城市漫遊:《阿卡迪亞》中的心理地圖 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文. 指導教授：楊麗敏博士 Advisor：Dr. Carol Li-Min Yang. 城市漫遊:《阿卡迪亞》中的心理地圖. 政治大. Walking in the City: Psychogeography in Arcadia. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. 研究生：周羿含撰 Graduate Student: I-han Chou 中華民國一百年十二月 December, 2011. v.

(2) Walking in the City: Psychogeography in Arcadia. A Master Thesis Presented to Department of English,. National Chengchi University. 學 In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. y. ‧. ‧ 國. 立. 政治大. Ch. engchi. by I-han Chou December, 2011. i n U. v.

(3) To my parents and my family 獻給我的父母和家人. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iii. i n U. v.

(4) Acknowledgement. If writing is compared to a journey, I will never know what place the path will led me to. Just like a flâneur, I walk, observe, collage fragmented thoughts together day after day, and try hard to form my own map. What is meaningful is not the destination I finally arrive at, but the process of exploring. Writing for me is also a process of honestly facing one’s self. No matter what degree I have got to, I know, I have experienced a special journey and my living mark will never disappear.. 治政大liberal, and careful not to advisor Professor Li-min Yang, who was always patient, 立 I would not have completed this thesis without the encouragement of my. exert pressure on me. It was Professor Yang who initiated me into the studies of. ‧ 國. 學. urban discourses, and her inspiring guidance and warm support helped me walk out of. ‧. the frustrated labyrinth step by step. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the members of. sit. y. Nat. the committee. Although I had never met her, Professor Huang’s encouragement. io. er. releases my nervousness before the defense, and she gave me invaluable suggestions. al. for deepening the analysis of the text. Professor Yeh had patiently listened to my. n. v i n flimsy ideas from the beginningC ofh my immature project, e n g c h i U and he was supportive but did not hesitate to raise significant questions and offer insightful advices for the improvement of my thesis. In addition to great teachers who have helped me a lot, my heart-felt gratitude also goes to my dear friends and graduate classmates: Angela Lu, Trista Chiang, Nika Su, Clara Chung, Betty Kuo, Ting-yi Chang, Echo Tu, and Brandy Hsueh. You gave me courage to overcome difficulties during the process of writing, and my anxiety was eased with your caring company. I will always remember those blissful and memorable days which we have ever had together. Finally, I would like to sincerely. iv.

(5) extend thanks to my family. I am indebted to my family for their care and financial aid throughout my research for this thesis. Without them, I would not have paid my full attention to the research and gone as far as I could.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. v. i n U. v.

(6) TABLE Of CONTENTS. Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………………...ⅲ Chinese Abstract..........................................................................................................ⅶ English Abstract...........................................................................................................ⅷ Introduction..................................................................................................................01 Chapter One. Dérive: Remapping the City..............................................................19. Chapter Two. Détournement: The Claim of Public Space......................................49. Chapter Three Spectacle: The Rebirth of the City....................................................71. 政治大. Conclusion...................................................................................................................97 Works Cited...............................................................................................................103. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vi. i n U. v.

(7) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文提要. 論文名稱：城市漫遊：《阿卡迪亞》中的心理地圖. 指導教授：楊麗敏教授. 研究生：周羿含. 論文提要內容：. 立. 政治大. 當代英國小說家吉姆‧克雷斯 (Jim Crace) 在《阿卡迪亞》(Arcadia, 2008). ‧ 國. 學. 這部城市小說中，以一位隱身人群的專欄作家為敘述者，從城市居民的心理為出發點描寫城市空間，並以傳統露天市場被改建為一現代化購物商場之事件為. ‧. 主軸，刻劃城市居民經歷生存空間遭強制改變的衝擊之後，仍然找到適應的方式和創造空間運用的可能性。本文主要採取甄克斯 (Chris Jenks) 對城市漫遊者. y. Nat. sit. (flâneur) 的論述，以及情境主義的心理地圖 (psychogeography)、漂移 (dérive)、. er. io. 異軌 (détournement)、及景觀 (spectacle) 的理論概念，剖析克雷斯如何以都市. al. n. v i n Ch 的有機體，並揭露都市空間規劃背後暗藏視覺操縱，藉以反對空間商品化和景 engchi U 漫遊文本，呈現人和空間的互動，凸顯城市居民和其生存空間實為一生生不息. 觀化。論文第一章主要借助甄克斯的都市漫遊者論述以及情境主義的心理地圖和漂移理論，闡述小說敘述者打破心理和地理的界線，以不同的人物心理呈現一幅城市拼貼。第二章以異軌理論為出發點，闡釋此小說將阿卡迪亞的文學概念和都市公共空間議題並置，一方面解構溫室和商場中的鄉村實為自然的複製品，另一方面強調城市生命力在於多樣性以及居民與空間的互動。第三章援引情境主義的景觀概念，著重討論社會關係和城市的空間生產被資本主義塑造的景觀所滲透控制，並強調敘述者以漂移和異軌的空間實踐與其對抗之外，也刻劃了都市居民在景觀的控制之下，仍然找到新的出口，保有空間運用的自主性。. 關鍵字：《阿卡迪亞》、城市空間、城市漫遊者、城市漫遊文本、心理地圖. vii.

(8) Abstract. Jim Crace’s novel Arcadia delineates a city from the perspective of human mentality by means of an incognito critical social observer. The displacement of a modernized shopping mall for a traditional open market is the most important incident that causes a great impact upon the urban people. In this thesis, I would like to use Chris Jenks’ analysis of the flâneur and situationist concepts of psychogeography, dérive, détournement, and the spectacle to analyze how Crace presents the interaction between man and space which is threatened by the visual manipulation hidden behind urban planning. He also points out that urban inhabitants and their living environment form an organic whole that will keep evolving through. 治政 concepts of psychogeography and dérive, I would first 大 show that Crace breaks the 立 boundary between psychology and geography to present a collage of different their mutual influence. Applying Jenks’ discussion on the flâneur and situationist. ‧ 國. 學. interpretations based upon several characters’ mentalities. Then, the construction of the new shopping mall named Arcadia brings up the juxtaposition of the topos. ‧. Arcadia and the issue of urban public space. With the practice of détournement, the narrator deconstructs the countryside in the shopping mall as the duplication of nature. y. Nat. sit. and emphasizes that the life of the city does not reside in the spectacular sites but in. al. er. io. diverse and mutual interactions between urban space and its inhabitants. With spatial. n. practices of dérive and détournement, the narrator not only criticizes that both social. Ch. i n U. v. relationship and urban space are saturated with separation caused by the spectacle,. engchi. but also makes known that urban people still hold the autonomy of creating alternative spatial use even under the dominant representation of the spectacle in the city.. Keywords: Arcadia, urban space, the flâneur, textual flânerie, psychogeography. viii.

