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The enchanted path: magic and modernism in psychogeographical walking
Author(s) -
Bonnett Alastair
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/tran.12177
Subject(s) - magic (telescope) , subversion , modernism (music) , aesthetics , symbol (formal) , sociology , openness to experience , literature , art , philosophy , politics , law , political science , psychology , social psychology , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics
Geographers have a developing interest in the place of enchantment and the ‘extra‐ordinary’ in the modern city. The paper shows that magic has a significant role in the work of many psychogeographical writers, artists and activists, and argues that this phenomenon needs to be understood in the context of the wider use of magic as a site and symbol of creativity and subversion in modernist cultural expression. Drawing on a survey of British psychogeographical forms and a more detailed study of three London literary examples, it examines how psychogeographical walkers have expanded and developed ‘magical modernism’. Across the varied terrain of psychogeographical walking, magic is used to conjure an openness and vulnerability to voices ‘hidden’ in the landscape. As well as providing more in‐depth discussion of these themes, the three examples of London psychogeography that I explore complicate them by illustrating further specific and diverse uses of magic – namely, magic as environmentalist critique, magic as humour/humour as magic and magic as activism.