What happens when one moves about in the city? In this essay I will explore how we through our movements create our own temporal cities. I base my investigation on Michel de Certeau's theories from his book The Practice of Everyday Life vol 1. De Certeau believes that by just walking in the city – a mostly unconscious and for many trivial activity – you write it, creating different types of spaces that can be understood using linguistic terms. In my essay, I develop de Certeau's theories about ordinary activities by applying them to two less ordinary – and between themselves quite different – spatial practices: fare evasion on public transportation (plankning) and the urban activity of parkour. I also carry out a linguistic analysis of both parkour, fare evasion and walking, using the linguist Roman Jakobson's theory on the act of speaking together with de Certeau's theory on the rhetoric of walking. In my concluding discussion, I outline a theory regarding how these different spatial practices come together in the city and form a multiplicity of ever-changing spatial stories. I also discuss what one can say that this actually means, both practically and theoretically speaking.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-8784 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Eklöf, Åsa |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och kommunikation |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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