Dérive

In situationist texts, a Dérive is an attempt at analysis of the totality of everyday life, through the passive movement through space. It is translated as drift.

History

French writer and Situationist Guy Debord first theorized this concept^[1] in his studies of architecture. The original concept was the exploration of a built environment without preconceptions, to refuse to limit legitimate discussion to architectural styles or residential percentages, but to discuss the reality of actually inhabiting the environment.

The bulk of Situationist writing uses this technique, which shows its necessity when applied to concepts that are highly politicized or mainly discussed in an academic environment, such as the Watts Riots^[2].

"The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path of least resistance that is automatically followed in aimless strolls (and which has no relation to the physical contour of the terrain); the appealing or repelling character of certain places — these phenomena all seem to be neglected. In any case they are never envisaged as depending on causes that can be uncovered by careful analysis and turned to account."^[3]

“The dérive (with its flow of acts, its gestures, its strolls, its encounters) was to the totality exactly what psychoanalysis (in the best sense) is to language. Let yourself go with the flow of words, says the psychoanalyst. He listens, until the moment when he rejects or modifies (one could say detourns) a word, an expression or a definition. The dérive is certainly a technique, almost a therapeutic one. But just as analysis unaccompanied with anything else is almost always contraindicated, so continual dériving is dangerous to the extent that the individual, having gone too far (not without bases, but...) without defenses, is threatened with explosion, dissolution, dissociation, disintegration. And thence the relapse into what is termed ‘ordinary life,’ that is to say, in reality, into ‘petrified life.’ In this regard I now repudiate my Formulary’s propaganda for a continuous dérive. It could be continuous like the poker game in Las Vegas, but only for a certain period, limited to a weekend for some people, to a week as a good average; a month is really pushing it. In 1953-1954 we dérived for three or four months straight. That’s the extreme limit. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill us”
-Ivan Chtcheglov, excerpt from a 1963 letter to Michèle Bernstein and Guy Debord, reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #9, p. 38.

See also

• Situationist International
• Psychogeography
• Urban alteration game

References

External links

• Theory of the Dérive- Guy Debord (English translation)
• Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography- Guy Debord (English transtlation)
• Formulary for a New Urbanism- Ivan Chtcheglov (English translation)
• Henri Lefebvre Interview on SI
• Bio Mapping by Christian Nold