Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 9, No. 8, December 2008

Playing with fear: and the mobility of emotion

Stephen John Saville Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Ceredigion SY23 3DB, UK, [email protected]

This article engages debates on emotional geography and non-representational theory by considering fear as a distinctly mobile engagement with our environment. Parkour, or , has exploded into public consciousness through commercial media representations and films. It is depicted as a spectacular urban sport that either can or cannot be done. Through ethnographic research with groups of parkour practitioners I consider what has been excluded from these representations: the emotions involved in trying, experimenting, and gradually learning to be in places differently. In parkour places are ‘done’ or mobilised in tentative, unsure, ungainly and unfinished ways which can be characterised by a kind of play with architecture. I argue that this play is contingent upon an array of fears, which, rather than being entirely negative, are an important way in which practitioners engage with place. Here fears can manifest differently, not only restricting mobility, but in some cases encouraging imaginative and playful forms of movement.

Key words: fear, parkour, freerunning, emotional geography, mobility, place, play.

On Wednesday 17 May 2006, , a He was pleased and excited. After the man heralded as a founder of parkour, and ‘fakeness’ of Californian media-appeasing now international celebrity, runs towards a performances, the Frenchman said he felt solid wall that cordons off an underpass. His more ‘real’. movement is purposeful and practised. All This scene, watched and discussed world- eyes are turned towards him. As he closes on wide amongst parkour practitioners and the barrier and jumps, his calloused hands enthusiasts, gives us pause. How could the reach out, pushing off the top to propel him hero of parkour,the symbolic superhuman fail? over. His trailing foot does not clear the wall; it Watching Belle’s body moving in pixilated slow hits. It pulls his body out of alignment. motion, repeatedly crashing on so many Travelling at speed and out of control David thousands of monitor screens, how does this Belle’s back makes contact with the far wall of event shape the way traceurs (parkour prac- the underpass and he falls ... titioners) or indeed geographers understand

ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/08/080891-24 q 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14649360802441440 892 Stephen John Saville and enact places? How might such media could be misleading because it is two-dimensional clips influence and reveal finished; it is a fearless and mature product. our emotional, and specifically our fearful, Outofthemanythousandsofpeople engagements with place? practising parkour worldwide, for the most part we only see images of the few most proficient and experienced individuals per- Introduction: what is parkour? forming a highly rehearsed set of body movements in well-considered and thoroughly Parkour has been variously described as free- explored environments. Of course the vast , a type of play, the art of displace- majority of parkour practice remains beyond ment, the discipline of moving from A to B as the mainstream media’s focus. fast and efficiently as possible, and even as a While there exists a great divergence in way of life. One of the most defining styles, practice and definition of parkour depictions of parkour is the documentary (many of which clash with sensational media film Jump (directed by M. Christie), representations), my contention is that it is which first aired in the UK on Channel 4 in essentially a practice intent upon re-imagining September 2003. It combined stylised footage place. It does not give any particular clear or of a group of French traceurs to fabricate a finished blueprint for action (as is often narrative of three heroes who journeyed to peddled by media interests), but constantly London, revitalising and transforming the seeks new ways to move playfully with places. architecture of the city as they went. Early In this act of imagination parkour is granted on, the authoritative narrator tells us what spatially transformative powers which can parkour is: prevent comfortable closure (Parker, Fournier and Reedy 2007).1 When the traceur attempts ‘Imagine living in a city where you didn’t have to to master some movements through space, rely on overcrowded trains, gridlocked roads and such mastery, as it occurs (or not) is always packed pavements. Imagine having superhero accompanied by an emotional refiguring of abilities, able to leap from rooftop to rooftop as if spatial possibilities. In this sense, parkour nothing, not even buildings could stop you. This is speaks quite forcefully to an enchanted notion parkour, the anarchic new sport of freerunning.’ of place which, through wonderment, imagin- ation and participation, is in continuous However much contested, the hugely influen- composition (Crouch 2003; Edensor 2005; tial documentary along with other represen- Fenton 2005; Thrift 2004c). The extended and tations—from television advertisements and serious practice of parkour is always a music videos, to blockbuster Hollywood questing, a search for new and more elaborate movies and internet forums—has been respon- imaginings, it is an opening out of possible, sible for propelling parkour into the public but not necessarily attainable, mobilities. imagination. Such depictions of parkour are In this article I seek to explore some almost always scripted through with heroic emotional sense of what makes parkour a narratives of accomplishment; of highly powerfully engaging mobile practice. Through skilled, mature bodies overcoming the a year-long participatory engagement with constraints of the environment. The ‘armchair parkour,2 I wish to present a feel for the view’ that one might get of parkour from the sensuous connectedness of the emotional body; Parkour and the mobility of emotion 893 one which can be thrilled after a fall (as with Secondly, I wish to show how such practice the opening example), and one that can laugh is characterised by a ‘trying’, that is intent on with friends after the most demanding and creating futures which dare. The way move- painful experiences. In the process I hope to ments are tried in parkour reveals some of the dispel a seemingly common understanding of intimate and profoundly emotional connec- parkour as a spectacular finished product. By tions traceurs have with their material considering some of the emotional specificities environments. By considering this contact, of being a traceur that plays with place, I draw and describing it in some detail, here I hope to attention to what is often overshadowed by a work towards a ‘re-enchanting’ of the body in symbolic or visual ‘reading’ of parkour. The place (Massey and Thrift 2003; Thrift 2004c). changing embodied movements of parkour can Further to this and responding to growing calls be both motivated by different kinds of fear, as in geography that bid us attend to emotions well as a ‘method’ for altering, unveiling, (Anderson and Smith 2001; Bondi, Smith and refining and layering emotional engagements Davidson 2005, Davidson and Milligan 2004) with places. Emotions here are more than and to distinguish between ‘types’ of, and simply something that ‘happen to’ a body; subtleties within emotions (Anderson and rather when fear is a lived and mobile process it Harrison 2006), I consider the flux of can be considered, cultivated and sometimes experiences that could be described as fear. even enjoyed. Avoiding giving fear a purely negative polarity, While there has been some significant work or defining it in terms of opposites (to hope or on embodied mobile practices such as skate- fearlessness for example) (Solomon and Stone boarding (Borden 2001), driving (Edensor 2002), I show how fear can be a highly 2004; Merriman 2007; Sheller 2004), cycling complex engagement with place, which can in (Jones 2005; Spinney 2006) and walking (Wylie some circumstances be considered more a 2005), the