Vertical Travel, Listing and the Enumeration of the Everyday

Abstract

 Drawing on the work of Georges Perec, and focusing on other authors such as Julio Cortazar and François Maspero, the chapter begins with an analysis of the phenomenon of vertical travel. It explores the ways in which the disruption of the traditional (horizontal) axis of the journey provides access to often unseen aspects of the everyday. In discerning a poetics of such a practice, the chapter privileges processes of listing and enumeration. Perec's use of observational catalogues is seen in particular as a challenge to any understanding of the list as a ‘subsumptive’ form that identifies a thing by subordinating it under a particular category. Instead, he demonstrates how lists may articulate what is observed in very different ways: arranging, combining, and ordering words, observations and things sequentially not only subverts categorical hierarchies, but also has positively generative qualities in creating new epistemological orderings. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the power of the list to subvert established orders of knowledge and to suggest alternative means of making sense of the everyday.