chapter twelve
Mapping worlds, moving cities
In the previous chapters, we have been exploring techniques for writing
rather than themes or topics. On the whole, this book has tried not to draw
too much of a distinction between form and content, and has been at
pains to point out that there is ‘a politics of form’.
In this chapter we will take a topic/theme which is central to cultural
studies. We will focus primarily on ideas about place and space. We will
look at the concept of place itself; different ways of representing place;
writing the city as a site of difference; the city as walk poem; and how to
shift a text between disparate times and spaces. These are all ways of both
mapping and moving place, that is, representing it, making it dynamic and
changing our conceptions of it.
This chapter brings theory and practice together in a particular way.
In some of the other chapters, theory has been a tool for understanding
and articulating the process of writing; in this chapter it is a trigger for
ideas.
In order to write about place you may want to research it as a topic his-
torically and theoretically. You may also want to explore literary
approaches to the subject (the way writers have written about it), and the
way ideas about place have changed over time. Or you may want to
research specific places and their histories.
The exercises in this chapter exploit many of the approaches you have
learnt in this book, and allow you to draw on many of the genres or tech-
niques which have been the focus of previous chapters. You can, for
example, write a poem, prose, discontinuous prose, fictocriticism, a per-
formance piece or hypertext in response to them.