(9) Introduction. Jim Crace is a contemporary English writer and the winner of many awards who not only owns a substantial readership but also sustains the high regard of professional critics. He has consistently in his works created an imaginary, self-sufficient world which not only shines the brilliance of originality but also shows its parallel relation to the real world we inhabit. Therefore, he is regarded as a powerful political writer because he writes stories as fables to bring up the essential. 治政大 as a journalist and foreign Crace starts his career as a writer of fiction, he has worked 立 and universal themes, and his fictions resonate with our contemporary life. Before. correspondent for sixteen years. It is clear that his earlier jobs influence his. ‧ 國. 學. subsequent writings because he is good at specifying a space or a place in a particular. ‧. time, which plays an active and suggestive role in his writings.. sit. y. Nat. Crace’s first four books, Continent (1986), The Gift of Stones (1988),. io. er. Arcadia(1992), and Signals of Distress (1994), are about communities in transition,. al. and the next two novels, Quarantine (1997) and Being Dead (1999), are considered. n. v i n C hre-imagines an episode matched pair. In Quarantine, Crace e n g c h i U from the New Testament, Jesus’ forty days in the desert. Being Dead begins with a brutally murdered couple on a beach, and Crace delineates the biological process of death and decomposition. He talks about the sacred and the secular in both novels. Later, The Devil’s Larder (2001) comes in sixty-four short stories, all of them about food and humanity. Genesis (2003) is a character study of an actor who is cursed by fertility. Crace’s new novel The Pest House (2007) is a love story set in a quasi-medieval America in the future. Adam Begley in the introduction of an interview with Jim Crace mentions that most of his works are “set in what has come to be known as Craceland, a place both strange and. 1.

(10) familiar, historically specific and timeless” (184). Philip Tew also thinks that Crace accords his world of “unreal” the “direct determinacy of familiar ways of dealing with people and situations” (151). The fabulous in Crace’s novels is related to the real in our world, and his lies honestly present the human condition. There are preoccupations and themes which recur in Jim Crace’s novels, and they show that his works gain the force of political critique in spite of dissimilar plots and locations. Critics have noticed that Crace persistently cares about the impact of change or development which is shown in the form of new technologies, the form of. 治政 narrative urge are central to the acts of storytelling that大 permeate Crace’s novels, and 立 governance, or social organization. According to Tew, “[t]he imaginary and the. his fiction exists on the very margins of worlds in transition” (151). For instance, The. ‧ 國. 學. Gift of Stones explores a stone-age community which is under the technological threat. ‧. of the bronze age. In the novel Arcadia, we can see the contraries of the messy but. sit. y. Nat. organic pre-capitalist trade and the sterile, exploitative commercial environment of. io. er. the new era. The establishment of the new gigantic glass-and-concrete mall named. al. Arcadia to displace the traditional open market changes the way of trade, the classes. n. v i n Ch of shoppers, and it also influences the lives of those original e n g c h i U traders who sell in the. old one. Crace records various physical details of an imagined city and captures the relationship between the urban environment and human behavior in anecdotes told by a society columnist and a flâneur. I argue that in Arcadia, Jim Crace, with the employment of the textual flânerie, disassembles the abstract coherence of a city and reveals the visual manipulation behind to resist the banality of urban life and the commodification of space, and most importantly, to highlight the organism which is formed by city people and their living environment.. 2.

(11) Ⅰ. Arcadia: An Overview Arcadia is a novel that depicts urban environment and explores how urban inhabitants interacts with their living space. The most important incident that leads the plot and influences the fate of almost every character is the transformation of a traditional open market into a huge and arcade-like shopping mall. The owner of this market Victor, who has a humble start in this market and gradually builds up a huge fortune, decides to tear the old market down and makes the new one stand as his mark in the city. Rook, the street-wise ex-trader who works for Victor as his buffer in the. 政治大 flâneur-like journalist who merges himself in the crowd, observes, listens, and puts all 立 market, opposes this plan and agitates traders’ resistance. The narrator is a. ‧ 國. 學. the materials and criticism into his writing in the newspaper social column with the pseudonym Burgher. Therefore, the whole novel could be taken as his textual. ‧. flânerie.. sit. y. Nat. Crace separates this novel into four parts. The first part titled “The Soap. io. er. Market” begins with the arrangement of a country-style lunch for Victor’s. al. v i n C laurel branches as the the Soap Garden for picking some h e n g c h i U material to make a birthday n. eighty-year-old birthday. Rook goes into the central green space of the market named. chair for his boss. Following Rook’s drifting steps, Burgher delineates several parts of the city: the attractive boutique streets, the dark and filthy tunnel that connects the new and the old districts, the central park Soap Garden, and the Soap Market which is inefficient but lively for commerce and social communities. The old district of the city called the Woodgate is full of Rook’s childhood memories, but now there is no neighborhood here because most of all move to the suburbs. When Rook walks through the tunnel, he is attacked by a countryman named Joseph who stumbles along in the city chasing after his ideal life. Besides, the guests invited to Victor’s birthday. 3.

(12) lunch want to give him a statue which will be set in the garden. It is this suggestion that enkindles Victor’s ambition to rebuild the market into a grand memorial which is worthy of this statue. In the second part “Milk and Honey,” the narration traces back to Victor’s childhood and the old Soap Market where he grows up. Victor’s mother Em, a young widow who migrates to the city from her native village, hopes to make a new life for her and her baby. Later, Em meets her sister Aunt who originally works as a maid for a rich person but gets sacked because of her uncontrollable personality. Both Em and. 治政大of the countryside. After his grows up listening to his mother’s idealized recollections 立 Aunt beg to survive, the former in the Soap Market and the latter in the streets. Victor. mother dies in a fire set by the government to clear the slum area, Victor learns to. ‧ 國. 學. fend himself, and later he even rarely go out of the towering office building called. ‧. Big Vic. However, he can hardly free himself from the memory of a polished. sit. y. Nat. countryside with which he is imbued by Em and that of the terrifying fire which takes. io. al. er. his mother’s life away. Burgher describes deeply into Victor’s psychology which is. n. influenced by both the static, peaceful image of countryside and the transient urban scenes.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In the third part “Victor’s City,” Burgher depicts how urban people react when facing the change of their living space. Rook not only instigates traders to demonstrate and stop Victor’s plan but also secretly hires down-and-out Joseph to set a fire to market stalls which causes a riot. Despite Rook’s opposition and the protests of the market traders, the shopping mall is built and named Arcadia: Victor has left his mark, and it is “Victor’s City” as the title of Part Three expresses. Arcadia screens its customers and sets rules to keep a perfect situation. The narration in the fourth part “Arcadia” switches to the first point of view and it emphasizes Burgher’s observation. 4.

(13) and criticism of Arcadia. It is a high-tech enclosure which imitates the countryside. Besides, he notices that the Soap Market is not completely eradicated. The traders who are evicted from the mall decide to set up an open market called the Soap Two, and it proves that the city continues evolving with its people. Finally, Burgher leaves the enclosed, glass-and-concrete mall and keeps walking in the city and enjoying the delight of the crowd. Ⅱ. The Issues in Arcadia When it comes to Jim Crace’s Arcadia, critics would focus on discussing its. 政治大 First of all, they think this novel as the accusation against the city for its exploiting 立. language full of country image, the image of death, and its characters’ lack of depth.. ‧ 國. 學. the countryside. Crace in an interview says that “A fruit and vegetable market is the countryside imported into the city…It’s no coincidence that that book [Arcadia] is. ‧. about the conflict between the city and the countryside” (Begley 197). Crace shows. sit. y. Nat. this conflict by reconstituting pastoral imagery in the urban context. For example,. io. er. Crace describes a fit of asthma which attacks Rook: “The tree of passages, the. al. v i n C h street is compared (Crace 31). Besides, the crowd in the e n g c h i U to “tadpoles in the stream,” n. branches, twigs, and sprays, which served the air sacs in his lungs, were swollen”. and the crane of building sites is “mantis” (9). Mars-Jones states that “in fact virtually unique in a book so much given over to sophisticated urban recasting of natural imagery, is the criticism of the essence of cities, their bossy dependence on what lies outside them” (22). The most obvious expression of this criticism is presented by the countryman Joseph who newly arrived in the metropolis and sees the new surroundings: “What made this thirsty, ill-positioned city– too southerly to benefit from hops, too northerly for grapes– so rich and large? The answer crowded him at every step…A city with no natural virtues is reduced to trade…” (Crace 41). The. 5.