practice of parkour gives us an playmate than paralysing overlord. Here excellent opportunity to examine a rapidly affect is not only worked into emotion but emerging phenomenon that is focused on also reconfigured by the emotional engage- finding new ways of moving the body and of ment traceurs have with place. Affect has been inhabiting space. In this article I have three theorised in numerous ways, some of which main aims. First, to develop a concept of the conflate it with emotion (Anderson and Smith ‘parkour body’: an unfinished, ever-learning, 2001; cf. Kraftl and Adey 2008; Thrift 2004a). emotional body that will move away from an Common to most understandings though, is understanding of maturity/immaturity as a an abstract sense in which affect involves a positive/negative binary. The traceur is ever ‘sense of push in the world’ (Thrift 2004a: 64). questing towards new and often fearful move- In this article I have considered the way the ments, many of which are predicated on the body senses this ‘push’, and have thought of attainment of bodily skill. Here, mobile ‘the push’ itself to be the potential for new possibilities arise, and new unsure spatial mobile relations between bodies. This poten- imaginings are drawn forth from previous tial is always in a state of emergence as experience and the prior development of bodily configurations of people, things, ideas and maturity and habit. In this case a mobile animals form and reform; their movement maturity can come before and ceaselessly blur bringing about new possibilities and potenti- into a kind of playful immaturity in place. alities. Thus affect both motivates and 894 Stephen John Saville depends upon the mobility that re-organises anyone’s, is a composite affair, connected connections between elements of the world. much more than one might think through While affect is present, as raw possibility, international assemblages of technology (tele- between all those things that comprise life as vision broadcasting, internet, etc.), which, far we know it, I am concerned here with the way from delivering a bland disembodied represen- the human body senses, and to some degree tation, have stirred up a new world-wide plays with, affect, through its engagements phenomenon. with the world. Yet although these representations are Third, a participatory study of parkour and important, this paper is not so concerned ‘types’ of fear can illuminate the way we move with ‘reading off’ some part of this mass of with the materiality of the world. Things, that distributed media, but with the body practices is walls, rails, roofs, trees, etc., as David Belle themselves, through which this media gains claims in the opening example, can become most if not all of its evocative power (for the ‘real’ and raw when we move in new ways traceur). Texts permeate the practice of with them. I wish to present some new ways parkour, but are primarily interesting in people are finding to make contact with their relation to the practice itself—the embodied environments. Prizing ‘freedom’ of expression grounding of their affective potential. and movement, parkour is often intentionally formless, and as such, finding ones ‘Way’3 is a key element of parkour practice. There are few Movement, fear and place making overarching or distinct goals and little set structure, which opens an almost unparalleled Feeling so fragile all over. It was as if I could already space for play and creative engagements with begin to feel the jagged concrete below crunching architecture. I wish to mirror this play, and through my spine, dislodging vertebra. Try as I aside from giving the reader a flavour of the might I could not focus my attention on the goal: a practice of parkour, essentially this paper is an flat pink vertical wall which I wanted to jump to— attempt to make a playful, possibly risky, gripping the top edge with my hands, letting my feet intervention in our almost universally negative and legs absorb the speed of the impact, before understandings of fear in place. pulling up and hopping over. After some time here While primarily this paper is informed by considering from different angles, testing the my learning of and immersion in parkour surfaces, watching JZ jump the gap, feeling more movements and practice, it is impossible to and more shaky and sick(!), I moved on without separate this out from the more or less trying it. (Author’s diary, 8 February 2006) inspiring representations, philosophising,4 stories, images and signs, that always From the well-used mantra, ‘the only thing we have an affective materiality (Latham and have to fear is fear itself’, to the common McCormack 2004). In other words, such association of fear with terrorist tactics, it is representations are often encountered in a way fair to say that the emotion of ‘fear’ has a that is not representational (Laurier and Philo terrible reputation. Of all the emotions it has, 2006), they can, for example, evoke unbidden in academic literature, received unrivalled memories, thoughts and feelings (Crang and attention (Tuan 1979) and in much of this Travlou 2001). What is clear is that my analysis fear has been cast as the ultimate engagement with parkour, as much as villain; something to be railed against, out Parkour and the mobility of emotion 895 thought, and surmounted so as to minimise its they have a very real materiality of their own unhealthy effects and immoral tendencies (see (Pain and Smith 2008). for example, Bannister and Fyfe 2001; A racing heart, and sweaty, shivering Bauman 2006; Brownlow 2005; Katz 2008; sickness, reassure us that fear is ‘happening’, Koskela 1997; Nayak 2003; Panelli, Kraack but these effects—manifest from molecular and Little 2005). In short, fear is very often reactions in the body—are the feelings of fear, taken to be the overgrown roots from which which are part of, but do not constitute the stems much human suffering. Some authors go whole emotion ‘fear’ itself. In contrast, further still. William James’s (1884) famous theory, sees the emotion purely as the physiological bodily Evil and fear are Siamese twins. You can’t meet one symptoms. For James, emotion occurs not without meeting the other. Or perhaps they are but because of a danger or risk perceived, but as a two names of one experience—one of the names consequence of our bodily reactions towards referring to what you see or what you hear, the the danger; that is, the quickened heart, other to what you feel; one pointing ‘out there’, to shallow breathing, etc. ‘Common sense says the world, the other to the ‘in here’, to yourself. ... we meet a bear, are frightened and run ... What we fear, is evil; what is evil, we fear. (Bauman this order of sequence is incorrect’ (1884: 2006: 54) 190). Rather, we meet a bear, and the body’s perception of the bear, before thought, causes Yet even so-called ‘irrational fears’ often have us to tremble and run—for James the some foundation in the material world, which experience of the running and trembling is is awash with real dangers. Something akin to the emotion fear (James 1884). For him, the fear can be observed in almost all living movement of the body at various scales, animals and provides a useful and necessary whether it be muscular or cellular, is the survival mechanism (Tuan 1979). In humans’ emotion. experience of fear, it is when there is a For James it is impossible to separate out mismatch between ‘real’ dangers and the and distinguish between the emotion and the danger ‘perceived’, that the value of that embodied responses we commonly recognise emotion comes to question. For Bauman, and as being a consequence of that emotion. While many others, it is our inability to perceive risks there is value in such an understanding, I treat and danger with good timing and precision emotions as quite a bit more than this. If I have that makes fear an emotion to warrant our a dry mouth, raised heart rate and cold sweat, concern. When fear is defuse, vague and on their own, these do not tell us much. I could unidentifiable, it is at its most potent and have one of a number of different illnesses, for harmful (Bauman 2006). Our fearful inaccur- example. The