The rhetoric of walking (1)

I came across Michel de Certeau in 1998, during my postgraduate study in Edinburgh University. I read some chapters of his  The practice of everyday life ( the whole book is available at:http://danm.ucsc.edu/~dustin/library/de%20certeau,%20the%20practice%20of%20everyday%20life.pdf).  The chapter that I dearly treasure is the one that refers to walking(chapter 8: walking in the city).

Walking around the city has, according to M. De Certeau, rhetoric. The pedestrian makes selections, condemns certain places to inertia or disappearance and composes with others spatial “turns of phrase” that are “rare”, “accidental” or illegitimate. He transforms or abandons spatial elements.  There are possibilities and prohibitions and the walker actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way he makes them exist as well as emerge. By actualising some possibilities, he increases their number as well as the number of prohibitions.(pp98-99)

It is this selection process that marks the rhetoric of walking and creates a temporary –and sometimes a permanent- structure of paths in the city. This structure depends on the balance (I would rather say, imbalance) between possibilities and prohibitions that one keeps up with. Moreover and most important, the balance-and consequently- the structure depends on the drives of selection. The rhetoric of walking can be as multifaceted as the numbers of walkers. And it can be even more versatile when looking at the daily walking practices of one and the same walker.

 I am concerned with the following questions: What are the qualities of such drives? What makes us abandon spatial elements while actualizing possibilities? What drives pedestrians to actualize possibilities more than prohibitions-and vice versa?

I shall here take myself as a case study. An Argostolian , I have already spent some months in Los Angeles. I am by definition subject to endless selections and possibilities. I am allowed to write endless texts-as de Certeau put it. In selecting possibilities, I am driven by the pleasure that my sensory perceptions transmit to myself when passing by nice and tidy gardens in full bloom. Now, this drive takes me to avenues other than the main boulevard. So I impose a temporary prohibition to myself not to walk along the boulevard. I abandon it for the sake of  sizes, colours,  known and unknown to me flowers and smells. (I am better with the word aroma instead of smell). This last sense is so pleased that I proceed to take an intentional “turn of phrase” when reaching a crossroad and insist on walking along a certain avenue. I thus transform a spatial element to the most aesthetically pleasing one and accredit it with high value. In addition, I make a point of stopping, looking and smelling the jasmine that has fully covered the street lamp post. I create a structure here among spatial elements, that is avenues. I pick and praise a bush by not walking , turning to it and feeling it.  I even create a structure of my  pace. I take advantage of the possibility that the spatial element itself offers to me, while other flowers and bushes are not available to me as such.

So, the drive is season based, aesthetically oriented and stands on the edge of what is by definition offered and what not, of what is “public” and what “private” and thus security protected.

This is a first approach of my rhetoric of walking. It is, by now, a conscious act of walking and observing myself according to de Certeau’s perceptions that Los Angeles is gradually transforming to something else. Better, I am the agent of this transformation. And this venture is worth while pursuing…