(14) agricultural produce sold in the market nourishes the city, and Victor accumulates his wealth by controlling the market trading. The elimination of the traditional market does not mean that the city has gained the victory because the new shopping mall Arcadia gives people “a country walk right at the city’s heart” (231). Therefore, the country is simultaneously taken as the victim as well as the antagonist to the city, and the confliction between them will continue. Second, the metaphor of death is also discussed by critics. According to Edward T. Wheeler, the monologue of the narrator “provokes a recollection of Et in. 治政 blocking out the sun” (26). He claims that “[i]n some大 fundamental way, this novel 立 Arcadia Ego:” “the greatest men, like the tallest buildings, make their marks by 1. places at its center the struggle between life and death” (26). The threat of asthmatic. ‧ 國. 學. attack that distresses Rook, Em’s struggle to survive with infant Victor, the city fires. ‧. that take Em’s life away and maliciously set to the stalls, and the riot that breaks out. sit. y. Nat. right after the spreading of the fire, all of them imply that there is a shadow waiting in. io. er. the city. However, in the last chapter of this novel, the rise of the Soap Two somehow. al. represents a new life. Wheeler criticizes that “Jim Crace has found a form which. n. v i n celebrates the cycle of life in theCcity. is pungent but almost too h eHisnachievement gchi U self-regarding, too easily satisfied with the smell of mortality” (27). Wheeler thinks that death in cities nowadays has its roots in evil, but Crace simplifies it as the mortality everyone must face and transforms all the tragedies to a rebirth in a rush. However, I argue that city life includes the chaotic, dangerous, and evil side as well as the prosperous, active, and free side. Both of these two sides are what the flâneur attempts to examine and record. If we only emphasize the dark side such as the 1. “Et in Arcadia Ego” most noticeably appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin. They are pastoral paintings depicting shepherds who cluster around an austere tomb. This Latin phrase is usually interpreted as a momento mori (remember your mortality): “Even in Arcadia I exist.” The “I” refers to death, and “Arcadia” is understood as a utopian land.. 6.

(15) repression caused by capitalism or bureaucracy, we might neglect the individual autonomy and agency to deal with threats and resist restrictions. Third, some critics regard Arcadia as a schematic construction and feel that the characters lack depth. “The human cost of the enterprise,” Geoff Dyer states, “becomes apparent when we see that Crace’s intentions are strangely similar to those of the architect…who wins the contract to transform the market” (45). He thinks Crace’s reconstruction of the city with natural imagery as similar to the establishment of the countryside in Arcadia. He remarks that both Arcadia and this novel “suffocate. 治政大Crace’s former novels. His criticizes that Arcadia loses intensity compared with Jim 立 the natural life of the people it claims to shelter” (45). Besides, Philip Lopate. argument points out that Crace’s characters in this novel are “stock who never. ‧ 國. 學. develop any depth,” and that Crace “can only hover at a distance, summarizing the. ‧. action, ascribing playful epithets to each character, sweeping past the moment to get. sit. y. Nat. to its emblematic meaning” (711). However, I would like to argue that the point of. io. er. view and writing style of the narrator Burgher, as an urban chronicler and society. al. columnist, conform not only to the fragmentary nature of urban experiences but also. n. v i n to the image of the flâneur who C appears observer. Therefore, those h e nas ga detached chi U characters are intentionally to be enigmatic.. Finally, Doris Teske in her article “Jim Crace’s Arcadia: Public Culture in the Postmodern City” schematically brings up diverse ways of analyzing this novel such as the possibility of reinventing the Arcadian myth in a city, the prevailing commodification, and the conflicting discourses on the central public space. Inspired by her discussion, I would like to go deep to the relationship between the city and its inhabitants which, I think, is the most prominent in this novel. Although some critics think the foreground of urban environment would sacrifice the human drama, I think. 7.

(16) it provides the way to re-examine the meaning of living in a city, pieces together fragments of urban life, and suggests urban people a way to get the intimacy with the living environment. Ⅲ. Theoretical Approach Jim Crace employs a sarcastic social observer who is also like a social historian and political polemicist to highlight the relationship between people and urban environment. I would first use Chris Jenks’ discussion on the flâneur in order to analyze this observer, and then with situationist perspectives of dérive, détournement,. 政治大 in his narration. According to Chris Jenks’ reestablishment of the analytic power of 立. and the spectacle to further examine his criticism and the way to reconstruct the city. ‧ 國. 學. the flâneur, this figure which, although under challenges such as commodification and the speedy tempo of urban life, is able to analyze urban culture, expose social. ‧. problems, and criticize the fabrication of spectacle in the postmodern time of fugitive. sit. y. Nat. meaning. Jenks emphasizes that the flâneur is a social phenomena, a way of. io. er. experiencing urban life and should not be restrained in concrete reality. 2 This figure. al. v i n C h but not to be U he or she could be engaged in the crowd e n g c h i assimilated into the blind n. seems to possess a power to walk at will but actually with an inquisitive wonder, and. rubber-neck who does not find the meaninglessness of daily life. Besides, this image could be taken as “a narrative device” to analyze modern life and “an attitude towards knowledge and its social context” because of its flexibility and observing function (17). Burgher, the narrator of this novel who acts as a distanced observer and records as a city archivist, could be taken as the embodiment of the flâneur, and his flânerie is put in writing as this city novel. Therefore, I argue that the narration of Arcadia could. 2. Jenks claims that the flâneur is not only “a product of modernity” but also “an attempt to ‘see’ modernity; a metaphor for method” (14). It should not be pinned down with gender, class, space, or time. It should be taken as a way to study culture and social environment.. 8.

(17) be taken as the textual-flânerie that records Burgher’s observation in the city. Crace presents in Burgher’s textual flânerie that urban space arouses characters’ emotions that are paralyzed by the banality of daily routine. I would like to use the concept of psychogeography to explain the interaction between the subjective feelings and the objective environment which is shown in Burgher’s textual flânerie. The leading figure in the Situationist International, Guy Debord, displays the definition of psychogeography: It “could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously. 治政 International Anthology 5). David Pinder explains that大 psychogeography is coined to 立 organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals” (Situationist. “investigate different ambiences and zones in cities, and to attend to the relationships. ‧ 國. 學. between social space and mental space and between urbanism and behaviour” (152). 3. ‧. Psychogeography “expresses an interest (or ‘vision’) that is perpetually fresh, or. sit. y. Nat. indeed, infantile in its perceptions,” and “[t]his is an interest undaunted by the. io. er. uniformity of the consumer culture” (Jenks 24). That is to say, psychogeography can. al. revive the sensitivity and imagination which are oppressed by the sterile commercial. n. v i n C h a person from U environment, and this process prevents e n g c h i being objectified by. commodities and endows the revolutionary power against the bureaucratic capitalism. Jim Crace depicts a psychogeographical map with Burgher’s textual flânerie in which characters’ feelings and emotions aroused by the atmosphere of a space are emphasized. For Burgher, psychogeography is a way to explore the relationship between urban people and their living environment; for all the characters in Arcadia,. 3. Different from the canonical map such as that in a tourist guide, the psychogeographic map is constituted with unities of ambience which cannot be defined by architectural or economic conditions. The flâneur or flâneuse can allow himself or herself to be guided by those features of the street neglected by most pedestrians, like “the sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters” and “the path of least resistance which is automatically followed in aimless strolls (and which has no relation to the physical contour of the ground)” (Situationist International Anthology 6).. 9.