context in which these feelings acy—a fundamental characteristic of humans’ arise is absolutely crucial. It is true that when I inability to know the future—is exploitable, stand at the edge of a drop contemplating a and routinely deployed to bolster, maintain jump, ‘my’ fear is indistinguishable from the and change webs of global politics, and shakiness I feel in my hands, my wobbly legs, hierarchies of power and inequality (Robin and the watering of my doubt-filled eyes. Yet 2004). Whether specific fears are well founded fear is more than this, it includes the wall I or not, propagated through global networks or propose to jump to, and the jumps that have everyday activities or combinations of both, come before and that register this one as a 896 Stephen John Saville possibility. While much of this emotion may continuous flux and fear-inducing flow well be ‘in action’ before thought and before (Bauman 2006). Indeed time itself pre-sup- consciously calculating and understanding the poses movement in all things (Cresswell 2006; danger, the emotion still includes more than Dewsbury 2000). Yet mobility is neither a the physiological feelings. Rather I consider universal ‘good’ (Bordo 1993; Massey 1991), fear as an engagement in place. nor are similar movements always understood In doing so it is not my intention to or experienced in the same way. Thus for undermine the aims and strategies of much many academics mobility and the power that important work that treats fear as a primarily it might exercise can only be understood as negative emotion (indeed continued research relational (e.g. Adey 2006; Cresswell 1999; into, just for one example, fear of crime and Sheller and Urry 2006). It is the differences in violence, is clearly crucial). I do, however, speeds and directions between objects, people wish to push open what we take to be ‘fear’, and landscape that affect our relative experi- and to make a preliminary attempt to talk ences of mobility and immobility. about different ‘types’, layerings and nuances Relative velocities, vectors, directions and of fear. My argument is that in our tracing of momentums is one way of thinking and fear’s trail, which, by all accounts, has been writing about variations in mobility. Bissell stretched and broadened to near all-pervasive (2007) proposes another, by considering magnitudes (evidenced by the now common embodied action and inaction rather than usage of terms like ‘culture of fear’), we have relative mobility and immobility. One key as yet neglected the possibility that fear can be difference here—besides Bissell’s interest in more dynamic, multiple and possibly pro- ‘inactivity’ that poses some difficult methodo- ductive than a survey of the literature might logical questions—is in the scale of analysis, lead one to believe. which for Bissell is the body. While the During my research, for example, as the emotional experiences of the body are initial shock of seeing and participating in inescapably linked to the global mobility of movements which risked injury, and in some people, technology, information and ideas, cases death, lessened, so the fear that which is in turn bound up in changing accompanied my research changed. My percep- geometries of power (Massey 1991), they tions of the risks involved became clearer, as I cannot be properly understood through an practised, and saw how practice and movement overarching meta theory that automatically took place. It would be inaccurate and too ascribes value or power to ‘more mobility’ at simplistic to say my fear lessened. As I will the cost of losing real-life human experience discuss, fear began to permeate every aspect of (Bissell 2007). my daily experiences. As with all practitioners of When we consider the emotional content of parkour, my emotional engagements with space mobility, each and every movement (and changed along with my mobility in it. To indeed stillness) begins to gather significance. consider the richness and complexity of certain Emotion is entirely necessary to bring contrast typesoffearwillinevitablyinvolveaconsider- to the differentiations, say between the move- ation of the mobility and movement of the ment of a passenger on a long-haul flight, and parkour practitioner. the movements of a parkour practitioner over Modern life, we are told, is speeding up. It is a meandering set of walls outside a council more mobile and dynamic, in a state of office. When emotion is engagement with the Parkour and the mobility of emotion 897 world, it is itself mobile as new contact is made only possible by virtue of its immersion in the with configurations of materialities, which are world. Research undertaken in a spirit of open themselves (re)formed by virtue of their vulnerability, and research that is happy to be continuing movement. touched and moved, and to engage and play Parkour always involves the mobility of with materialities and imaginations, need not other materialities, be they living, inanimate, be doubt-ridden with questions of how to or intangible ideas or knowledge of tech- ‘write’ the more-than-human world. When we niques. From the carefully selected footwear, hold out our experience as our ‘truth’, we go the bag and clothing, to the arrangements of well beyond the ‘I’ that takes responsibility for concrete, brick, metal and grass that make the narrative. possible any form of parkour, the term We are necessarily in and with worlds rich in ‘traceur’ must always refer to more than the affect. One way towards building new individual body. The movements and actions configurations within this world does not of the traceur are totally dependent on (though require a determined shift toward ‘anti- not determined by) material objects that are humanism’ or even ‘trans-humanism’, but relatively permanent. This raises the question, rather an aspiration to engage the ‘language at what scale do we consider the prosthesis? of human experience’ (Entrikin and Tepple Or in other words, just how far do we de- 2006), including their withness to the world as centre the subject? well as imagination, emotion, and the wild In considering this Spinney (2006) presents flights of fancy therein. It seems that methods to us his feelings of being a ‘cyclist’, the exploring the haptic (e.g. Obrador-Pons 2007; combined unit of body and bike. In this vein he Paterson 2006) and the rich sensuousness of also talks to other cyclists in the saddle, to touch (Crouch 2001; Hetherington 2003; keep the context of riding (Spinney 2006), the Lewis 2000), but also those exploring what moving place; the heat, pain, rhythm, posture might be considered less traditionally ‘empiri- and richness of cycling are not lost, and retain cal’ or tangible (e.g. Anderson 2004; the potential to evoke. As with all others, this Holloway 2003; Latham 2003) begin to do account bears the problem of representation, just that. Here by exposing our experiences of in that we will never feel the emotions, togetherness and our openness and contact complexity and depth of the reality that the with the world it is becoming clear that text attempts to portray. Neither, for that ‘humans do not act as subjects in an object matter, will the author when it is being written world but are constituted as perceiving beings and edited. In the words of Latour, ‘there is no at the interface between subject and object’ in-formation, only trans-formation’ (2005: (Hetherington 2003: 1938). 