excessive, 112, 156, 159;expressive, 162–63, 175, 177; of the giver, 173; of the imaginary, 139, 158, 162, 171, 175–77; of immediacy, 157, 159; of the lived imaginary, 154; to name, 86; to orient otherwise, 128; to produce syntheses, 231n3; to reform, 134;of reversibility, 156–57, 159;to signify, 111; of speech, 93,225n1. See also imagining power; inhabitant power

practices, 6, 18–19, 23, 77, 82–83,160, 172–73, 233n20; ailing, 25;everyday, 13–14, 19, 85, 109,154, 159, 173, 183; housing, 13; intermediate, 18–19; lived, 4,14, 85, 147, 161; pedestrian, 78;pure, 158; urban, 155; walking, 5, 14, 19, 26, 40, 48, 62, 73–74,

I N D E X

273

81, 102, 112, 165, 233n20.See also social practice; spatial practices

preconception, 4, 126, 165, 168,170, 176–77, 183

pregnancy, 107, 109, 111, 115–16,124, 147, 160, 186; of archaic space, 12, 176; of atmospheres, 116–17, 184; climatic, 116–17,159; of the imaginable, 157

premonition, 125, 131, 145, 150preoccupations, 17, 72, 142;

ordinary, 135presence, 21, 48, 75, 115, 122–23,

128–29, 131–34, 147; collective, 117, 121; immediate, 151; lived, 118

present, the, 20, 59, 71, 113, 126,129, 131–32, 134, 137–39,146–51, 152, 156, 161; and the eventual, 148; lived, 126, 128,134, 139–40, 146, 148, 153,159; ordinary, 146; and the past, 146; and the possible, 136–37,139, 145, 147–51, 153, 157,161, 232n10; “really,” 137

presentiment, 17, 102, 108, 131, 143present tense, 28, 151private, the, 19, 89–91, 132, 186–87produced, the: and the reproduced,

25, 78produced space, 121, 183production, 10, 12, 14, 163, 170,

183, 187; artistic, 128; of the built world/edifi ed space, 8, 168,176–78; of cities, 23; economic, 13–14; of habitat, 10, 134,231n38; of high-density housing complexes, 22; of images, 137;

planned, 154; of planned space, 5, 166, 168; relations of, 173;of space, 112, 128, 134, 164,168, 172, 179, 187; technical, 154; urban, 10–11, 165;urbanistic, 171; of urban space, 7–8, 174. See also conception-production; modes of production; productivity

productivity, 176, 235n9projectation, 170projected, the, 17projects, 9–10, 71, 80, 85, 96–97,

134, 141, 153, 178, 183, 185;architectural, 9, 170; deferred, 148; of inhabiting, 152–53;initial, 9; of our action, 133;social, 176, 187

properties, 51, 94, 102property, 9, 89–90, 93proprioception, 117prose, 26, 73–74, 114, 158, 163protention, 20, 130, 133, 184psychoanalysis, 11, 225n1psycholinguists, 144psychology, 12–13, 75, 116, 168;

depth, 78; “of faculties,” 123,137, 154; perceptual, 229n20

psychosociology, 12–13; applied, 222n9

public, the, 9; and the private, 19,132, 186–87

public life, 69public services, 18public spaces, 90, 167public sphere, 17, 95public transport, 8public use, 104pursuit, 24, 121

I N D E X

274

qualifi ers, 16, 48, 79–80, 99, 113,117–19, 120, 122, 125, 142,183; concrete, 89; overall, 141;particular, 89; of sites, 113, 160;of space, 79, 84, 117, 133, 166,169; of spatial relations, 102

qualitative analyses, 4, 8qualities, 8, 15, 17, 22–23, 37,

49, 89, 97–98, 100–101, 112,121, 133, 136, 147, 152, 156;change in, 48; climatic, 119,122; dreamlike, 108; irruptive, 148; kinesthetic, 125; “of life,” 3; lived, 5, 20, 26, 129; of lived space, 5; of movement, 129;preeminent, 108; present, 147;social, 90–91, 93; tangible, 125;unforeseen, 142; unnoticed, 48.See also metathesis of quality

quantifi cation: geometric and economic, 11

quantity, 3–4, 7–8, 63–64, 66, 71questionnaires and questions, 13,

20–22

rain, 72, 120, 169, 228n10rambling, 3, 39, 54, 158ramp, the, 42, 59, 84–85, 127, 150,