(18) this emotional generation propels them to react to the objective environment and to keep shaping their relationship to the city. Walking is shown as an important way to know the city in this novel. Characters such as Rook and Aunt unconsciously take walking as a spatial practice that helps to create their subjective spaces, and the flâneur Burgher consciously uses walking as a means to investigate the city. Therefore, the concept of dérive will be employed to analyze how people, when walking in the city, gain other spatial possibilities. According to Debord, the urban investigation in terms of. 治政大 behavior and through varied ambiances,” and it “entails playful-constructive 立. psychogeography could be achieved by dérive. It is “a technique of transient passage. awareness of psychogeographical effects” (Situationist International Anthology 50). 4. ‧ 國. 學. Debord thinks that the dérive oscillates between the psyche and the collective. ‧. rethinking of the city. During the process of dérive, the flâneur can expose the. sit. y. Nat. repressed or conjure up the passed under the rational surface and gain an intimacy. io. er. with the city. Burgher, the flâneur-like columnist, with the vision of dérive dismantles. al. the abstract, homogeneous order of the traditional map and reconstructs the city by. n. v i n collecting and collaging spatial C experiences are fragmented, subjective, and h e n gwhich chi U temporal. The dérive as a means to investigate urban space allows Burgher to see. contradictions and conflicts in the city. The rebuilding of the open marketplace into a glass-and-concrete shopping mall causes problems: urban people’s need for an open public space that includes diverse communities, communication, and individual freedom is sacrificed. This shopping mall is named Arcadia because its architect 4. The dérive privileges passage on foot, and its participants put aside practical motivations that guide movement through the city and allow themselves to be “drawn by the attentions of the terrain and the attractions they find there” (Situationist International Anthology 50). However, it does not mean simply drifting with passivity or submitting to unconscious desire. Therefore, it moves between intension and automation to create an organized spontaneity.. 10.

(19) creates an environment of the countryside inside this modernized, arcade-like building. The traditional Arcadia refers to beautiful natural splendor and harmony with nature. It appears in mythology and later in literary works such as Virgil’s Eclogues. Doris Teske points out that there is a “contrast between the political ideal of the polis and the cultural topos Arcadia” in Crace’s Arcadia (166). I argue that this juxtaposition generates a new meaning in Burgher’s textural flânerie: the desire for public spaces where people can enjoy individual freedom and establish social communities. Such space is represented by the Soap Market. Therefore, I would like. 治政大of subversive diversion, and the topos Arcadia. Détournement, for SI, is a means 立. to use the concept of détournement to analyze the coexistence of the political issue. reworking and hijacking. According to Debord and Wolman, détournement means. ‧ 國. 學. that “[t]he mutual interference of two words of feeling, or the bringing together of. ‧. two independent expressions, supersedes the original elements and produces a. sit. y. Nat. synthetic organization of greater efficacy” (Situationist International Anthology 9).. io. er. The preexisting elements are liberated from their original context and rerouted to. al. generate a new meaning. Sadie Plant also explains that “[i]t is a turning around and a. n. v i n C hof putting the stasisUof the spectacle in motion” reclamation of lost meaning: a way engchi (86). 5 Détournement is used as a critical technique to deconstruct the spectacular. surface fabricated by capitalism and turn it into something meaningful. In Arcadia, Victor’s Garden on the top of Big Vic and the new shopping mall Arcadia seem to be the extension of nature in the city. However, Burgher’s textual flânerie reveals that both the garden and the countryside in Arcadia do not belong to the first nature but its. 5. The spectacle here comes from Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. It is related to the use of vision by capitalism to make people passive spectators in the world of commodities, and this manipulation of appearance is also used by administrative power to control subjects. For more details on analyzing the concept of the spectacle and how Burgher criticizes its manipulation in his textual flânerie, please see my chapter three.. 11.

(20) duplications, the manmade second nature. 6 In order to prove this point, I will refer to Timothy W. Luke’s article “Simulated Sovereignty, Telematic Territoriality: The Political Economy of Cyberspace” in which he discusses three kinds of nature that appear successively in human history. The artificial countryside in Arcadia makes people inactive consumers for sight and commodities. Ironically, those consumers who are allowed to shop in this “countryside” are strictly filtered, which is different from the openness of the real countryside. Such visual code results in the loss of the right to the central public space.. 治政大vital and distinctive place in commerce and sociability for everyone, and it is the most 立 The Soap Market, located in the center of the city, combines functions such as. the city. It realizes the right to the city claimed by Henri Lefebvre. 7 However,. ‧ 國. 學. Arcadia displaces its democratic participation with hierarchy. The culture of this. ‧. place, from the architecture to the social relation and social class of its shoppers, is. sit. y. Nat. reshaped by the capitalist. Sharon Zukin’s symbolic economy can explain this. io. er. situation: certain urban areas, especially the central public space, are redesigned for a. al. city to present its cultural performance that brings economic profits, but such cultural. n. v i n performance usually has nothingCtohdo with the everyday e n g c h i U life of its adjacent. inhabitants. It refuses diversity and causes privatization. In this novel, the shoppers the shopping mall Arcadia attracts are mostly foreign visitors or rich people who live in the suburbs who are just isolated consumers and have rare relation to this area, so the original social community built in the Soap Market is destroyed. The practice of 6. According to Luke, the second nature is “an artificial technosphere” which is “manufactured out of modern science, capitalist exchange, and industrial technology on a world-wide scale” (28). The greenery in the Big Vic rooftop garden and Arcadia does not naturally grow; it is transplanted, nourished by fertilizer, and kept thriving within a machine-controlled environment. Therefore, it is not the primitive first nature but the artificial, manmade second nature. 7 Lefebvre argues that the right to the city can be “complemented by the right to difference…and information,” and it should “modify, concretize and make more practical the rights of the citizen as an urban dweller (citadin) and user of multiple services” (34). It includes the right to use the central space of a city without any restriction of social class.. 12.

(21) détournement can reveal the hegemonic side of symbolic economy and criticize capitalist manipulation. Crace’s use of the coexistence of two unrelated issues, the pastoral utopia and the unprivileged right to public spaces, satirizes that the desire for a pastoral utopia is commodified and presented as artificial second nature. Equipped with high technology and secure staff, the Arcadia evicts the working-class people, the marginal, and the poor who share communities in the Soap Market and should obtain the right to the central public space in the city. With the critical concept of visual manipulation, Burgher’s dérive shown in his. 治政大of the Soap Market and the under the attractive surface of the spectacle. The demise 立. textual flânerie is the détournement which reveals the separation of social life hidden. erecting of the Arcadia influence the lives of working-class people: they are more. ‧ 國. 學. exploited by capitalism without noticing it. Besides, the shopping mall Arcadia. ‧. represents not only the urban spectacle but also the expansion of capitalist territory. I. sit. y. Nat. would like to employ the critical concept of the spectacle discussed by SI to argue. io. er. that Burgher’s textual flânerie contributes to the revelation of an alienated society. al. mediated by commodities and images, and that Burgher’s dérive is practiced as the. n. v i n Cspectacular denunciation of the way in which dissects the urban landscape for h e n g cpower hi U its own profit. First, the spectacle refers to that the social life is so colonized by commodities and images that people are like passive spectators rather than active agents. People are unconsciously imbued with the ideology and values represented by the attractive appearance of commodities. Besides, through the spectacle people acquire the knowledge of aspects of social life although this knowledge is falsified. That is why Debord claims that “[t]he spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images” (Society of the Spectacle. 13.