149). None the less, in the effort to be Emotions play a crucial part of this ‘inter- ‘truthful’ (or to try hard not to lie) we can hope face’. They are a vital element of the to create, with the reader, more ‘real’ accounts connections we have to the world. They are based on empathy for the emotional contact between, in motion and animated by the with place. movements and contact the body has with its It is a similar affective empathy that I take as surroundings. But emotions also encompass a starting point, towards de-centring my other times and places as they negotiate an account. Or to rephrase, I see no need to engagement with the world. An unforeseen emphatically ‘de-centre’ an account that is cue, a remembered caress, a painful fall or a 898 Stephen John Saville harsh word, and we are emotionally moving in be angry at a driver that pulls out in front of a way that brings past movements and us, or sombre upon entering a quiet church materials into the places we inhabit. Emotion yard. As with much ethnographic research, can comprise of a baffling complex of doing parkour was a departure from the more overlapping events that always have affective routine emotional interactions in daily life. potential beyond the time and space in which Different and new socio-cultural settings call they once occurred. What is clear is that for a re-examination and to some degree bring parkour makes absolutely obvious the need for into conscious thought the negotiation of a consideration of an emotional basis of emotional relations (Blee 1998). Similarly, action. Aside from the (misleading) high- parkour as a relatively new phenomenon, and profile media activity, parkour befuddles any by its very nature, encourages the practitioner attempt to describe a rational, economic or to begin this process in earnest. During my disembodied decision-making actor. research, emotional stances within place As Tony Wolf5 demonstrates well in all his shifted rapidly. Engagements with benches, parkour workshops, a bench becomes much walls, fences and lampposts became charged more than an object for sitting or resting on. with complex emotional play. For the first As participants are encouraged to find as many week or so of meeting and practising with ways of moving over, around, across and even parkour groups, the hours spent doing under the bench as possible, it takes on a parkour could be characterised by an almost whole new feel. Through continued contact engulfing range of fears. Here, emotional and movement with the bench, the traceur repertoires and bodily possibilities for move- slowly becomes more adventurous, attempting ment are exceptionally fluid and intercon- grand leaps and inverted vaults—their famili- nected. Emotions are ‘done’ with our arity with the form takes on a new life surroundings. In this sense, any talk about altogether. In this instance the bench facilitates emotional experience is a call for the contact exciting and as yet inexperienced bodily between those people and things involved. No movements and postures in the world. discrete or tidy theory of emotions can do Emotional disposition toward the bench justice to their continual emergence without changes as traceurs watch others, and experi- attending to the mobile environments with ence first-hand movements over and about the which they engage. bench. Emotions in parkour, as in many social and cultural practices, are not things that simply Breaking and making movements and fear occur or ‘happen to’ the body as in James’ theorisation. Neither, though, are we in The pink wall. When I approach the edge this time it is complete control of our emotions, the way quite a lot smaller.Even the large steps below look less we feel and act is not as a sovereign subject, edgy, less sharp and less likely to do damage. It is in rather places can express more than their those firstinstants that I knowI will jump the gap, that human inhabitants might wish from them the fear intensifies somewhat, whilst at the same time (Hetherington 2003). changing its character dramatically. Much more Many emotions are performed; very often excitedly now fear is almost pushing me toward the habitually acted out without prior consider- pink wall, rather than holding me back. I run. Must ation. Before we consciously realise it, we can get the takeoff right; near the edge but not too close, Parkour and the mobility of emotion 899

Figure 1 Pink wall (author’s collection). there cannot be a chance of my trainer slipping over for movement before them, from which they the edge when kicking off. But as I approach I cannot may playfully select and string together new look down to check, for I need to focus on the far wall improvisations in a flowing dance across the to make sure my hands find their mark and grip well. I urban landscape. Yet the paradox of parkour have to let up and hope my legs will take off from the is that to have a sense for these spatial right place, and this trust is accompanied by a new possibilities, as anything but terrifying dreams, surge of fear, a last intense bolt that hits me in the leg one must drill particular moves repeatedly. In as I jump. The first time around, the moments spent in general, the social sciences have considered the air are too brief and intense to recall, a haze of similar processes of re-iteration, as productive adrenaline and fears and pink. After making it once, of distinct and often negative performativities twice, five times, the fear begins to lessen, back down (Butler 1990). Such spatial practice leads to to ‘background levels’, but it has made a permanent habit, and to cycles of repetition that dull and mark on my body, which is now in love with flying numb our relations with space. Over time it toward the pink wall. (Author’s diary, 1 March 2006, has the capacity to make ‘normal’ the strange see Figure 1) and unconscious our bodily comportment (Edensor 2007; Seamon 1980; Young 1990). The practitioner of parkour is encouraged We have been warned of how easy it is to towards ‘freedom’, to have vast possibilities become complicit, to begin to narrow the 900 Stephen John Saville focus of our attention to what we already producing new possibilities as it experiences know and are comfortable with (Harrison textures, meets heights, distances and shapes 2000; Thrift 2004b). To attain complete (Figure 2). As it playfully tests, the body is maturity is to forget the wonder that drives closely intertwined with places as a sensuous genuine creativity. If performativity is body- moving subject (Crouch and Desforges 2003). training or the contraction of habit, then to On occasion, people would not want to what degree does it afford us ways to leave an area until they felt they had mastered understand the possibility of creatively manip- a certain movement with an object. Prac- ulating space and time? We are called to ‘let titioners developed attachments to things and go’ of regularly repeated relations/representa- the movement possibilities they allow. As I tions of space and to attend to the spark of was told by many of the traceurs I researched newness that marks a life as enchanted and with, after and during each parkour session, lived (Thrift 2004c). Of course, the difficulty is my vision changed. New features popped up in deciding: of what to let go, and of what to unexpected places: an electricity box to , keep a hold? a ‘grippy’ wall to run up, a handy-sized barrier with soft grass on the other side to try flipping Me: Don’t you get bored of doing the same move over. Of course none of these ‘new’ objects many times? were really new. Rather they materialised into the consciousness as parkour practice perme- James: Well you know it is just practice, that’s why ated the body. Such objects were inspected, you’re here right? tested, felt, rolled over, pushed off of, jumped on, vaulted over. My parkour practice brought Me: Yeah. to the environment unexperienced transience; where success or partial success at moving in a James: It’s good to train. Each move is never the same specific way with a certain object, could lead anyway. You do it again and again and again, but to a sudden shift—new mobile possibilities trying different things. And then it starts getting easy, unfolded—and more playful options arise. then suddenly you will see this thing over here, and it ‘The impossible recedes, like a horizon, never might be really scary, but it is a possibility now. sets, like a sun. But as it recedes other regions (Author’s diary, 2 April 2006). of the world appear’ (Massumi 1997: 761). Thus, a certain level of maturity of the body Parkour is not always the super-mobile to know a certain sequence of movements in practice one might imagine. Hours spent in a relation to space leads to a type of immaturity, relatively small area slowly ‘getting to know’ as the body in its excitement and playfulness the space is the norm. Embodied knowledge finds new mobile relations with materialities. and familiarity of place is gained as place is These new relations are unsure, untested and tried. Here the body, while repeating similar sometimes unrealistic. Traceurs focused in on movements many times, is slowly building micro-detailed aspects of movements, trying embodied knowledge of itself and its relation again and again. In trying, and being open to to spatial forms. Yet the doing of this space, here ‘trying’ denotes the uncertainty, knowledge is always provisional, and not the imminence, through which the kinetic play repeatable with perfect accuracy. The parkour of bodies in space are bringing about some- body is creatively encountering spatial forms, thing new. A tricky balance then: imaginative Parkour and the mobility of emotion 901