189, 224n14Ramus, Petrus, 225n1rationality, 23, 25, 37, 52, 61, 123,

135, 154–55, 157, 174, 176,183; necessitarian, 8; technology-based, 11, 174

rationalization, 126, 157rats, 143–45reactivation, 126, 140, 146, 177readability, 124, 171, 228n13reading, 5, 10, 12–13, 25–26, 57,

75, 80, 110–11, 145, 158,

160, 225n35; “degree zero” of, 28; “directed,” 13; fi nal, 139,232n10; initiatory, 233n27; re-, 116, 119, 128, 145, 148; and writing, 25, 40, 57–58, 62–63,67, 78, 114, 122, 124, 132, 137

“real,” the, 11, 34, 42, 57, 108–9,117 134, 137, 147, 153–54,166, 176, 183, 187; as conceived, 128; constructed, 113; material, 176; and rational, 174, 183; and the “unreal,” 117, 137, 146–47,185

real estate, 8, 10, 176recognition, 21, 42, 78, 86, 89, 93,

100, 102, 104recounting. See narrativesre-creation: of given spaces and

preconceived uses, 126; of space, 90, 128

“Red Square,” 87–89, 103reductions, 3–6, 19, 23, 67, 80, 92,

113, 128–29, 154, 166, 168–70,173, 175–76, 179–85, 187,234n1; self-, 185

redundancy, 50–52, 55–58, 94, 116,125; hyperbolic, 130

reduplication, 5, 7, 57, 59, 85, 110,119–20, 142, 144, 156, 166

referential function, 75, 82, 109,186; fi eld of, 135, 139

referents, 17, 75; essential, 157;social, 75

refl exology, 229n20refusals and rejections, 28, 40, 69,

78–80, 88, 92–93, 101, 109,131, 134, 158–59, 165, 176

refuse. See garbageregulars, 81, 87, 93, 152reimagining, 144–47, 153

I N D E X

275

remainders, 6, 14, 168Renaissance, the, 138–39, 162,

225n1, 227–28n5, 233–34n28renting, 44, 168repair work, 29, 35, 127repetition, 4, 5, 7, 25–26, 31, 48,

51–52, 55–56, 58, 60, 68–69,71, 77–79, 116, 121, 130,146–48, 152, 170, 183, 185;amplifi ed, 51; collective, 29; in difference, 184; excessive, 148;logic of, 8; rules of, 59; spatial, 105; varied, 34, 54

re-presentable, 183representational space, 234n28representations, 4–5, 10–11, 17, 23,

28, 34, 67, 85, 101–2, 135–37,164, 168, 170–71, 173, 179,182, 186–87; abstract, 19–20,185; cartographic, 40; causal, 187; of constructing-housing, 179; dominant, 11, 23, 110; of everyday life, 118; and every-day lived experience, 25, 34,51, 153–54, 166; general, 179;geometric, 15; graphic, 15, 71; of homogeneity, 183; housing, 170,174; ideal, 164; of neighborhood design plan, 85; of neighbor-hood practice, 23; of poses and positions, 185; pure, 91; social, 120; of social space, 112–13; of space, 107, 185, 233–34n28; of the spatial totality, 156; spatio-geometric, 109; streams of, 157;stroboscopic, 185; synchronic, 16, 63; systematic, 111; theoreti-cal, 161; of time, 156; of a total-ity, 166–67; totalizing, 14; of a trip, 67; of the whole, 98

reproduction, 4, 11, 25, 78, 81, 90,102, 126–27, 138, 179, 187;symbolic, 56. See also social reproduction

repulsion, 29, 39, 55; and fascination, 39, 66

res extensa, 234n28resistance, 56, 58, 110, 153resonances, 120, 186; affective, 133;

eventful, 113; imaginary, 157;qualitative, 121

retention, 20, 40, 130, 133, 184; of the other as other in the same, 105

return. See coming and going/returning

reversals, 106, 139, 144, 148–49,156–57, 159–60, 170

rhetoric, 6, 26, 28, 33, 37, 50, 52,57, 60, 67, 74–75, 77, 110–14,122, 126, 128, 132, 134,166, 175, 225n1; ambulatory, 158; art of, 77; classical, 27;electoral, 225n1; everyday, 158;goal of, 77; modern, 75; of one’s walks, 26, 67, 72–75, 98,100, 111, 114, 133, 152, 159,189; “savage,” 225n1. See alsoinhabitant rhetoric

