Join me in person on Sunday 23 April, 3-4pm in The Round George’s function room, 14-15 Sutherland Avenue, Brighton, BN2 0EQ. You will have an opportunity to ASK ME ANYTHING! about the project. And together we can celebrate the excitement and trepidation of beginning the continuous long walk around and across the United Kingdom, and potentially beyond. All WELCOME. I look forward to meeting you then!
[Content Note: swear words, discussion of poverty and chronic illness]
I am drifting. Untethered, unfettered, movement. Seeing where it takes me, rather than where I am taken. An important difference. To drift purposefully without purpose, by choosing to actively, playfully, encounter the world just outside (or even within) our door, radically resists the reactive, purposeless drifting from one worldly demand to another. It offers space to just be and be with—to honour our most neglected human needs.
In an important sense my choice, this purpose, has been borne out having no other choice. Yet again, all I want to do is walk. Just put one foot in front of the other. This time on the streets of Melbourne. Alas, once more—with all good intentions, best laid plans, and all that—not by me. Well, not as planned. For good reasons that I shall get to in a bit, my body simply refused.
My plan had been to test out being a flâneur (noun, masculine), or more accurately, a flâneuse (noun, feminine), literally defined as ‘one who wanders aimlessly.’ Specifically, in urban environments, the city. Usually, the big cities—Paris, London, New York, Tokyo. And with its cosmopolitan attitude, Melbourne is perhaps the best fit as Australia’s ‘big’ city. (However, before I get all of Sydney completely riled, Melbourne was primarily a pragmatic choice as I was offered unconditionally a place to stay.)
But the more I read about flânerie, the less I care for it. Its seemingly innocuous aim of aimlessness, disguises its noxious practice of ‘people watching.’ Where the flâneur purposefully dresses and acts in ways to ‘blend in’ to give him the best opportunity to ‘observe.’ So, it is claimed, through the flâneur’s voyerism, he becomes ‘attuned to the city,’ coming to understand the people of the streets, perhaps, even better than they know themselves. Unfortunately, for me, the feminist alternative does not seem to escape (or at least, does not adequately address) this aim of turning ordinary people’s lives into an intellectualised spectacle. For, as far as I can tell, the flâneuse’s loudest complaint is that as a woman, she cannot ‘blend in’ to the street in the way the flâneur can, and thus, the flâneuse regrets missing out on the privilege of performing this sort of looking and knowing.
Indeed—this feminist asks, I ask—why would any woman want to claim this sort of looking at all?
I recognise and generally share the desire to inhabit the wider world in the ways that men, especially educated middle and upper class men, take for granted. But, it does not mean that we should indiscriminately strive to do so in every way. Significantly, where it means a privileged few necessarily reduce living, breathing, thinking people into mere objects to imitate and study. As with Stage One of this project, I am once again struck by the lack of reflection in the writing on walking about the related implications of class, privilege, and freedom in appropriating the lives of those who have no choice to live otherwise—typically, the ordinary poor.
Revealingly, I cannot see me in any version of their flâneur/flâneuse, rather, I am clearly their object, to be freely looked at, yet too ignorant to look back. So, even if my body had been up to it, flânerie is not for me. Instead, I turn to the feminism that has taught us to question and resist this sort of objectification as a way of knowing. That further alerts us to the privilege of our subjective experience to know the world in the particular way it forms us as we pass through it. And right now I have the rare privilege to choose how I pass through it. To do what I want when I want to. Or more precisely, do what I need when I need it. My body commanded rest.
Having reactively drifted to the relentless demands of the world without, I have now actively chosen to drift to the demands of my world within. As mentioned earlier, I have chosen to listen to my body’s refusal. Or as I like to put, after years of needing to hold it all together to survive, I am now allowing myself some much needed time falling apart with the hope to thrive. Predictably, I add to the statistics of the poor who are disproportionately chronically ill. Also, predictably, I am a statistic of academia’s deep precariousness. But against the statistically predicted consequence of falling into the (no exaggeration) death spiral of perpetual sick notes and benefits commitments, I have chosen (metaphorically and literally) to walk away.
I now have no regular income. But I now also have no employer to dictate my working hours and required outputs nor multiple government departments assessing my eligibility to be unemployed, to be ill, to regulate my time, activities, location, even spending. I am free to rest. To drift.
Subsequently, I have discovered I am an unwitting psychogeographer. Well, of sorts.
The practice of dérive (to drift, drifting) is established by the mid-twentieth century Situationists, and first articulated by Guy Debord in 1958, where dérive is described as ‘a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences.’ According to Debord, drifting requires losing our usual motives for movement and actions; say, when we go to the shops, work, even for leisure, or our current fashion for fitness. Instead, for a time, we purposefully and consciously allow ourselves to be drawn along by the attraction of our surroundings and the encounters we have along the way. The drifter has two intentions that influence the literal ground covered, that is: either to study or map the surroundings; or for emotional disorientation or reaction to the surroundings. Although the former emphasises the geography, and the latter the psychology, these two inseparably follow, what Debord calls, the ‘psychogeographical contours’ of the city.