Figure 2 Getting to know space (author’s collection). and playful becoming of mobility that is both places without seeing some nice-looking obstacles. ‘allowed’ and threatened by bodily maturity. (Josh, in conversation while showing me round one A degree of embodied maturity is needed to of his favourite practice areas) enable the imagination to take a hold of spatial forms. Bodily maturity, in parkour, is put to In parkour, while successful practice (trying, play, immediately searching out new possible trying, trying and doing) might make place more movements with space. To practise parkour at ‘certain’ for a time, the new perspective— any level is to be open and vulnerable to space accompanied by an immature playfulness— which in turn requires the blurring together of leads to greater subtleties and reveals further bodily maturity and habit with play and depthtoemotionalrelationswithplace.AsI spatial immaturity; neither maturity nor practised, I discovered never before noticed immaturity ever being complete. architectural features, which came alive with a potential that lent them new emotional inten- You develop what I call parkour vision, you know. sity. This carried over into my life well beyond Round here people might see just a pretty rundown my research remit, and my parkour began to backside of a building, but it’s actually a great radically affect my emotional engagements with playground of rails and pipes, steps—it’s got it all. place. In Figure 3, for example, as I began to That’s what parkour does to you. I can’t go many consider the jump between the walls as a real 902 Stephen John Saville

Figure 3 Roof gap (author’s collection). Parkour and the mobility of emotion 903 possibility, I also began to cultivate quite a the art of movement. It is not a hobby, it is not a complex array of fears towards this roof sport, parkour is a way of life’. Like many other gap. During my research I passed this particular sports involving risk (see for example Le Breton gap several times a day (it being right by the 2000; Lewis 2000), fear, at least certain types of front door of the flat I was living in). After first fear, can be enjoyed and can become enmeshed noticing it (in a parkour way), it would not in everyday mobile relations. leave. At times, like an un-wanted spectre it Rather than close the book on fear as a haunted my being in that place. Fear laced every fairly simplistic survival mechanism that is movement I made in its sensorial vicinity. Such relational to danger (produced or otherwise) fear did not simply repel me though, nor in fact or some ageless aversion to our own death, in did it remain static for any length of time at all. some circumstances, as I argue here, it is useful Here fear was not entirely unpleasant and to think about the way we try to cultivate unwelcome. On occasion I would stand for long different ‘types’ or layerings of fears. Differ- periods on the edge looking down, contemplat- ences in fear are more than just variations in ing consequences, where fear helped to sketch intensity. They can have fundamental and out scenarios, some of which made me feel quite quite subtle differences which are crucial to sick. Other times I would focus solely on the far the way we engage in contact with the world. edge with a sort of excited expectancy, or I Emotions are a multiplicity of relational would try to ignore it completely, walking past judgements, not just reducible to spatial with a kind of deliberate anger. simplicity (e.g. wanting to be distant from Whilst parkour talk is often superficially some dangerous object). Through intimate about doing battle and overcoming a fearful play with place, the practice of parkour is alter ego, it seems that fear in parkour is more a good example of how people can begin complicated than that. It is dynamic and to explore, refine and even enjoy fearful mobile and it can be layered with other times emotions. They become a key through which and spaces, but also other emotions. Emotions place can be engaged. like anger, excitement and joy can all be accompaniments to the fears encountered in parkour. Such emotional layering cannot be ‘Contact fear’ and plastic concrete totally contained by time or space. And while fear usually proceeds unconsciously it can also He has just made the jump. It is a strange be reflected upon, considered, compared and realisation; a ‘what am I doing here’ moment, thought through. On one occasion, for when my stomach speaks up telling me this must be example, a traceur wanted to go straight to a a madness-inspired misadventure. What I have seen very specific location because he had been looks impossible; it is genuinely shocking, it strikes thinking, and getting excited and anxious at me and racks the body all over. In an instant that about, a ‘gap to step to ledge’ move/architec- person and that place take on a horrifying tint, a tural form, all day whilst at work. wrapping of coarse fear that grates away any This makes understandable the zeal with bravado or rosy talk about what was planned or the which parkour practitioners declare their risks involved. dedication to parkour—evidenced by signa- And now it is my turn. The distance shrieks at tures in parkour internet forums that so often me, shouts mockingly. Two-facedly it beckons me take forms like: ‘Parkour for life!’ or ‘Parkour is to the edge, seduces me onward, only to smack 904 Stephen John Saville back. Eyes water, visual inputs begin to confound would otherwise be quite benign space. At times my other senses, just how far is it? Can my legs, this fear can drive me forward, experienced as arms and torso feel a jump of this distance as a an exhilaration, an enlivening of my body that possibility? Uncertainty twitches in muscles. The expands forth and shrouds place in new and harmony between kinaesthetic and visual playful colour. experience begins to falter, instead I am made Just as new technologies and computer whole precariously, like overly elastic threads interfaces that work upon the haptic senses holding my ‘seeing’ and ‘feeling’ together. Can I can distort and elongate our capacity to ‘feel’, be trust their communication? This will literally be a touched, and essentially to make contact at a leap of faith, a moment that takes fear, hope and distance (see, for example, Paterson’s 2006 uncertainty so close that they blur into each other, analysis of the first ‘transatlantic handshake’), even as my everyday senses seem to be coming so also do augmentations to our bodies—our apart. (Author’s diary, 16 February 2006) weight, flexibility, strength, co-ordination. While new technologies highlight well our When Merleau-Ponty (1968) talks about the changing capacities to feel the presence of intermingling of the senses, he suggests that we virtual and distant objects or people, it is still the can see, understand and be with our environ- case that similar presences can be at least as ments in a haptic way. Similarly and to varying intensely mutated, enchanted and refigured degrees, touch can become a visual experience. through decidedly ‘low-tech’, raw experiences Either way, it is always the case that our visual as described above. perception is experienced primarily in connec- Here the experience of the senses do not tion with the rest of the body. Before a always ‘join up’, rather it is left to the body and a linguistic understanding has a chance to