rhetors, 226n2rhythm, 3, 17, 34, 61, 73, 108,

113–14, 129–32, 158, 165,178; ambulatory, 141; bodily, 132; change in/of, 33, 130;of everyday life, 133, 182;variations in, 61

right. See left and rightrubbish. See garbagerules, 79, 110, 135; of the code of

appropriation, 90, 94, 97, 101,

I N D E X

276

105, 109, 111; rational, 154; of repetition, 59; of the whole and its parts, 8

rumor, 82, 106–7, 140–41, 146–47;collective, 107, 142; common, 140

running, 54, 135, 141, 143rupture, 109, 133, 157. See also

breakdowns

Sansot, Pierre, 56, 227n4, 120Saturday, 52, 54, 69, 96, 103,

226n12Saussure, Ferdinand de, 223n3,

233n25scaling, 54, 57, 65, 125, 130scattered, the, 5, 7, 114, 123, 136;

and the manifold, 138schematism, 176, 231n3, 231n5science, 3, 6, 9, 12, 14, 18–19,

23–24, 26, 76, 110, 112, 160,172

seasons, 49, 118, 120, 130seeing. See visual orderselection, 27, 63–67, 74, 125; axis

of, 73; olfactory, 118self-expression, 3, 5–6, 19, 40, 112,

114, 130, 162–64, 172, 174,182, 186, 234n28

semantics, 55, 114, 171semiology, 78sensation, 19, 116–25, 128, 132–33,

138, 142, 145, 156, 184; act of, 91

sense. See meaningsensorimotor, 116, 133–34, 136, 162sequences, 50, 64, 68, 83, 110, 170;

bypass, 35; causal or rational, 157; functional, 19; logical, 133,157; territorial, 73; time, 50

sex, 87shadows, 23, 39, 75, 142–43;

artifi cial, 120shelter, 49, 120, 169shopping, 75, 95, 120shops, 82shortcuts, 29, 31, 34, 37, 128, 156,

223n6side step, 3–4side streets, 7, 14, 18sidetracking (déroutant), 24–25, 126,

160, 178siege, 56, 95, 108, 116sight. See visual ordersignals, 66, 123, 146, 148, 228n13signifi cations, 45, 48, 106, 111–14,

116, 132, 159, 165, 187,228m13, 232n7, 234n28; attrac-tive, 64; clear, 158–59; competi-tive play of, 63; excess of, 101;formal, 128; functional, 233n20;latent, 40; lived, 66; manifest, 75;prosaic, 114; question of, 74

signifi eds, 6, 14, 57, 67, 76, 78, 100,111–12, 114, 132, 146, 158–60,174, 187, 223n11; concrete and everyday, 75; different and unique, 111; well-connected, 111

signifi ers, 14, 57, 100, 111–12, 114,124, 146, 158–60, 174, 187;accidental, 174; arrangement of, 75, 101; pedestrian, 101;predominant, 101; their linear character, 159

signifying, 74, 76, 90, 111–112, 114,139, 158, 225n35

signitive relation, 177signs, 23, 80, 110, 123, 146, 150;

concrete, 156; discrete, 156;theory of, 159

I N D E X

277

silence, 17, 23, 43, 68, 70, 72, 108,114, 120, 126, 148

Silesius, Angelus, 173silos, the, 28, 35, 39, 54, 59,

125–26, 190simultaneity, 8, 17, 45, 48, 106, 128,

161–62; spatial, 185, 230n27;topographical, 113

singularities, 5, 13–14, 18, 23–24,77, 83–84, 146, 154, 165,225n34; and the manifold, 138;and the universal, 138

“six-hundred-seat room,” 86, 93sky, the, 41–42, 122, 124; and earth,

149, 169slippages, 45, 85, 119; of meaning,

64; semantic, 55slum areas, 7smells. See odorssociability, 78, 90, 174, 186;

confl ictual, 182social castes, 169social change, 12, 173social dimension, 29, 75, 79, 90–91,

93, 97, 187social division, 7social groups. See groups: social“socialist myth,” 140social life, 9, 22–23, 153, 173, 183,

185, 187“social mechanisms,” 170social movements, 173social practice, 12, 234n28social reproduction, 13–14, 112social sciences, 14, 173–74social space, 112–13, 159social status, 12sociocultural activities, 3, 174,

