Will Self’s Parallactic Urban/Land-scapes in Walking to Hollywood
Résumé
This paper addresses the complex relation of identity to site in Walking to Hollywood: Memories Before the Fall. In keeping with the idea of a cityscape rather experienced than observed or depicted from a distance, the analysis of scale, proportions and displacement reveals a complex interplay between the urban environment and the perception that shapes it. The perceiving subject’s identity is in turn equally shaped by the post-industrial setting it initially purported to fashion after its own views, in a Möbius strip-manner, coherent with what Slavoj Zizek defines as a ‘parallax view’, characteristic of the experience of contemporary urbanity.
À travers le prisme de la psychogéographie, cet essai traite des notions d’échelles, du sens de la proportion et de la perception pour analyser la relation complexe du sujet à son environnement telle qu’imaginée dans Walking to Hollywood : Memories Before the Fall, afin de montrer comment l’esthétique du paysage urbain s’inscrit chez Will Self dans une dynamique de représentation parallactique, conforme à l’acception du terme fournie par Slavoj Zizek.