take ‘skilful coping’ (Dreyfus 1991) to make sense as shape we are already feeling our environment best one can of a kinaesthetic experience that through our eyes, as well as through our more might fit jaggedly with the corresponding visual proximate attuned sensory organs. In this way one. In each moment ‘the feeling of how things solidity, texture, surface and depth can all be are going motivates behaviour’, rather than any felt at a distance. Spatial forms have a haptic solid or complete idea, image or representation presence, and can ‘touch’ you long before you (Dreyfus 2005: 141). Yet the notion that the have come close enough to lay hands on the body is only ever ‘coping’ can tend to neglect the brick, grass, wall, rail or whatever. important role of imagination, creativity and It is the past that comes at the body from the playful interaction. With fear as an engagement environment. A fence or wall can be ‘felt’ before with space, in parkour our emotions can be the hand makes contact; rather the fence is considered less a ‘coping’, and more a playmate. involuntarily remembered. Yet there is uncer- While I do, to an extent, ‘cope’ with the tainty and misconnection between place and disjointedness that can afflict my senses, it is a memory. Multiple temporalities inhabit the disjointedness that is sought, fought, rolled present (Crang and Travlou 2001). The place around, tugged about and quietly contemplated. and the intent of the presence in it can stimulate There is a paradoxical element of freedom a metaphorical riot of memories jostling about in this play with fear. While fear moves me on, the body, each demanding different perspectives unsettles, prompts, calls and inhabits place, its on the same section of space. Riding on the back callings make possible an answer. ‘Freedom of memory, fear can lurch up at the sight of what becomes a form of embodied awareness: a Parkour and the mobility of emotion 905 choosing to sense and, more specifically, a the place. The point here is that place is choosing to feel and touch an environment’ evocative by virtue of its ability to stretch, (Lewis 2000: 58). jump and scratch temporal lineage. With fear as Yet there can be a profound ambiguity to the playmate, moments are exploded into games fear. It can protect the body, discouraging that span large swathes of time. As an ongoing positions or movements that will result in injury project, an epic that plays with architecture and or death, but for parkour practitioners this type contact, parkour brings into awareness our of fear can have quite the opposite effect. It can capacity to cultivate types of emotional engage- cloud the senses and form a separator between ments. The contact itself is often motivator, but body and environment leading to unnecessary it is one that can be playfully and consciously error and a lack of commitment. It can and does focused upon and reworked. jeopardise the success of movements. This has Parkour is full of events, where the world led many practitioners to suggest that one of the expands and shakes with intensity. This is the most dangerous aspects to parkour is fear itself manipulation of affect. I do not use that term (and of course here we are talking about a very lightly, the danger is that ‘affect’ becomes a specific type of fear). This sentiment was vitalist philosophy that posits an unchangeable, repeatedly expressed by traceurs. amorphous and atemporal field (Kraftl and Adey 2008). Rather affect emerges, and is made Duncan: The thing is I know I can make that, I have malleable by virtue of the continuous movement done stuff much bigger before ... It’s so annoying! in the world. In other words, affect is mobile There’s just something funny about the jutting out lip. along with the materialities of the world and not at all essential. Presupposing emotion, as a type Me: Yeah, the height doesn’t help either. of potentiality, there is a sense in which the continued practice of parkour calls forth certain Dunc: No! Haha. If it was on ground level I would strands of affect and weaves them into the jump it straight off, no problem. It’s so hard to just emotions that connect the traceur to place. get over it and give it 100 per cent up here, that’s the Thus it is possible for parkour to become a problem. (Author’s diary, 24 April 2006). way of retrieving fear from an abstracted, Despite confusing and in some instances dispersed phenomena. Of wresting emotion- annoying the practitioner, fear is still ‘contact ality away from bureaucratic controls and fear’—it is being and moving with entities that complex systems, and placing it within reach, are termed ‘other’. Configurations of materi- as something immediately ‘touchable’, that alities and the spaces between them become can be slowly and intimately worked upon. As meaningful when they are jointed with an artisan works with base material to shape emotions. They orient people’s movements, something new, the traceur works with the and perception. As I have suggested, with an environment to help cultivate their emotions. engagement that is, over time, more or less There is a concerted effort to move away from immature and open towards space, in parkour the view of emotions as something that it is possible to unsettle, change and even happens to them. Instead they are in a playful wilfully modify this emotional contact. process of negotiation, between place and the I had seen my friend jump the gap, and body. Immature practice produces new fears now replayed it churns up my emotions towards that connect body to textures, shapes and 906 Stephen John Saville objects. Such forms are touched and touch otherwise) between them. Figure 4 shows back. The practice of parkour encourages an several designs made by practitioners for immaturity that allows that touching. ‘parkour parks’, which they hold little hope With this immature engagement the body is of ever seeing realised, but relish in the free to re-interpret space from many different imaginative play of its virtual construction, mobile perspectives. Parkour and emotional whether with pen and paper or three-dimen- play with space makes architects of its sional CAD packages. practitioners, who can demonstrate well their The traceur’s experience of place can be of a emotional attachments to configurations of concrete, solid and brutal materiality, that at space, and the movements (imagined or every turn betrays them, alarming the body and

Figure 4 Designs and sketches. Parkour and the mobility of emotion 907 confining its playful aspirations. Yet those same roughness on hand, the shininess of the ‘kitchen’, scars can animate the parkour practitioner’s the power of the leg, the frightening position of the engagements, making walls into flow-full body. Looking back, it is a feeling that becomes mobility, and rails into spinning leaps. surprisingly sharp when I turn my focus to any part: the first vault over the kitchen; legs push off, body It was a fantastic sensation; I moved from one extends fully like superman flying for a split second. object to the next, uninterrupted, my focus was all The padded bits of my palms go down, the stainless about (I didn’t want to bang into a passer by) but steel makes that noise that only thin sheet steel does, never holding on to anything in particular for any there is an only just perceptible slip on the smooth period of time. I moved from concrete posts, to the surface before my hands grip firm, this is strange looking outdoor kitchen [Figure 5], up a unexpected and comes with a pang of panic but is wall and along some, through the higher narrower somehow pleasant, knees tuck, hands lift off, part of ‘the kitchen’, and slowly jogged out of fingertips pushing until the last, and I’m running flowfull steam. It felt amazing. My hands touched, again. (Author’s diary, 25 February 2006) my body crumpled up small, expanded out, bent around. The contact I had with things was precious, While I completed much longer ‘runs’ between but it never lingered, it was always letting go, and through street furniture and buildings, this moving from texture to texture, revelling in the experience stuck out as a flash of effortlessness.

