Surrealism, situationists, city and Great Acceleration. Towards a psychogeography of the “right there” [ahí] in the era of ecological crisis

Abstract

Psychogeography and other poetic games with urban space, which the surrealists and situationists understood as weapons of revolutionary change, must be analyzed in their specific socio-ecological and historical contexts. Thus, the canonical period of psychogeography must be understood within the framework of the metabolic reality of the Great Acceleration and its effect on the city, with the transition from coal to oil as the center of our energy matrix. This article analyzes these connections and investigates the new socio-ecological realities that a 21st-century psychogeography must take as its starting point: the consummation of the neoliberal city and the ecological crisis of industrial civilization.

Keywords

• psychogeography of “right there”
• situationism
• surrealism
• great acceleration
• ecological crisis