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Walking Inside Out is the first text that attempts to merge the work of literary and artist practitioners with academics to critically explore the state of psychogeography today. The collection explores contemporary psychogeographical practices, shows how a critical form of walking can highlight easily overlooked urban phenomenon, and examines the impact that everyday life in the city has on the individual. Through a variety of case studies, it offers a British perspective of international spaces, from the British metropolis to the post-communist European city. By situating the current strand of psychogeography within its historical, political and creative context along with careful consideration of the challenges it faces Walking Inside Out offers a vision for the future of the discipline.

Psychogeography: In recent years this term has been used to illustrate a bewildering array of ideas from ley lines and the occult, to urban walking and political radicalism. But where does it come from and what exactly does it mean? This book examines the origins of psychogeography in the Paris of the 1950s, exploring the theoretical background and its political application in the work of Guy Debord and the Situationists. Psychogeography continues to find retrospective validation in much earlier traditions, from the visionary writing of William Blake and Thomas De Quincey to the rise of the flâneur and the avant-garde experimentation of the Surrealists. These precursors to psychogeography are discussed here alongside their modern counterparts, for today these ideas hold greater currency than ever through the popularity of writers and filmmakers such as Iain Sinclair, Will Self and Patrick Keiller.

From the urban wanderer to the armchair traveller, psychogeography provides us with new ways of experiencing our environment, transforming the familiar streets of our everyday experience into something new and unexpected. Merlin Coverley conducts the reader through this process, providing an explanation of the terms involved and an analysis of the key figures and their works.

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