190–91sociology, 12, 75, 78, 89, 116;

classical, 4, 78; new, 4;qualitative, 4; urban, 5

socioprofessional categories, 89sounds. See noisespace and time, 5, 15, 26–27 37, 40,

55, 57, 64, 68, 74–75, 108–10,114, 128–29, 133, 139, 155–58,161, 172, 184–85

spatial appearances, 35, 42, 79–80,84, 86, 91, 97, 102, 104, 106–7,113, 123, 146, 179–80, 185;constructed, 156; planned, 155; as raw material, 185;substantifi cation of, 185

spatial practices, 3, 15, 25–26, 28,84, 115, 126, 155, 165–66;constructed, 110; socio-, 89

spatial wholes, 27, 58, 98, 105, 117;planned, 17; socio-, 86

spectacular, 124, 167, 185speech, 5, 10, 19, 37, 80, 83, 88, 93,

115, 140, 179, 225n1; art of, 77; fi gurative, 77; power of, 93,225n1

Spinoza, 231n38, 233n27spiritus phantasticus, 175, 231–32n7spots, 60, 70, 99, 122, 144, 231n36;

“dead,” 65; “my,” 83staggered polysemy, 42–45, 106,

145, 227n23staircases, 108, 144stairs, 84, 125–26, 145stairways, 83, 103, 145, 226n4,

232n14statistical data, 4, 13, 18staying, 18, 25, 56, 116, 118. See

also visitingstep by step, 3, 5, 135step forward, 3–4steps, 3, 5, 16–17, 26–27, 48, 57,

I N D E X

278

61, 69, 75, 79–81, 109, 115,120, 125, 130–31, 142–43, 153,158, 161, 165; confi guration of, 153; decisive, 49; enunciation of, 73; everyday, 127, 149; their succession, 16, 25, 67; wasting of, 54; writing of, 57

steps (of stairs), 65, 125Stimmung, 227n3stopping. See haltsstrange. See alienStrauss, Erwin, 229n20strolling, 17, 19, 52, 54, 124, 133,

147; daily/everyday, 3, 17–19,73, 135, 189; horizon of, 137

structuration, 12, 74, 111, 122, 128,134, 139, 177; act of, 115

structure, 115, 122, 128, 177; binary, 159, 234n28

styles, 26, 57, 62, 67, 69, 111,114–15, 129, 146, 172;ambulatory, 115; of being, 122;community of, 75, 80; everyday, 232n10; of expressing oneself, 6;expressive, 27; of inhabiting, 40,61–62, 68–69, 110, 122, 129,139, 152–53, 157; of movement, 129; narrative, 68, 104, 115,129; of walking, 61–62, 68–69,74, 113, 121–22, 129

“stylistic devices” (fi gures de style), 26, 225n1

stylistic effects, 72, 75, 77stylistics, 136subgroups, 81, 89–90, 102–3subjects, 11–13, 157, 174; collection

of, 13; and objects, 122, 157,183, 187; residential, 11;universal and abstract, 23

subjectum, 232n7

sublime, the, 138, 149, 224n19submission, 25substitution, 17–18, 27, 29, 31, 33,

51–52, 55, 63, 83, 86, 137, 139,143, 156, 168; paratopic, 29;radical, 37

subterranean, 143, 145, 154,232n13. See also underground

subversion, 109, 171summer, 35, 95–96, 118, 121, 150summoning. See convocationSundays, 49, 223n10supermarket, 33. See also Gro, thesurreal, 117, 148suspension points, 33, 114, 116, 126swervings. See gapssymbols, 56, 67, 74, 93, 108, 120,

141, 148, 154, 156–57, 159,169

symmetry, 45, 50, 58–59, 61, 95,142

synchronic representation, 16, 50,63, 91, 98, 223n11

syncretisms, 79, 88syndeton, 129synecdoche, 62–68, 70, 73–74,

83–84, 95, 99, 100, 104–7, 109,112, 123, 128, 133, 141, 148,152, 155–56, 158–59, 224n21;pathic, 66

synonyms, 33, 64, 81syntactic level, 34syntagma, 27, 62, 73; poetic, 74synthesis, 138–39, 157, 226n16,