(22) 7). 8 Second, the spectacle causes separation from reality and from individual truth. Debord thinks the spectacle as “the culmination of humanity’s internal separation” (12). On the one hand, the spectacle can subject people to manipulation while obscuring the deprivations of capitalism. Therefore, they are separated from the reality of capitalist exploitation. On the other hand, when people contemplate the surface of commodities, they actually get caught in a speculative world of images. For this reason, they are also separated from direct experiences and immediate emotions and desires. 9. 治政大reproduction of dominant production of urban spaces which are associated with the 立 Third, the separation is concretized by urbanism when it comes to the. social and economic interests. 10 “While all the technical forces of capitalism. ‧ 國. 學. contribute toward various forms of separation, urbanism provides the material. ‧. foundation for those forces and prepares the ground for their deployment. It is the. sit. y. Nat. very technology of separation” (Debord, Society of the Spectacle 95). This separation. io. er. refers to “atomizing” the workers and reintegrating them into “pseudo-community” (95, 96). 11 Moreover, the social polarization which is fundamental in capitalist. al. n. v i n Ch domination is simultaneously strengthened by the raised income and e n gandcobscured hi U leisure society. Finally, the expansion of capitalist territory results in unification that leads to the destruction of local distinctive realities. Debord states that “[c]apitalist production has unified space, breaking down the boundaries between one society and 8. In terms of the concept of spectacle, Jenks explains that the spectacle “indicates rules of what to see and how to see it, it is the ‘see-ness,’ the (re)presentational aspect of phenomena that are promoted, not the politics or aesthetics of their being ‘see-worthy’” (27). 9 Seven Best argues that the spectacle causes an abstraction and raises it “to the point where we no longer live the world per se…but in an abstract image of the world” (Baudrillard: A Critical Reader 48). It is in this abstraction that people are alienated from reality and individual truth. 10 In the seventh chapter “Territorial Domination” of Society of the Spectacle, Debord discusses urban space in the formulation of the spectacle. 11 The pseudo-community means that people are gathered by the needs of production and consumption planned by capitalism. Actually, they are separated from each other instead of forming a real community.. 14.

(23) the next,” and this unification will “undermine the autonomy and quality of places” (94). In Arcadia, Burgher’s textual flânerie depicts a city where the manipulation of the spectacle causes alienation, and the urban planning under the principle of the spectacle obscurely forces capitalist deprivation and leads to the destruction of local history and memory. Ⅳ. Chapter Organization In the first chapter of my thesis, I argue that the narration of this novel could be regarded as Burgher’s textual flânerie which presents the city as a collage constituted. 政治大 includes his and several characters’ walking in the city, so the street-level perspective 立 by different interpretations represented by different characters. What he records. ‧ 國. 學. is the most significant for knowing a city and for connecting individual feelings with objective environment. I would examine the significance of the dérive taken by. ‧. Burgher and the meanings of different characters’ walking taken in their everyday life.. sit. y. Nat. Walking as a spatial practice provides Rook a way to revive his emotions and feelings. io. er. so as to prevent the banality of life. For Aunt, strolling in the streets is necessary for. al. v i n C against urban hegemony. Burgher’shdérive only as an investigation of i U e n gworks c hnot n. her while begging to survive, but it also allows her individual freedom and resistance. urban life but also as a critical tool that, operated in the realm of everyday life, fragments the city into different zones of ambience and reconstructs it into a more humanistic city. Chapter Two will focus on explaining how Burgher’s textual flânerie deconstructs the extension of countryside which is represented by Victor’s rooftop garden and the shopping mall Arcadia. I will examine Burgher’s observation in these two places. From Burgher’s penetrating eye, both of them are artificial environment far away from nature, and the greenery in these places functions as spectacles for. 15.

(24) personal collection and visual consuming. Moreover, Burgher’s dérive in Arcadia not only reveals that the desire for pastoral utopia is degenerated into the commodification of nature but also brings up the issue of public right to the central urban space. A hierarchy and visual code could be preserved in the Arcadia, which is ironically opposed to the freedom and openness in the pastoral utopia Arcadia. I will compare the traditional Soap Market with the modernized shopping mall to argue that: the juxtaposition of the Arcadia topos with the political issue of the use of the central public space is employed by Crace to highlight that the life of city does not reside in. 治政 with the help of its denizens in spite of their position in大 the socioeconomic strata. In 立. the transplanted greenery or manmade countryside, but in the organism which thrives. which leads to the theme of my next chapter.. 學. ‧ 國. this novel, such life is threatened by the establishment of a spectacular building,. ‧. In the third chapter, I would examine the social relationship and the production. sit. y. Nat. of urban space in Arcadia, and I argue that Burgher’s textual flânerie delineates a city. io. er. saturated with the spectacle against which his practice of dérive is taken, and that. al. Burgher’s writing is a resistance against the all-encompassing control of the spectacle.. n. v i n C hthat propels JosephUto emigrate from the country to I will first examine the motivation engchi the city. Then, Victor’s and Em’s interaction with others will be the point to analyze the manipulation of the spectacle on man’s psychology and the alienation it leads to. Moreover, I will also analyze the influence caused by the geographical change which is represented by the incidence that the Soap Market is replaced by the Arcadia. The emphasis will be the demonstration organized by the market traders and its customers and the way how the government deals with the following riot. Burgher’s writing. reveals how the use of the spectacle by the capitalist and bureaucratic power threatens the life of a city.. 16.

(25) The most important of all, Burgher’s dérive also makes known the rebirth of the Soap Market: the Soap Two. It is the place where he can see “life,” where he can feel freedom and interact with the environment at his pleases. I think the power of regeneration represented by the rise of the Soap Two is symbolized by the title of this novel “Arcadia.” “Arcadia” symbolizes life and the power of rebirth. Burgher witnesses the demise as well as the rebirth of the city. The eye that observes the city is like that of the flâneur who drifts in and out of the crowd. The strolling and the keen observation dissolve the alienation between the individual and the environment.. 治政大the excessively objectified, stimulants which could be turned into the power to resist 立 Such observation reveals the heterogeneity in the city. It pays attention to the. programmed world. Reading Arcadia from the situationist perspectives of dérive,. ‧ 國. 學. détournement, and the spectacle, I argue that this novel suggests another literary type. ‧. which is more close to the fragmented urban life, and it maps a psychogeographical. sit. y. Nat. city: the real city is not simply the objective planned space and architecture, but it. io. al. er. could be perceived through spatial practices based on everyday life practice, and. n. through the study of the mental map we can look through the false wonderland which. Ch. is actually the phantasmagoria of commodification.. engchi. 17. i n U. v.

(26) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 18. i n U. v.

