‘Cities and Schizophrenia’
The attempt to ‘read’ the city and so to master it has been the subject of so much writing: Wordsworth, Blake, De Quincey, Dickens, Gissing, and Joyce being some examples from the ‘English’ tradition. But the modern city, unlike the village, or the country-setting, cannot be read, because it knows no inside or outside; its exterior harbours secrets as much as its interiors; put another way, the city allows no separation between the person who tries to understand it, and what is beheld: it allows no single-subject position to exist as the observer. [continue reading]