231n3; utopian, 171systems model, 102

tactile, 119, 121, 125taking a plunge, 3, 6, 180tangible, the, 109, 125

I N D E X

279

technology, 10–11, 43, 154, 161, 169,174, 230n24; manipulated, 177

temporality, 48, 50, 55, 68, 90,97–98, 104, 106, 113, 123,128–29, 131, 142, 169,172, 186, 226n16, 230n32;chronometric, 95, 133–34; of differance, 136; everyday, 4,17, 229n19; of inhabiting, 164;linear representation of, 157;lived, 3–4, 16, 19, 24, 113, 129,132–35, 171, 184–85, 226n13;nonchronometric, 105, 113; of walking/of a walker, 19, 48. See also space and time

tensions, 43, 78, 81, 94, 105, 107,110, 127, 132–34, 147, 156,169, 175, 185, 234n3; dynamic, 176

territorial appearance, 91, 97–98,110, 145

territorial fl uidities, 94, 96, 111, 146territory, 17, 28, 73, 91–98, 100–

101, 109–11, 126, 132, 153,166, 182; circumscribed, 54;diffuse and mobile, 96; fi xed, 94;mental, 154; never-frequented, 131; permanent, 94; urban, 133

thetic, 24, 171; principle, 175; space, 185

“they,” 100, 140threats, 92, 107, 120, 142–43Tinbergen, Niko, 229n20tomorrow, 20, 128, 151; and today,

150, 156tone, 61, 63, 120, 124–25, 133, 149,

156; affective, 120, 147; change in, 31; knowing, 52, 88; lived, 123; of one’s walk, 143; playful, 52

tongue, 62top and bottom, 42, 44topical assignments, 92, 139topical position, 123topography, 15, 19, 51, 67, 113,

146, 150, 229n19topology, 124, 130; imaginary, 146toponyms, 80–81. See also place-

names topos, 106totality, 8–9, 16–17, 22, 24, 64,

67–68, 74, 108, 137, 153,166–67, 183; absent, 71;constructed, 182; and lived parts, 95, 156; rational and real, 183;and the scattered, 114; sensorial, 184; simultaneous, 8; spatial, 28,135, 153, 156; urban, 8, 153

totalization, 14, 64–66, 162;progressive, 74

town, 3, 111, 113, 115, 117, 123,166

traces, 15, 17, 26, 29, 63, 76, 115,128, 158, 227n1; originary, 226n16; pure, 227n16; of steps, 16, 115

tracks, 115, 135, 227n1traffi c, 18, 54, 62, 74, 79, 146, 165trailblazing, 127trails, 29, 31transfi guration, 77, 150, 225n26transgression, 15, 127, 130, 139transitivity, 48, 133transmutation, 118, 142transparency, 23, 153, 183; diurnal,

154; of forms, 124transport, 8, 45traveling through, 24, 48, 125, 128,

159trips, 15, 17, 20–21, 25, 28–29, 35,

I N D E X

280

42, 47, 50–52, 55, 58–61, 64,66–67, 69–72, 80, 106, 116,119, 122, 124, 126, 130–31,152, 158, 229n22; “blank” or hole-, 72, 137; everyday, 113,152; exhaustive, 54; ordinary, 52; same, 15, 19, 34, 49, 51, 72;varied, 39, 51

truth: and error, 57, 77, 137, 147;and false, 147, 233n18; self-evident, 159, 178

Tunisians, 91, 145. See also North Africans

underground, 142, 232n13. See alsosubterranean

understanding, the, 138, 231n5unforeseen, the, 35, 39, 48, 75, 103,

105–6, 118, 125, 135, 142, 144,147–48, 154, 168, 184

unimaginable, 152–53, 163uninhabitable, 119, 133, 152; and

unlivable, 124unity, 5, 8, 98, 114, 136, 138, 162,

174; fi ctive, 99; lived, 19; of meaning, 138, 158; qualitative, 97, 136

universality, 13, 83, 138, 226n14univocality, 80, 111, 113–14, 187;

local, 47unmotivated, 159unnameables, 84–86unpleasantness, 65, 98, 118, 123,

127, 142, 151, 231n35unsayable, 114, 121, 141upkeep. See maintenanceurban development, 3–5, 8–11, 23,