Figure 5 Kitchen vault (author’s collection). 908 Stephen John Saville

The kind of feeling that often comes, but is for it has a small ash at its highest point. It is kinder soon undermined as I attempt to latch on to it. than concrete, it has encouraged me to try more. It was a moment of improvised movement that Twice though, I have fallen, the second time resulting brought with it a new and welcome place, in dirt getting in my mouth ... For a time Tree-drop is without prior contemplation and at a running all there is, just me and Tree-drop. I feel I know it, pace. Every part of the environment moved better than most banks or trees. I have felt its height together in an emotionally charged continuum rise and fall, been upside-down from low branches, of shapes, textures and sensations. spun off the top lip, gotten caught by the protruding Flow becomes the moment in which there is root bit, then used the same root to push off and reach no longer any discernible ‘I’ that negotiates or the second branch ... I am alone and playing with plans paths around objects, rather there is a Tree-drop and my fear is part of the play—we are body that knows at each moment what to juggling it between us. It keeps me going, taking small grasp, how to slide through space unhindered risks by trying new configurations until I am by obstacles (Sudnow 2001). exhausted sweaty and getting cold. (Author’s diary, If flow is such a joining it is inlaid with 20 December 2005) emotional engagements, which go between movement and space. While ‘consciously’ we The practice of parkour has emotional may not be aware of our movements within a purchase. As an idea, or ideal, it engages. given space, during such moments we have for With fear as playmate, emotion continually guidance an emotional engagement. For most shifts in linguistic evading style, as something of us this engagement never ceases and while that moves us on, a craving, an asking, a becoming and emergent, it is not haphazardly demanding, a loving and a hoping. Fear can so. ‘Emotions, which have so often been become a familiar link to space, a riddle to treated as opposed to thinking, are paradoxi- solve. In parkour the answer is not to dispense cally self-reflexive actions and experiences. with fear but is found in process, trying, But the self-reflection in emotions is corporeal testing, working out, and becoming fluid. rather than a matter of discursive reasoning’ My vulnerability, my existence as a corpor- (Katz 1999: 7). There is a sense in which the eal being demands this development be made emotions themselves are a stance towards in contact with the world. As the terrible and space that can be evaluated. It is precisely our awesome things we are capable of flash before ability to look back and reflect upon our us, what takes hold? How does affect become emotions that gives them a degree of malle- manifest into emotional engagement? My ability. We can choose to practise or ‘train’ contention is that by encouraging practitioners certain emotions. In parkour the emotional to find new ways to experience and move in connections undone and formed through its places, parkour begins to render this process embodied actions create new kinds of fear open to revision. The way we build knowledge along with new modes of inhabiting place. of these movements (as discussed in the previous sections), can bring depth and Play with fear intimacy to our fear, rendering it an engage- ment that has the possibility of play with I have been one and a half hours on this one sheer space. grassy/rocky bank in the middle of the countryside. I If thinkers like Bauman (2006) argue that have gotten to know it well. I shall call it ‘Tree-drop’, fear has become less touchable and no longer Parkour and the mobility of emotion 909 an engagement with the world, it is still the learned to ‘read’ them. While we might case that practices like parkour can connect casually refer to this as ‘productive’ of space, the practitioner in a quite direct way, where actually it is the nature of our engagement the solidity of walls, rails and floors and with space that changes. When I attempt for movements of jumping, vaulting and rolling the first time, but fail to vault a rail, the become, through subtle and ‘refined’ fear, specifics of that event will cause a radical something less shadowy, formless and diffuse, mutation in my perceptions, and contact with and more something that can be worked upon, space. My fear forms a very important part of played with and examined. ‘Doing’ these that mutation, as it is my emotional engage- emotions, as an engagement with place give ment with things that envelopes my percep- the traceur what has been considered by tions of them. Lefebvre (1991)—and many others who have In experimentation and play there are taken inspiration from him—a ‘productive’ breaks, fissures and interruptions in the capacity. seeming smoothness of emotional engage- Borden (2001), in writing a history of ments with the world. Play in parkour has skateboarding and architecture, for example, the potential to destabilise both the emotion of shows how through skateboarding movements fear (folding into it feelings of movements that architecture can be ‘compositionally quite can entice and draw one towards certain distinct from the ordered hierarchies of special forms) and certain styles of mobility. architecture-as-object, architecture-as-draw- Through my parkour practice I move around ing, or architecture-as-idea; [instead] it is a an environment in which fear, as engagement, rhythmical procedure, continually repeated leaps and bounds before me teasing, questio- yet forever new’ (2001: 262). Here the ning, and exposing gaps, textures, corners, movement re-produces anew, the body, skate- crooks, railings and drops. board and the space. Much of the research that has shaped this paper, has been an experiment with a vulner- Architecture is at once erased and reborn in the ability6 that allows new ways of connecting, and phenomenal act of the skater’s move. Space, then, is of making moving contact with architectural produced dialectically—both outward from the forms. This is more than a parkour-specific body, and in relation to skateboard and skateboard point, or even a methodological point. More terrain, each of the last two being erased within the broadly it is an issue that permeates most of our process. (2001: 108) attitudes and precognitive interactions. It is a call to be open to play, as a practice that can Yet, for the scientist, the physical space enrich and redefine our existence, one which actually changes very little during parkour— encourages contact, wonder and the willingness there may be some small traces of rubber sole to place a hope in fear. That is de-centring deposited on the walls or a few grains of oneself for the purpose of playful interaction. material dislodged, but, depending on the Letting things, stones, walls, trees, bars, grass, surface, such changes are often microscopic. ledges, lips, kerbs, grit touch and reshape you, But such small molecular changes can drasti- and thus become themselves ‘alive’ in the cally influence a person’s contact with space. process. Direct honest feedback is learned, Rubber scuff marks on the wall can tell a through the senses, in an involved way that profound and mobile story for those that have demands fear be a type of contact. 910 Stephen John Saville

Although openness and vulnerability must can become so routine, its way or touching so involve degrees of ‘letting go’, this is always a familiar it becomes invisible. It hides the partial affair. We may not make a pure or possible, masks the fears that can beckon, atemporal type of contact. The flaw in spin, illuminate and animate places. In this phenomenological reduction perhaps: that instance retrieving one’s multiplicity, re-enga- the ‘stripping away’ (epoche´) can never be ging with fear as playmate requires that fear be complete—we exist because we have a past. larger than an embodied phenomena. Instead Body-knowledge or maturity is not easily it is mobile amongst the kong vaults, cat leaps, cast off. What is called an ‘immediate’ palm spins.7 In this sense, for some people inspection of a situation, one that does not parkour can be a way to re-enchant their enrol prejudice (Zaner 1975), is hard to relations with spaces and ideas. Certainly my conceive of. Yet as I have argued, here this parkour and play with the environment need not subtract from the possibility of play have gotten lost together and lead me with fear. Indeed, parkour is a process that towards exciting and enlivening engagements deploys maturity and immaturity together and with place. inseparably in its questing. What then does play with fear do to our understanding of the word ‘fear’? Should we Conclusion be looking towards new words to describe multilayered emotions? Must a specific I have made a preliminary attempt to run emotion include the place in which it has with our widely held understanding of ‘fear’, arisen, as well as the sensations it entails? I towards something not quite so static, have argued here that the emotion is itself a singular