(27) Chapter One Dérive: Remapping the City. Ⅰ. Introduction Jim Crace’s Arcadia is an urban fiction which shows his attention to the specifics of space. He writes the impact of change in the form of social organization and addresses the transition from the traditional to the modern, from the country to the city. Such impact makes people rethink the way of living in the city and remake. 政治大 combined with capitalist ambition denies people’s right to the city. However, Arcadia 立 the concept of urban spaces. The modern functionalist design of urban spaces. ‧ 國. 學. is opposed to such hegemony and it shows that the meaning of space determined by urban planners is replaced by the meaning formed in terms of individual feelings and. ‧. sit. Nat. the right to the moments and places out of calibrated life.. y. needs. It shows that people can claim the right to inhabit the city in the way they wish,. io. er. Heterogeneity is also presented in Arcadia, which includes different cultures. al. v i n C takes on the issue ofUsocial hierarchy that is shown city collide. Moreover, Crace also h engchi n. and interpretations of the city. The cultural conflict happens when the country and the. in specific space. His depiction not only climbs high to the space of higher-class people but also walks with common people and goes down to the bottom of the marginal and silent. It makes readers think about the relationship between space and social relation. Psychogeography, one of Situationist International’s concepts, provides a special perspective to investigate the relationship between people and the city. Its emphasis upon man’s feelings influenced by the environment expresses the sovereign decision of the individual. It is achieved by dérive, a spatial practice which undercuts. 19.

(28) the assumption that space can be understood as a thing, and such practice permits a lot of unrealized possibilities and triggers individual emotions and feelings that is dormant in urban people. I argue that the narrator in Arcadia observes and records the city as a flâneur and this novel could be seen as his textual flânerie. This figure takes the spatial practice of dérive to deconstruct the conceptualized space and to present a city which is remapped by individual mentalities. Ⅱ. Dissecting the City The flâneur that rises in the Paris streets and arcades in the nineteenth century. 政治大 particular time and space but later has been allowed to walk away from that context. 立. has long been a significant object of urban studies. This figure was originally tied to a. ‧ 國. 學. The flâneur could be regarded as the ever-fresh interest and vigorous energy to investigate human condition. This novel could be seen as a flâneur’s record of a city. ‧. that works to awaken the public consciousness to the evil generated by the apparently. sit. y. Nat. stable and civilized society and to rethink the meaning of living in the city. According. io. er. to Simon Sadler, “[t]he situationist ‘drifter’ was the new flâneur” who “skirted the old. al. v i n Ch the concepts of dérive and psychogeography, i U Burgher presents a new e n g cthehnarrator n. quarters of the city in order to experience the flip side of modernization” (56). With. form of cartography which enables representing states of consciousness and feelings and connects them to the objective spaces through the practice of dérive. A. The Flâneur: A Lens to See the Metropolis Different parts of a city contain different and multiple meanings. Those meanings may be defined by institutional functions, or decided by means of the excavating of cultural development. In any case, they need to be discovered through “practices of methodology and through reflexivity” (Jenks 12). Jenks emphasizes the methodology through which we observe the city and bring up the flâneur and explains. 20.

(29) why this figure’s characteristics advantage observation of the relationship between people and the urban environment. Some critics such as Susan Buck-Morss and Elisabeth Wilson bring up the problems the flâneur will undergo in the metropolis: the domination of capitalist system, the darkness and danger that hide somewhere in the city, both of which make the flâneur a deconstructed one. However, the essential characteristics of this figure, such as mobility, detachment, and observation, might be advantages to survive in the labyrinthine metropolis and even to create meanings in the disorienting space of metropolis. 12. 治政 observation. Chris Jenks looks back on the poet created大 by Baudelaire as the 立. First of all, the flâneur possesses the sovereignty based in anonymity and. embodiment of the flâneur and mentions that the flâneur is “the metaphoric figure. ‧ 國. 學. originally brought into being by Baudelaire (1964), as the spectator and depicter of. ‧. modern life, most specifically in relation to contemporary art and the sights of the. sit. y. Nat. city” (Jenks 13). The flâneur is considered by Baudelaire an observer who is “a prince. io. er. enjoying his incognito wherever he goes” (Baudelaire 1972: 400). The anonymity is. al. advantageous to deciphering the secrets and mysteries of the city because it provides. n. v i n C freely the privilege to move and observe The public conceals no h e ningtheccrowd. hi U. mysteries for this person who holds his own mystery. According to Keith Tester, the flâneur knows that he is just the constituent part of the metropolitan flux and that the 12. In “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century” (1939), Benjamin depicts that the flâneur walks in the streets of the capitalist city and “the intelligentsia becomes acquainted with the marketplace. It surrenders itself to the market, thinking merely to look around; but in fact it is already seeking a buyer” (The Arcade Project 21). Buck-Morss in “The Flâneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore” further explains this commodification embodied by the flâneur: “In order to survive under capitalism [the flâneur] writes about what he sees, and sells the product . . . His protests against the social order are never more than gestures because (not surprisingly under capitalism) he needs money” (Buck-morss 111-112). It seems that the capitalism makes the flâneur have no choice but to survive by following its rules, and the creativity and intelligence of this figure degenerate into the means to look for profits. Moreover, Elizabeth Wilson in “The Invisible Flâneur” argues that the heart of Benjamin’s meditation on the flâneur is “the ambivalence towards urban life . . . a sorrowful engagement with the melancholy of cities” (73). “The city is a labyrinth and the flâneur an embodiment of it” (74). That is to say, living in the city of fragmentation, disorientation, and indifference, the flâneur is paralyzed and loses his activeness, and the path of his strolling takes the form of labyrinth which means “the attenuation and deferral of satisfaction” (74).. 21.

(30) metropolitan crowd might crush him, but it is this sense that makes him different from all the others in the crowd (The Flâneur 3). 13 The flâneur is apart from the rubbernecks who just blindly follow the flux of crowds because his knowledge of being in the crowd and his princely incognito endows him the ability to make the significance and the meaning of the metropolitan space for himself. He is like a prince who defines the world rather than allowing things or appearances to control him. He is the person who “cannot be pinned down” (Jenks 15). Second, the flâneur, rich in imagination and good at observing, is able to have. 治政 between human minds and the metropolis. Jenks claims大 that “the flâneur possesses a 立 an insight to the inner world of people so that he could be aware of the interaction. power; it walks at will, freely and seemingly without purpose, but simultaneously. ‧ 國. 學. with an inquisitive wonder and an infinite capacity to absorb the activities of the. ‧. collective─often formulated as ‘the crowd’” (Jenks 14). Just like the poet in. sit. y. Nat. Baudelaire’s writings, the flâneur “enjoys an incomparable privilege: in his own way. io. er. he’s able to be himself or someone else. Like those wandering souls in search of a. al. body, he enters anyone’s personality whenever he wants to” (Baudelaire 1991: 355).. n. v i n Csimply In this way, the metropolis is not appearance and the planned h e nthegobjective chi U functional parts we can find in a map but more complicated and related to the. subjective motives, feelings, and experiences. This figure who is “the lover of life, may . . . be compared to a mirror as vast as this crowd; to a kaleidoscope endowed with consciousness” (Baudelaire 1972: 400). Therefore, the flâneur is less to passively present the contingencies of spectacles than to consciously take each person’s behaviors and inner activities as lenses to see the metropolis and piece. 13. Keith Tester claims that although the flâneur is a face in the crowd along with all the other faces, “behind the face of the poet [the flâneur] lurks a great secret of nobility,” and “the nobility of the poet is located quite precisely in his thinking of his mediocrity in the eyes of others” (Tester, The Flâneur 3).. 22.

