Michel de Certeau

“Far from being writers—founders of their own place, heirs of the peasants of earlier ages now working on the soil of language,…

— Michel de Certeau

Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless ways on the property of others.

— Michel de Certeau

The sick man is taken away by the institution that takes charge not of the individual, but of his illness, an isolated…

— Michel de Certeau

“His [the pedestrian's] elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts his at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which…

— Michel de Certeau

To walk is to lack a place.

— Michel de Certeau

First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one can…

— Michel de Certeau

A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus…

— Michel de Certeau

“I lettori sono viaggiatori: circolano sulle terre altrui.”

— Michel de Certeau

When he grew old, Aristotle, who is not generally considered a tightrope dancer, liked to lose himself in the most labyrinthine and…

— Michel de Certeau

“Their story begins on ground level, with footsteps. They are myriad, but do not compose a series. They cannot be counted because…

— Michel de Certeau

“Finally, the functionalist organization, by privileging progress (i.e. time), causes the condition of its own possibility--space itself--to be forgotten: space thus becomes…

— Michel de Certeau

One is a socialist because one used to be one, no longer going to demonstrations, attending meetings, sending in one's dues, in…

— Michel de Certeau

The panorama-city is a 'theoretical' (that is, visual) simulacrum, in short a picture, whose condition of possibility is an oblivion and a…

— Michel de Certeau

Along with the lazy man... the dying man is the immoral man: the former, a subject that does not work; the latter,…

— Michel de Certeau

It is as though the practices organizing a bustling city were characterized by [city practitioners', everyday citizens'] blindness. The neworks of these…

— Michel de Certeau

“Reading thus introduces an "art" which is anything but passive.”

— Michel de Certeau

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places of believing practices, but for this very reason, they seem…

— Michel de Certeau

“To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper. The…

— Michel de Certeau

“what does travel ultimately produce if it is not, by a sort of reversal, 'an exploration of the deserted places of my…

— Michel de Certeau

The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports,…

— Michel de Certeau

It seems thus possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation.

— Michel de Certeau

They become liberated spaces that can be occupied. A rich indetermination gives them, by means of a semantic rarefaction, the function of…

— Michel de Certeau

It seems possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation.

— Michel de Certeau

To practice space is thus to repeat the joyful and silent experience of childhood; it is, in a place, to be other…

— Michel de Certeau

“We travel abroad to discover in distant lands something whose presence at home has become unrecognisable.”

— Michel de Certeau