Walking the Walled City. Gender and the Dérive as Urban Ethnography

Abstract

This 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 Abdelhafid 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.