(31) fragments of people’s experiences together into the understanding and meanings of the metropolis. According to Chris Jenks’ argument, the flâneur as a concept could be used as “an analytic form, a narrative device, an attitude towards knowledge and its social context,” and it is also “an image of movement through the social space of modernity” (Jenks 17). That is to say, because of unconstrained characteristics of this figure, we can use it as a lens to see our society, a device to present observation and thoughts, and an analytic form to illuminate social issues. It is like “a multilayered. 治政 “the practical organization of space and its negotiation 大 by inhabitants of a city,” to “a 立 palimpsest” that enables us to “move” from “real products of modernity,” through. critical appreciation of the state of modernity and its erosion into the post-” (17). 14 It. ‧ 國. 學. continues its street reading “from Baudelaire through Surrealism to the Situationist. ‧. International” (24). Debord’s dérive is “relevant to the walking methodologist (the. sit. y. Nat. flâneur within the [post] modern city)” (24). Therefore, Jenks refuses the. io. al. er. simplification and homogenization of the flâneur, and dérive could be taken as an. n. aspect of the broader concept of flânerie.. Ch. B. Dérive and Psychogeography. engchi. i n U. v. Guy Debord elaborates the practice of dérive through which the flâneur could undertake the investigation on the relationship between city people and urban space: Among the various situationist method is the dérive [literally: ‘drifting’], a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances. The derive entails playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects; 14. Jenks discards the simplification and homogeneity of the flâneur. Instead, he presents it as a concept with which we can form an understanding of carious issues of the city and subject matters of (post)modernity without the restriction of time, space, gender, and class. Besides, its traces could be found in different domains such as politics, society, economics, and literature. As what John Rignall states in his article “Benjamin’s Flâneur and the Problem of Realism:” the flâneur is “constituted intertextually” because we can find its application in Baudelaire’s essays and poetry, Poe’s fiction and Balzac’s, Dickens’ letters, Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, and documentary and historical writings about Paris (Rignall 113).. 23.

(32) completely distinguishes it from the classical notions of the journey and the stroll. In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. (Situationist International Anthology 50) According to Debord’s definition, Jenks further explains that the dérive does not refer to simply drifting with passivity but “demands a response to inducement, albeit. 治政大as enticement to follows whatever cue, or indeed clue, that the streets offer 立. unplanned and unstructured” (Jenks 24). “In the ‘dérive’ the explorer of the city. fascination” (25). Nevertheless, it does not demonstrate the total submission to. ‧ 國. 學. unconscious desire that characterizes surrealist wanderings. Debord criticizes the. ‧. surrealist aimless ambulation for its “insufficient awareness of the limitations of. sit. y. Nat. chance” (Situationist International Anthology 51). Coverley states that “[t]he dérive. io. er. may lack a clear destination but it is not without purpose” (96). It aims at seizing the. al. city whose seductive surface misrepresents the repressive realities of capitalist. n. v i n C h want to embraceUchance as an emblem of consumption. Therefore, situationists engchi freedom and to encounter the heterogeneous in the reified society as what surrealists try to practice. Moreover, they also aim at transforming the urban space through a psychogeographical investigation that examines the ways in which the areas resonate with particular ambiences. According to Debord’s definition, psychogeography is the point where psychology and geography collide: Geography, for example, deals with the determinant action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climate conditions, on the. 24.

(33) economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world. Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. (Situationist International Anthology 5) Therefore, what psychogeography shows is the relationship between the individual state of mind and the environmental elements. What it contains is not the rigid zones or routes that define the order of a place. Actually, it is composed of fragments of. 治政大governed. Therefore, “[t]he the useful connection by which his conduct is ordinarily 立. special climates and spontaneous turns of direction taken by a subject who disregards. city begins . . . to take on the characteristics of a map of the mind” (Jenks 25). Debord. ‧ 國. 學. mentions the significance of such “renovated cartography”: “[t]he production of. ‧. psychogeographic maps…can contribute to clarifying certain wanderings that express. sit. y. Nat. not subordination to randomness but complete insubordination to habitual influences”. io. er. (Situationist International Anthology 7). These influences determine habitual patterns. al. of the residents, but what the map presents is a contrast to such repetitive, usual. n. v i n C hthe spontaneous tendencies directives. Psychogeography shows for orientation of a engchi U subject who traverses the city without regarding practical consideration, and this “renovated cartography” also subverts the structure of the canonical omnipotent map and contributes to explore the impact of urban places upon human behaviors. Sadler claims that “the power of psychogeography . . . lay precisely in its intoxicating combination of subjective and objective . . . approaches to urban exploration” (The Situationist City 81). There are many emotional zones in the city that cannot be determined simply by architectural or economic conditions. Debord claims that “[t]he sudden change of ambience in the street within the space of. 25.

(34) a few meters; the evident division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres” are neglected (Situationist International Anthology 6). The results of such ambiences “form the basis of a new cartography characterized by a complete disregard for the traditional and habitual practices of the tourist” (Psychogeography 90). These zones are emphasized as unities of ambiences that are constituent parts of psychogeographical maps. However, there are no directed routes to connect them and no indication of the distances between them. These fragments and the gaps between them replace the totality and coherence of a canonical map. Sadler points out that “the. 治政大 of light and sound, of elements of the city scene; the play of presence and absence, 立. unities of ambience were constituted by many things, especially the ‘soft’, mutable. human activity, even of time, and the association of ideas” (70). They are more about. ‧ 國. 學. psychology, sensations, social relations, and history. Moreover, psychogeography. ‧. does not discover unities of ambiences as fixed, geographical phenomena which exist. sit. y. Nat. in a spatial context, but it constructs them with “soft and mutable elements” that. io. er. interacts with space. According to McDonough’s explanation of ambiences, he thinks. al. that in Debord’s psychogeographical maps, “space does not simply reflect social. n. v i n Cishconstituted by them” relations; it is constitutive of and e n g c h i U (252). “Rather than a. container suitable for description, space becomes part of a process: the process of ‘inhabiting’ enacted by social groups” (252). Therefore, psychogeography denies space as just context but unites it to social practice and reveals its relationship and interaction with human activities. C. From Arcadia to Soap Two Operated in the realm of everyday life to construct a fragmented but more humanistic city, dérive could be seen as a means to explore the relationship between man and urban spaces. I argue that the narrator of Arcadia is a flâneur who moves. 26.

(35) between solitude and multitude at will and whose dérive seems to be purposeless but actually with “an inquisitive wonder” to enquire activities of the collective and to collect fragments of urban life (Jenks 14). The narrator is a flâneur-like person who mostly hides himself behind the story he tells until the description of his own strolling from the new shopping mall Arcadia to the makeshift Soap Two in the last part of this novel. He appears very shortly in the first part of the book for introducing himself as a journalist whose pseudonym is Burgher. He strolls, observes, makes inquiries about anecdotes in the city and writes “mordant, mocking” diaries on the city’s daily (Crace. 治政大and emphasizes the people souls. Crace puts Burgher behind the curtain of the stage 立. 73). He possesses the freedom to observe in incognito and the ability to enter people’s. and things this character feels interested in and keeps tracing. Although the author. ‧ 國. 學. does not shape Burgher with many details, this character still conforms to the image. ‧. of the flâneur who appears as a detached observer. Therefore, this novel could be. sit. y. Nat. taken as Burgher’s record of the city, his textual flânerie in the city, and the flâneur is. io. er. both embodied in the character Burgher and employed by Crace as “a narrative. al. devise” to present a city (Jenks 17).. n. v i n Arcadia could be taken asC Victor’s as well as the record of the h e nbiography gchi U. evolution of a city. Burgher is retained to write Victor’s life, and in the last chapter he says that he has the first line of Victor’s life: “No wonder Victor never fell in love,” and readers can see this sentence right at the beginning of this novel (Crace 3, 369). Thus, it is reasonable to think that Burgher is the narrator of Arcadia, and that he has the accesses to enter Victor’s and his mother’s inner worlds as what we can perceive in the second chapter. Burgher has clues and information from Anna who becomes Victor’s assistant after Rook is dismissed, Victor himself who feels uneasy about expressing himself but still tells some details of his early life, and some crucial. 27.

