Rethinking the City

Sadler's article was way easier for me to understand, both because it is just generally more accessible in the way it was written, and because I have the benefit of tuesday's class discussion. It started off with an explanation of the situationist's goals and philosophy, and then went on to describe the drift before tackling the maps that are iconic of the group. When discussing The Naked City, Sadler talked about how the sections of Paris were cut apart with great care, and how this shows you that the streets were walked and considered. This made me see The Naked City as a more complex piece than McDonough's article which said that the portions of the city don't line up along the proper east-west axes, but didn't offer much of an explanation of why or what this could mean. Sadler on pg 248 gives examples of buildings that were included in the maps and how they are changed from their original purpose and how the
healthy state bodies" are absent from the maps.

Looking back at the end pages of McDonough's article I saw some of the same ideas in Sadler's piece regarding the discussion on the Derive or the drift. Namely, they both differentiated between situationists and surrealists, though Sadler did this in a way that made it understandable for me. They also used a lot of the same quotes from Debord himself to describe the act and essence of the drift. I think one reason Sadler's article was easier to read is that he gives more context for the quotes and explains them thouroughly afterwards, instead of relying on the reader to decipher the arcaic grammar and awkward wording that arises from translations.

One Question arose when Sadler brought up the idea of the male point of view, and that most of the drifters were white men who used the drift as a way to somehow conquer the city. He then also said that there were a few women and non-europeans who used the rift as a way to rebel against the rule of the white men in power. I found this very interesing that these two groups could have appearantly contradictory purposes yet use the same means. I guess it kind of works if you remember that the men were also rebeling against the imposed order of the time... okay maybe that wasn't a question just a point of thought.

Question 2: Appearantly, the word or act of the derive/drift has military/nautical connotaions? I didn't really understand this part of either of the articles, and it was mentioned in both.

Aside: I liked the allusion to Jackson Polluck in reference to an early railway network map on pg 234