Discursive Topographies and City Mindscapes: Eyeing the Other
Discursive Topographies and City Mindscapes: Eyeing the Other

Summary/Abstract: The subject matter of this paper constitutes a combination of comparative cultural studies and semiotic approaches to the study of urban environments. It will study discursive patterns and practices in relation to the urban ‘imagined communities.’ In Cultural Studies, discourse is also viewed in terms of semiotic codes and processes (verbal and non-verbal signs, supporting materials for signs, contexts, etc.) that link communicating individuals into interpersonal and intersubjective collectivities. Accordingly, the paper seeks to study how precisely interactions and interpersonal relations can be deduced from individual signs belonging to discourse on the metropolis. This question is based on the assumption that the construction of signs, regardless the characteristics of a particular interaction, is always intersubjective. Thus, the paper traces a brief historiographical account of changing patterns in viewing the city as reflected in fictional texts. The final part offers an analysis of contemporary cityscapes as ‘sites of signs,’ exemplified in Paul Auster’s “City of Glass.” This study forms part of a larger research program (<http://www.ucm.es/info/siim/>) that seeks to investigate interpersonal interactions within social groups in order to work towards the more complex notion of interculturalism.

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