(36) “pointers” who bear this old man’s story out. However, what this book contains about Victor’s life is not complete, and most of the description focuses upon his childhood, his abject early life. Burgher is not an omnipotent narrator because the information he gets about Victor and other characters is limited and fragmented. It reveals the truth that as a flâneur, with the detached involvement and observation, to completely know a person is hardly possible. There exists ambivalence in the narration: Arcadia might be taken as Victor’s biography, but urban space and the reaction of its inhabitants to the prominent incident seem to be more the focus of Burgher’s textual flânerie in this. 治政大Taking the incident that the Arcadia is not written to eulogize Victor’s achievement. 立 novel. Burgher, as a flâneur, has “a creative attitude of urban inquisition,” and. Soap Market is going to be replaced by the giant shopping mall Arcadia as a crucial. ‧ 國. 學. transition, Burgher not only describes how the city changes under the domination of. ‧. capitalism and bureaucracy but also brings up struggles and many interpretations of. sit. y. Nat. the city presented by its main characters, including Burgher’s thoughts and comments.. io. er. Therefore, what Burgher depicts is not Victor’s city, not the readable text by city. al. planners from above, but the heterogeneity which is observed down below in the. n. v i n Cthe ever-changing urban space. From material change of urban spectacles to h evisible, ngchi U the unseen activities of everyday life of the peripheral, Burgher makes his textual flânerie the collective and personal archives. Arcadia is not praise for “[t]he tallest buildings,” not for “those who spend their lives in contemplation of their monuments,” but for the evolution of a city which is attained by its inhabitants who create their spaces out of the vision of the dominant. Crace gives critical understandings of the city through Burgher’s exploration of the marginal and the forgotten, and expressed them by his sardonic tone. Burgher keeps observing and describing the influence of objective environment upon the. 28.

(37) subjective mind: ex-trader Rook oscillates between two material spaces, the office building Big Vic and the Soap Market, as well as two political spaces, the capitalist predators and the powerless market traders; Victor’s impoverished childhood in the marketplace causes his desire for order and his dominating but alienated view of the city; Aunt thinks city streets endow her with chance, freedom, and delight while her sister Em feels helpless and alienated in such strange and indifferent labyrinth. What Burgher focuses upon is not the rational knowledge of the city but the cognitive city in each character’s mind according to which he or she reacts to the objective. 治政 homogeneous appearance of the city with fragmentary 大 urban experiences, and the city 立 environment. Therefore, the flânerie used as a narrative device in Arcadia disrupts the. shows the characteristic of the psychogeographical collage.. ‧ 國. 學. Depictions of several places, such as the Soap Market, Big Vic, Arcadia, the. ‧. Soap Two, and of man’s activities in them, present the attraction or repellence of a. sit. y. Nat. space to people. Not only geographical information but also man’s thinking and. io. er. emotion aroused by these zones are described. From Burgher’s narration of his own. al. walking, he gets totally different feelings in two zones of ambiences which exist right. n. v i n CofhArcadia, BurgherUshows up and describes his beside each other. In the last part engchi. feelings about two places: the huge, themepark-like Arcadia and the spontaneously assembled Soap Two. At this time, the open-air Soap Market has already been gutted and replaced by a gigantic glass-and-concrete mall. The narrator has a monthly lunch with his fading comrades in Arcadia. This building is made to bring the country into town and to represent “a country walk right at the city’s heart” (Crace 231). In its interior, a greenhouse and numerous kinds of plants, an aviary of tropical birds, and stalls and shops, create a village atmosphere. However, its temperature, humidity, and even the smell are controlled by machines. It provides “produce of the gene-bank and. 29.

(38) the science farm” and only welcomes “the city’s swiftest, trimmest, smartest clientele” (355, 364). Its customers must follow rules enforced by a man in uniform: there should be no eating on the hoof, no dining on the food brought outside, no cigarettes (362). Contrary to this closed, defended world, Soap Two is “the makeshift market” which “flourishes on noise and filth and rain” (364-365). It seems like the resurrection of the Soap Market. It provides unselected, cheap fruit and vegetables still moist with country rain. There are no rules to follow here. People are treated the same, free to buy things and do whatever they want, and even the commissionaire. 治政大mechanical environment of complicate – the ecstasy of crowds” (372). The artificial, 立 who summons and directs people from everywhere in the city “hopes to share – and. Arcadia, lack of life and under surveillance, is opposed to the lively space of Soap. ‧ 國. 學. Two. Although Arcadia is a well-guarded and invulnerable place for people to shop. ‧. and stroll without worrying about any danger, what Burgher sees is a stifling place. sit. y. Nat. that makes him a pure spectator and consumer. On the contrary, Soap Two endows. io. er. him with “the blessing of the multitude” and the freedom to be an active person. al. creating his own space (374). Therefore, he decides to walk into Soap Two rather. n. v i n Cexhibition than passively looking among the and the stale h e n gofccommodity hi U entertainment.. Crace treats a space not as an object that contains human activities but as a part of social relation. He is attentive to the undulation of emotion affected by a space and man’s reaction to it. Arcadia is not simply a space for shopping and entertainment but also a representation of social class. The customers are variations of the same type and their behavior is restrained. When all the dangerous and chaotic elements are excluded outside, the diversity and freedom of urban spaces are sacrificed as well. It is the “life” Burgher feels in Soap Two that more attracts him than the “flamboyant. 30.

(39) uniformity,” “recreant geometry,” and “managed cheerfulness” of Arcadia do (Crace 372, 362). Such different feelings for spaces will not be noted in the traditional map. The psychological understanding of a space must be obtained through engaging in activities and noting emotional changes. Besides, the unpermitted Soap Two could be regarded as the subversion against the administrative plan and surveillance of the city, and also as everyday life struggling for the right to urban spaces against the monolithic monument. While Victor builds Arcadia to memorize his life, Burgher makes his “living mark upon the city” through dérive (375). Such living mark may. 治政 feelings and the objective environment. Victor’s mark 大 is only a spectacle, but 立. symbolize Burgher’s creation of spaces that shows the combination of the subjective. “playful-constructive” narrative of an urban terrain.. 學. ‧ 國. Burgher’s mark, the act of walking, opens up spatial possibilities in the. ‧. It is explained by David Frisby in “The Flâneur in Social Theory” that: “The. sit. y. Nat. flâneur as marginal figure, collecting clues to the metropolis, like the ragpicker. io. er. assembling the refuse, like the detective seeking to bring insignificant details and seemingly fortuitous events into a meaningful constellation ─ they are all seeking to. al. n. v i n read the traces from the details”C (Tester the process of piecing together h e n99).gDuring chi U the scraps of city the flâneur keeps chasing his essence of existence. In this novel, flânerie is not only part of the narrator’s work as a society columnist but also the means to “complete his otherwise incomplete identity” (Tester 7). It is not “the attenuation and deferral of satisfaction” Wilson claims in “The Invisible Flâneur” (Postmodern Cities and Spaces 74). Jenks establishes the flâneur as “a creative attitude of urban inquisition and a ‘relative’ absence of variable constraints” (Jenks. 28). Robert E. Park argues that the city “shows the good and evil in human nature in excess. It is this fact…that would make of the city a laboratory or clinic in which. 31.