40, 66, 146, 155, 158, 165,169–71, 174, 228n13, 234n28

urban experience, 4–9, 12–14, 18,

21, 23, 66, 78, 82, 87, 109–10,118, 120, 124, 127, 132–33,135, 139, 147, 150, 154–55,165–66, 168, 174, 176–77,226n13, 227n4; and the rural, 78, 150

urbemes, 228n13use and usage, 8, 55, 62, 85–86,

110, 121–22, 134, 143, 154,166, 174, 179–80, 183, 185,187; codes of, 6, 185; common, 103; deviant, 31; everyday, 145;functional, 110, 135, 143, 155,165, 185; macrocollective, 99; of pedestrian spaces, 17; of space, 78; of the spatial product, 179;practical, 82; preconceived, 126,176; prosaic, 163; public, 104;representations of, 4; -space, 183

useful, the, 25users, 3–4, 10–11, 66, 148, 173, 179use-value, 25utopian, 170–71

vacancy. See emptinessvacant lots, 33, 154value judgments, 20, 68variation, 29, 33–34, 37, 39–40,

51–52, 54–56, 61, 78, 113,130, 148, 152, 164, 169, 172,178; day-to-day, 18; modal, 186;quantitative, 63; seasonal, 49,120; walked, 47

vertical dimension, 37, 119, 127,230n24

vicissitude: concept of, 139“Video-Gazette,” 86, 91–92, 167,

226nn6–7view, 39, 98, 126, 132, 228n15,

231n35; from afar, 124, 167

I N D E X

281

visiting (le séjour), 65, 99, 113, 122,133, 135–36, 154

visual order, 34, 42, 48, 96, 107,109, 121, 124–25, 127, 146–48,185; for the sake of, 124

walkers, 25, 33, 55, 66; mood of, 48;temporality of, 48

walking, 15–17, 19–21, 24–29,33–35, 40–43, 45, 47–52,55–76, 78–81, 83, 85, 89,94–104, 108–9, 111–14, 116,119, 121–23, 125, 127–31, 133,135–37, 141, 143–45, 147–49,152, 155, 159, 162, 172, 186,189, 224n19; activity of, 19,42, 48, 50–51, 64–65, 74, 114,128–29, 132, 139; “degree zero” of, 28; direction of, 59, 61, 64,127; everyday practice of, 14, 16,24, 26, 176, 178; expression of, 50, 68–70, 72–73; lived experi-ence of, 65–67, 71, 81, 83, 113,117; modes of, 35, 55, 59, 69,72, 75; mood of, 48; organiza-tion of, 55, 58, 62, 67, 69–70,72, 74, 113, 128; orientations of, 58; and reading/writing, 25–26,40, 55, 57, 62, 71, 122, 137;and recounting, 25, 40, 42, 48,64, 68–69, 71, 80, 91, 103, 137,139; rhythm of, 17; temporality of, 19, 48; ways of, 24, 113. See also rhetoric: of one’s walks

walking alongside, 33, 122walking through, 41, 64, 72way out. See coming and going/

returning

ways of being, 5, 18–20, 75, 90,93, 154, 169; collective, 109;everyday, 24, 184; with the other, 93; in space, 93, 104, 109, 129,142; in time, 129

ways of doing, 24, 75ways of expressing, 77weather, 49, 116, 118, 120Wednesday, 96, 226n12Welles, Orson, 229n16West, the, 29, 234n28Western philosophy, 232n18whole, the: and the fragment, 156;

geographic, 109; and the part, 8–9, 63–64, 66–67, 73–74, 83,112, 114, 152, 156–57, 161–62,224n21; representation of, 98;territorial, 101, 166. See alsospatial wholes

“why” questions, 13–14, 18–19,172–73

wind, 39, 47, 49, 85, 118–20, 141,152, 169, 228n8. See also air

windows, 24, 86, 123, 126, 132,167, 231n35

winter, 39, 228n8work, 7, 17–18, 71–72, 75, 130workers, 8, 69workplaces, 19works, 169; and the way, 128, 178writing, 25–28, 40, 55, 57, 62–63,

67, 78–79, 98, 114, 122, 124,132, 165, 178

young people, 11–12, 29, 33, 35, 50,52, 66, 86–92, 96, 98–100, 103,144, 146, 167, 226n12

Jean-François Augoyard is professor of philosophy and musicology, and doctor of urban studies, at the Center for Research on Sonorous Space and the Urban Environment, School of Architecture, Grenoble, France.

Françoise Choay is professor emeritus of history and theory of urban-ism and architecture at the University of Paris VIII and Paris I.

David Ames Curtis is a translator, editor, writer, and citizen activist. His translations and writings have appeared in American, European, and Australian journals, books, and art catalogs.

[jean-francois augoyard] step by step everyday wa(bookos.org)

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