Flâneur
Encyclopedia
The term flâneur comes from the French
masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire
developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it". Because of the term's usage and theorization by Baudelaire and numerous thinkers in economic, cultural, literary and historical fields, the idea of the flâneur has accumulated significant meaning as a referent for understanding urban phenomena and modernity. In French Canada flâner is rarely used to describe strolling and often has a negative connotation as the term's most common usage refers to loitering
.
Flâneur is not limited to someone committing the physical act of peripatetic stroll in the Baudelairian sense, but can also include a "complete philosophical way of living and thinking", and a process of navigating erudition as described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's essay on "why I walk" in the second edition of The Black Swan (2010). Louis Menand in seeking to describe T.S. Eliot's relationship to English literary society and his role in the formation of modernism describes Eliot as a flaneur (The New Yorker,September 19, 2011, pp. 81–89?)
asserts that "Baudelaire would be torn the rest of his life between the stances of flâneur and dandy
, a disengaged and cynical voyeur on the one hand, and man of the people who enters into the life of his subjects with passion on the other" (Paris: Capital of Modernity 14).
The observer-participant dialectic
is evidenced in part by the dandy
culture. Highly self-aware, and to a certain degree flamboyant and theatrical, dandies of the mid-nineteenth century created scenes through outrageous acts like walking turtles on leashes down the streets of Paris. Such acts exemplify a flâneurs active participation in and fascination with street life while displaying a critical attitude towards the uniformity, speed, and anonymity of modern life in the city.
The concept of the flâneur is important in academic discussions of the phenomenon of modernity
. While Baudelaire's aesthetic and critical visions helped open up the modern city as a space for investigation, theorists, such as Georg Simmel
, began to codify the urban experience in more sociological and psychological terms. In his essay "The Metropolis and Mental Life
", Simmel theorizes that the complexities of the modern city create new social bonds and new attitudes towards others. The modern city was transforming humans, giving them a new relationship to time and space, inculcating in them a "blasé attitude", and altering fundamental notions of freedom and being:
and urban planning
describing those who are indirectly and unintentionally affected by a particular design they experience only in passing. Walter Benjamin
adopted the concept of the urban observer both as an analytical tool and as a lifestyle. From his Marxist
standpoint, Benjamin describes the flâneur as a product of modern life and the Industrial Revolution
without precedent, a parallel to the advent of the tourist
. His flâneur is an uninvolved but highly perceptive bourgeois
dilettante
. Benjamin became his own prime example, making social and aesthetic observations during long walks through Paris. Even the title of his unfinished Arcades Project
comes from his affection for covered shopping streets. In 1917, the Swiss writer Robert Walser
published a short story called "Der Spaziergang", or "The Walk", a veritable outcome of the flâneur literature.
In the context of modern-day architecture and urban planning, designing for flâneurs is one way to approach issues of the psychological aspects of the built environment. Architect Jon Jerde
, for instance, designed his Horton Plaza
and Universal CityWalk
projects around the idea of providing surprises, distractions, and sequences of events for pedestrians.
. The street photographer is seen as one modern extension of the urban observer described by nineteenth century journalist Victor Fournel before the advent of the hand-held camera:
The most notable application of flâneur to street photography probably comes from Susan Sontag
in her 1977 essay, On Photography. She describes how, since the development of hand-held cameras in the early 20th century, the camera has become the tool of the flâneur:
s, diorama
s and daguerrotypes", and they often visited and described Barnum's American Museum
. Brand argues that "[t]hese panoramic spaces, containing the entire multiplicity of the world and presenting it as a spectacle to be consumed, appeared to spectatorial narrators to be the most representative spaces in their respective cities, the one true metaphor for the whole." (Spectator and the City in Nineteenth-Century American Literature)
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it". Because of the term's usage and theorization by Baudelaire and numerous thinkers in economic, cultural, literary and historical fields, the idea of the flâneur has accumulated significant meaning as a referent for understanding urban phenomena and modernity. In French Canada flâner is rarely used to describe strolling and often has a negative connotation as the term's most common usage refers to loitering
Loitering
Loitering is the act of remaining in a particular public place for a protracted time. Under certain circumstances, it is illegal in various jurisdictions.-Prohibition and history:Loitering may be prohibited by local governments in several countries...
.
