Work

Apocalyptic urban surrealism in the city at the end of the world

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: This paper responds to calls for radical experimentation in urban theory in the context of the material and psychological upheavals of Anthropocene. It does so through the development of an apocalyptic urban surrealism, based on a set of principles drawn from surrealist attempts to simulate the experience of reality characteristic of psychotic breakdown. These principles are put to work in the psychogeographical exploration of an urban resettlement scheme on the outskirts of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon, and the flooded informal settlement that this scheme seeks to replace. Through the relinquishment of established modes of academic sense-making, and their replacement with a surrealist interpretive delirium, alternative meanings emerge within the entrails of cannibal capitalism and the wreckage of state-regulated reality.

Source: Urban Studies

DOI: 10.1177/00420980221118817

Author: Japhy Wilson

Institutions: University of Manchester, Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana

Language: English

Topic: Urban Planning and Governance

Subfield: Urban Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Sustainable cities and communities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,500