This praxis-based book explores how an improvisational, creative and embodied practice such as the derive works to defamiliarise our experience of the late modern built environment, fostering new insight into routinised cultural behaviours. In addition to detailing the key contexts of modernity, this book includes case studies on the work of Viktor Shklovsky, Craig Raine, Georges Perec, plus rare scholarly attention to the postcards of Jim Henson's Uncle Traveling Matt. Tertiary students and early career researchers in the humanities, particularly cultural theory and the creative arts, will...