Although the historical drifters were primarily men, who exhibit the overt masculinity of the historical flâneur, by focussing on the drifter’s own un/conscious experience and the reciprocity of encounter, rather than aiming for objective observing, the Situationist’s theory is open to a clearer, more desirable, feminist alternative. Indeed, one that includes the likes of me. I suggest that not only does drifting offer space for the ordinary poor, but also for the ubiquitous yet obscured disabled.
I shall never be conventionally fit. Counter-intuitively, exercise can make my chronic illness worse. Walking is one of the few physical things that I can do in a sustained way that does not readily make me ill. Still, I am regularly not well enough to even walk. Over a lifetime, I have learnt to make these very particular instances of severe fatigue my friend, and in important ways it keeps me safe. With great effort and discipline, I have been able to develop from relying on the typical (and understandable) survival strategy to over-ride my illness, faking well just to get by, to thriving by exploiting my illness as my ally, by becoming attuned to my genuine needs to fully live.
Central to my thriving is my practice of, what I call, ‘do what I feel’ days. Like the Situationists’ drifting, ‘doing what I feel’ is not merely succumbing to or being lead by reactive impulse. Rather it is the active, purposeful, kindness of listening to what my body, heart, soul really needs in that moment and actually giving it to myself. Analogous to following the psychogeographical contours of the city, I consciously follow the contours of my internal topography to see where it leads me—I am drifting within.
For me, this might mean lying on a couch binging every single Star Wars film and live-action series in chronological order (yes, I recently did exactly that); or eating all the chips, and I mean ALL the chips, in their potato-y, fatty, salty glory; or forgoing all activity except minimal hygiene. Importantly, this sort of listening aims to resist the commanding voice of ‘oughts.’ Especially, when it is the old strategy to over-ride my illness disguising itself as genuine needs. These include, for instance: the morally loaded, the FTW (for the win)—I need to do my stretches to manage my pain levels, I ought to do my stretches; the desires, the YOLO (you only live once)—the sea makes me feel better, I ought to walk down to the sea; and the opportunistic, the FOMO (fear of missing out)—I am in Melbourne, I ought to see…
Since I have been in Melbourne, for Stage Two of ‘a philosopHER walks,’ I have seen a whole lot of FUCK ALL. My body refused, and I listened. Instead—to honour my body’s deep need to rest, my heart’s deep need to break, my soul’s deep need to be still—I have been drifting.
AcknowledgementsThanks to the most excellent of friends, Norelle, and number one niece, Eva, for gifting me a place to stay, and your nourishing company.
Thanks to Emily, Leslie, Beda, and Junaid, who, for the price of keeping your cat alive, offered me the whole of your lovely home and access to the Disney+ subscription.
Thanks to everyone I have encountered in Melbourne.
Thanks to Murray for suggesting I look into the Situationists when I gave a talk at the Aesthetics Research Centre, University of Kent. And then, to my friend Anthony, who happens to be an expert on them for giving me a valuable introduction (all misunderstandings and misrepresentations are my own). For more on the Situtationist see the Situationist International Archive.
I am about to commence a test walk, with my great friend and experienced walker, Miranda. We are doing the Great Ocean Walk, along the southern coast of Victoria. It is my first long-distance walk with full pack for many years. Thanks Miranda for being prepared to endure, even share a tent with, my fuckery over the 8 days and ~100kms.
Mid-April I am returning to the United Kingdom to begin Stage Three of ‘a philosopHER walks’, solo-walking from one end of the country to the other and beyond.
If you wish to support this project, in any way, please let me know via the contact page. I particularly appreciate gifts of goods—a meal, a pint, a place to pitch my tent; or exchange of goods—I am proving an excellent cat sitter, for example, but I would also be delighted to give talks, philosophy sessions, or do chores for that meal, pint, campsite pitch.
Where I have to cover cost, my budget is £20/day for all the things. If you would like to help financially, you can shout me the equivalent of a meal, a pint, a campsite pitch, even a day. All gratefully received via my Kofi site: https://ko-fi.com/aphilosopherwalks
[Content note: swear words]
All I want to do is walk. Me and my pack and (my first thought) the entire south west coast of England. From the official website, it looks like all of the national trail can be walked right now, and a further website welcome that it could be walked by all of us right now. But no, not by me. So I look again. Closer to my current home, I find a ‘new’ old pilgrimage trail along the south coast of England. From the official website, it looks like it can be all be walked right now, and could be walked right now by all. But again, no, not by me.
