Walking the walled city gender and the dérive as urban ethnography

Abstract

The paper focuses on the possibilities and limitations of the contemporary dérive as a form of ethnography in contemporary Delhi. The dérive, which originated as the Surrealist déambulation and subsequently became the Situationist dérive in the late 1950s, has now been re-imagined by walking artists and practitioners. In seeking to locate the Situationist dérive as an ethnographic practice within (Old) Delhi through Abdelha" d Khatib's dérive, this paper dwells on the experimental origins of the Situationist dérive and its journey through contemporary pedestrian practices, and asks how walking as a gendered, autoethnographic practice of the city might help narrate and navigate Indian urban spaces.