or dishearteningly negative. Through type of contact with the world and that an immersive engagement with parkour, I description of it only makes sense when we found fear taking on an array of different account for both the feelings and the place. I textures and colours, many of which were leave the question of exactly how we go about not as unpleasant as has hitherto been describing emotions, what words we use for theorised. In the spirit of the practice which ‘fear-enchantment’, ‘fear-pain’ or ‘fear-enti- I have been studying (and practising), I cing’, for example, as an open one. Only to have attempted to think about and articulate suggest that words like ‘fear-pain’ will mean these types of fear with a kind of mobile most when they have a context with which we playfulness. can attempt to empathise. Indeed, it may be that it is in play, and play While fear as playmate has been the focus not just amongst young children, that we can here, equally one could look at the opposite; find ways to break out of iterative perform- that is, fear which craves repetitive safety. ances, not only of mobility, but of emotion- Acting without openness is to give no potential ality as well. Specifically, certain types of to place. It is to kill play with fear outright. It unpleasant fear can be supplanted, experi- fosters a specific fear that closes down human mented with and reflected on, through experience with a dullness that describes only practices like parkour that attempt to cultivate one path, only one future which gains more ‘enjoyable’ kinds of fear. These fears are empowerment through disenchanting. not always totally direct engagements (i.e. Towards this passive spectator, fear’s hold physical pain¼a fear) and can come from Parkour and the mobility of emotion 911 playful imaginings and various time-spaces. Acknowledgements More often though they emerge in the moments of action, when engagements with My thanks to all those who shared with me the place shift and are remade ready for a new pleasure and pain of parkour practice. Thanks ‘trying’ and another round of ‘getting to also to Tim Cresswell for kick starting this know’. research and Pete Merriman, Gareth Hoskins, The plasticity of a place that is under Samantha Saville, Peter Kraftl and other construction by traceurs can be frightening in friends and colleagues for their insightful many different ways. The intimate contact comments and encouragement on earlier practitioners have with place ties their fears drafts and presentations of this work; and tightly to distance, texture, surface and form. for the feedback of the three anonymous Playing with such contact is a risk that, for referees. This research was gratefully under- many, is seen as unacceptably high: not only taken with funding from the ESRC. does such play have the ability to reshape radically the body’s emotional engagement with place; it has the risk of permanently Notes injuring the body itself. For the experienced 1 Though I will not dwell on it here, it is interesting to practitioner though, who has known pain and consider how parkour might be understood as a possibly injury, parkour has led them to new utopian practice. Common to recent work on utopia spatial awareness, and most importantly of all, (see Kraftl 2007; Parker, Fournier and Reedy 2007), has given them the ability to participate more parkour is an ongoing process that can be unsettling in its re-imagination of movement and landscape. deeply in the formation of their emotions and 2 During this immersive participation, I practised the experience of the places they move parkour on a daily basis, with several different groups through. and individuals, and occasionally on my own. As an But there can be no doubt: there is danger in observant participant, I kept a research diary of my this path. On my computer screen I see David experiences. I also conducted semi-structured recorded interviews with some traceurs. Belle fall. My thoughts cannot be disjointed 3 Talk about one’s ‘Way’ in parkour is almost wholly from the tension I feel in my arms and legs. It is borrowed from Japanese forms of Budo, which prize my contact that responds to these images and certain bodily practices and disciplines (archery, sounds. I have looked down and seen the , etc.) which come to possess spiritual significance. While ‘The Way’ in Japanese practices is danger. A danger that is part of me, for it is I normally quite prescribed, master to student, in who considers this jump or that; it is a parkour this is much less the case. possibility of freedom that fuels my fear. 4 Parkour practitioners often refer to the philosophy of It is the possibilities and the emotional parkour. This philosophy is espoused variously by engagements that connect us. David Belle runs different traceurs across the globe, drawing on a variety of cultural references, particularly from what at a hard concrete wall. I know he will fall and can be broadly identified as Eastern philosophies. I feel slightly sick, for I too have that wall, that 5 During my research I attended a ten-day parkour void of space to cross or disappear into. In this workshop, run by Tony Wolf as part of the ‘Stomping- way our play extends down screens and wires, Ground’ dance festival in New South Wales. Before the until it meets, and I am standing before a wall, term ‘parkour’ was coined by David Belle, Wolf and others were supplementing their professional stunt any wall, contemplating, feeling slightly sick. work by practising very similar movements under the But I get up, excitedly—a safe journey is not guise of ‘Urban Shugendo’. Of course, the physical always a good one. practice of parkour-type movements has been with us 912 Stephen John Saville

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Wylie, J. (2005) A single day’s walking: narrating self and un lien avec le lieu. Les peurs se manifestent ainsi de landscape on the South West Coast Path, Transactions manie`re diffe´rente et constituent autant un obstacle of the Institute of British Geographers 30: 234–247. a` la mobilite´ qu’un encouragement, dans certains Young, I.M. (1990) Throwing Like a Girl. Bloomington: cas, a` des formes de mouvement imaginatif Indiana University Press. et enjoue´. Zaner, R.M. (1975) On the sense of method in phenomenology, in Pivcevic, E. (ed.) Phenomenology Mots-clefs: peur, parkour, course libre, ge´ographie and Philosophical Understandings.Cambridge: e´motionnelle, mobilite´, lieu, jouer. Cambridge University Press, pp. 125–142. Jugando con el miedo: parkour y la movilidad afectiva Abstract translations Este artı´culo entra en debates sobre la geografı´a Jouer avec la peur: le parkour et la mobilite´ de afectiva y la teorı´a no representacional por considerar l’e´motion el miedo como una forma verdaderamente transport- able de interactuar con nuestro entorno. El Parkour, o Cet article ouvre des de´bats sur la ge´ographie ‘freerunning’, es bien conocido por parte del pu´blico e´motionnelle et la the´orie non-repre´sentationnelle gracias a las representaciones y pelı´culas comerciales en abordant la peur sous l’angle de l’engagement de los medios de comunicacio´n. Es representado mobile avec notre environnement. Aujourd’hui, le como un deporte urbano espectacular que, o se puede, public est fortement sensibilise´ au parkour, qui est o no se puede hacer. Mediante un estudio etnogra´fico une sorte de course libre, par l’interme´diaire de con practicantes del parkour considero que´ ha sido repre´sentations me´diatiques commerciales excluido de estas representaciones: las emociones et cine´matographiques. Celles-ci le de´crivent involucradas en el acto de intentar, experimentar y, comme un sport urbain des plus spectaculaires poco a poco, aprender a estar en un lugar de forma auquel on peut ou ne peut pas se livrer. En reprenant distinta. Los lugares del parkour esta´n‘hechos’o les re´sultats d’une recherche ethnographique mene´e movilizados de forma indecisa, insegura, torpe e aupre`s de groupes qui s’adonnent au parkour, une inacabada, que puede ser caracterizada como un tipo se´rie d’e´le´ments e´carte´s de ces repre´sentations sont de juego con la arquitectura. Sugiero que este juego aborde´s, dont les e´motions suscite´es par la tentative, depende de toda una serie de temores que, en lugar de l’expe´rimentation et, en dernie`re phase, l’appren- ser totalmente negativos, constituyen una manera tissage d’eˆtre dans les lieux de manie`re diffe´rente. importante en que los practicantes interactuan con el Les lieux, dans le parkour, sont «re´ussis» ou investis lugar.Aquı´ los temores pueden manifestarse de forma de fac¸on provisoire, ale´atoire, maladroite et peut distinta, no so´lo limitando la movilidad sino, en eˆtre vu comme une expe´rience ludique de l’archi- algunos casos, impulsando formas de moverse que tecture. Il est avance´ que ce jeu repose sur toutes son imaginativas y traviesas. sortes de peurs qui n’ont pas seulement un effet ne´gatif, mais qui constituent e´galement une voie Palabras claves: miedo, parkour, freerunning, importante par laquelle les participants e´tablissent geografı´a afectiva, movilidad, lugar, juego.