Why? We are told that walking is for everyone. Indeed, everyone should be walking (or counting our steps, at least). And especially, out in nature (have a mindful moment hugging a tree and save yourself and the NHS)! So…WHY NOT BY ME? Well, because I am poor.
I have always been some kind of poor, on benefits in education, working poor, adult financial dependent, destitute; now that my precarious employment has run out I am currently living on benefits below the poverty line. I don’t really think of myself as poor, it has never felt like a defining part of my identity. For me, it is just the accident of my circumstance.
While it makes my life difficult and different in ways my more financially secure and better socially connected friends and colleagues just cannot and often fail to imagine, rarely does being poor stop me doing what I really want to do. After all, I did move to the other side of the world to do a self-funded PhD in Philosophy from a highly competitive, world class university, located in one of the most expensive cities in the world, in a country whose government is proud to have a ‘hostile environment’ for an immigration policy. (And significantly, at no point did I worry if I deserved it or doubted my right to be there or thought how ‘lucky’ I was to have ‘made it’. I just did not think about it that way.)
Surely, then, I thought, as a somewhat experienced long distance walker (I can claim crossing the Yorkshire Dales in an 8ft snow drift carrying a full pack on the Coast-to-Coast), walking England’s southern national parks and trails during this mild October-November, would, for me, in every way, be a walk in the park. But no, it turns out, not for me.
Even if I could actually get to a trail-head, public transport permitting (what public transport?), I could not afford to walk these trails. There was nowhere for me to stay. No campsites, no youth hostels. All shut down for winter (I discovered, standardly, shut 1 November to Easter). Strictly, no wild camping. Even the new sanctuary system on the pilgrimage trail is yet to balance its Christian charity with corporate officious-ness. Despite the multitude of welcome you year-round Bed and Breakfasts along the way, there was no remotely affordable, nor attainable accommodation options, for me.
For all the explicit claims and genuine beliefs about everyone being free to walk, walking for pleasure, for health, for life, for why-ever the fuck you please, or for no fucking reason at all, walking is a real and insidious privilege.
The notion of privilege and walking is particularly seen and discussed in the important, growing literature on women and walking. It is a counterpoint to the more familiar history of men walking, freely and especially philosophically. The struggle for women to walk freely, even nowadays, is real. And as a philosopHER, it is central part of my project to expose, challenge, subvert and transgress the social, cultural, and even physical barriers to women walking, and relatedly, philosophising about walking. But, it occurred to me (fittingly, while out walking) that there was a problem, a gap, a point of ignorance, that no one really addresses. And it is class. The deep cuts class makes through society might be acknowledged, taken for granted even, but rarely is it tended to fully by those with the privilege of reflection. I have noticed in these books on walking there is always reverent talk of the workers who fought for the right to roam. However, the related implications of class, privilege, and freedom, seem to be forgotten, when describing the noble, bravery of all these noble and brave upper and middle class people, man and woman, alike, choosing to ‘live like a tramp’.
Choosing to give up a life of privilege, regardless of its strictures, for the supposed freedom of ‘tramping’ is very different from never having the privilege to choose any other life to begin with. So far, I am yet to read about or see any real discussion of these sorts lives. In no way do I claim extreme poverty, it is something I have never known. Yet, because I do not ‘see’ myself as ordinarily poor, it took me a while to realise that what the literature was missing, was me. I could not see me, or anyone (even anything) like me, in the lives of these ‘noble and brave’ women who nobly and bravely walked.
So, for the first stage of my ‘a philosopHER walks’ project, I have decided to walk this literature into existence. I am going to be a pedestrian. I am going to embrace it in both its senses of ‘on foot’ and being ‘commonplace, ordinary’. I am taking the pejorative ‘pedestrian at best’ and turn it into the best of pedestrians. My aim is to test the limits of walking as poor. Here is what I plan to do:
The Basic PrinciplesI plan to be strict with the budget to show what is really possible on it. Optimistically what extraordinary things can be done, also pessimistically what ordinary things just cannot, and never possible for the working poor and people on benefits. Also perhaps give a sense of how much energy goes into every purchase, every decision, how much calculating and future planning goes into every spend.
Each day I plan to record the bus and walking route, variously on social media Twitter/Instagram, as I go, and more detailed irregular accounts and reflections on my blog.
Day 0, Wednesday 26 October 2022: PreparationToday I did some shopping so I could make a packed lunch for tomorrow and prepare something warm and filling for my dinner after the first walk in the evening. However, I have already blown my budget. I spent £9.05, it was the very ‘necessary’ chocolate (£0.69) that did it.
I have decided on the bus route and where I shall walk to and from it. Now for a sleep!