Locative Media & The City

I'm trying to wade through de Certeau's Walking in the City chapter and make sense of it while also trying out some possible critiques. I've been trying to decide whether de Certeau's use of text and language in relation to movement and space is itself the use of metaphor--or if it can operate on some kind of concrete level--does it matter? What might the significance of this be? Clearly he was keenly aware of the subtleties of metaphor, metonomy and synecdoche, etc. (he makes a useful comparison at one point with synecdoche and the 'spatial continuum' (101)).

de Certeau seems to follow the typical structuralist approach in this work. Am I wrong to sense a tendency of reductionism and totalization? Does this reduction negate de Certeau's own assertion that 'traces are no substitute for the paths themselves'?

The piece does however contain many connections that work elegantly in relating text and language to space and movement. One such connection that I found to be interesting was the Saussurian synchronic/diachronic relationship to the historical/spatial (94); this seems to echo a bit of what Jameson (and others) describe as the postmodern trope of the replacement/conflation of the temporal with the spatial and vice versa. Does this work only as metaphor or can we indeed -read- space and text and history?

Reading further I begin to understand some of the more 'concrete' relationships de Certeau offers. I found the idea of the 'phatic' function of language, which includes any speech act which 'establishes, initiates, maintains, or interrupts contact' (98) very intriguing (sexy, almost). Then his discussion of enunciation as a locative phenomenon (103) offers another concrete relationship between language and place/movement. And further with the language/place duality of street names, areas, districts, etc. then stories (texts) about places.

The piece offers some very fruitful relationships regardless of the part of speech in which it might operate (metaphor or not)--particularly in his discussion of the politics and power structures inherent to language and space. I like the term "local authority" de Certeau introduces for this reason.