Walter Benjamin, cultural theorist and writer wrote about the city through a series of ‘urban pen pictures’ – experiments in the representation of the city to capture the fleeting and contingent. These ‘thought images’ were a way of mapping personal history that modern society threatens to destroy.
This paper draws on Walter Benjamin’s philosophy for considering the ‘city as text’ – a way of writing that maps personal history through a series of ‘urban pen pictures’. It considers Brixton, in South London – a place of constant change yet embedded in history – through the perspective of autobiography. In an attempt to ‘know’ Brixton, I draw on memories of my past, whilst confronting the overwhelming stimuli of the present. The paper references Benjamin’s unfinished work, The Arcades Project (1927-1940), a series of fragmented writings about the Paris arcades, the habitat of the flâneur or urban explorer who embodies modern urban experience. It draws an oblique parallel with Brixton’s covered arcades, lately preserved as ‘listed’ and recently reborn as ‘Brixton Village’. The paper touches on ideas about identity and the city and how place – its architecture, shops, history, images and associations – imposes a powerful and lifelong impact in our sense of belonging.
Dr Judith Rugg is an artist and art theorist and Professor of Contemporary Art & Spatial Culture, emerita, UCA. Her publications include: Spatialities: The Geographies of Art & Architecture (Intellect Press, 2012); Exploring Site-Specific Art: Issues of Space & Internationalism (IB Tauris, 2010); Issues in Curating, Contemporary Art & Performance (Intellect Press, 2008); ‘Maternal Loss, Transitional Space and the Uncanny in Alison Marchant’s Kingsland Road East’ in Textile Journal of Cloth and Culture; ‘Sophie Calle’s Appointment at the Freud Museum: Intervention or Irony?’ in New Practices, New Pedagogies (Malcolm Miles, ed. Routledge, 2005).
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Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin), (Harvard University Press, 2002)
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Keywords: Brixton, Walter Benjamin, London, autobiography, the city