Flâneur is not limited to someone committing the physical act of peripatetic stroll in the Baudelairian sense, but can also include a "complete philosophical way of living and thinking", and a process of navigating erudition as described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's essay on "why I walk" in the second edition of The Black Swan (2010). Louis Menand in seeking to describe T.S. Eliot's relationship to English literary society and his role in the formation of modernism describes Eliot as a flaneur (The New Yorker,September 19, 2011, pp. 81–89?)
Contexts
Urban life
While Baudelaire characterized the flâneur as a "gentleman stroller of city streets", he saw the flâneur as having a key role in understanding, participating in and portraying the city. A flâneur thus played a double role in city life and in theory, that is, while remaining a detached observer. This stance, simultaneously part of and apart from, combines sociological, anthropological, literary and historical notions of the relationship between the individual and the greater populace. After the 1848 Revolution in France, after which the empire was reestablished with clearly bourgeois pretensions of "order" and "morals", Baudelaire began asserting that traditional art was inadequate for the new dynamic complications of modern life. Social and economic changes brought by industrialization demanded that the artist immerse himself in the metropolis and become, in Baudelaire's phrase, "a botanist of the sidewalk". David HarveyDavid Harvey
David Harvey is the name of:*David Harvey *David Harvey , geographer and social theorist*David Harvey , American luthier...
asserts that "Baudelaire would be torn the rest of his life between the stances of flâneur and dandy
Dandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...
, a disengaged and cynical voyeur on the one hand, and man of the people who enters into the life of his subjects with passion on the other" (Paris: Capital of Modernity 14).
The observer-participant dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
is evidenced in part by the dandy
Dandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...
culture. Highly self-aware, and to a certain degree flamboyant and theatrical, dandies of the mid-nineteenth century created scenes through outrageous acts like walking turtles on leashes down the streets of Paris. Such acts exemplify a flâneurs active participation in and fascination with street life while displaying a critical attitude towards the uniformity, speed, and anonymity of modern life in the city.
The concept of the flâneur is important in academic discussions of the phenomenon of modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
. While Baudelaire's aesthetic and critical visions helped open up the modern city as a space for investigation, theorists, such as Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel was a major German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach laid the foundations for sociological antipositivism, asking 'What is society?' in a direct allusion to Kant's question 'What is nature?',...
, began to codify the urban experience in more sociological and psychological terms. In his essay "The Metropolis and Mental Life
The Metropolis and Mental Life
The Metropolis and Mental Life is a 1903 essay by the German sociologist, Georg Simmel.-Simmel on the Metropolis:...
", Simmel theorizes that the complexities of the modern city create new social bonds and new attitudes towards others. The modern city was transforming humans, giving them a new relationship to time and space, inculcating in them a "blasé attitude", and altering fundamental notions of freedom and being:
Architecture and urban planning
The concept of the flâneur has also become meaningful in architectureArchitecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
and urban planning
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
describing those who are indirectly and unintentionally affected by a particular design they experience only in passing. Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
adopted the concept of the urban observer both as an analytical tool and as a lifestyle. From his Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
standpoint, Benjamin describes the flâneur as a product of modern life and the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
without precedent, a parallel to the advent of the tourist
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
. His flâneur is an uninvolved but highly perceptive bourgeois
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
dilettante
Amateur
An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....
. Benjamin became his own prime example, making social and aesthetic observations during long walks through Paris. Even the title of his unfinished Arcades Project
Arcades Project
The Passagenwerk or Arcades Project was an unfinished lifelong project of philosopher Walter Benjamin, an enormous collection of writings on the city life of Paris in the 19th century, especially concerned with the iron-and-glass covered "arcades"...
comes from his affection for covered shopping streets. In 1917, the Swiss writer Robert Walser
Robert Walser (writer)
Robert Walser , was a German-speaking Swiss writer.-1878–1897:...
published a short story called "Der Spaziergang", or "The Walk", a veritable outcome of the flâneur literature.
In the context of modern-day architecture and urban planning, designing for flâneurs is one way to approach issues of the psychological aspects of the built environment. Architect Jon Jerde
Jon Jerde
Jon Jerde is an American architect based in Venice, California, Founder & Chairman of , a design architecture and urban planning firm that pioneered the concept of placemaking and "experience architecture;" and has created multiple award-winning commercial developments around the globe...
, for instance, designed his Horton Plaza
Westfield Horton Plaza
Horton Plaza, officially Westfield Horton Plaza, is a five level outdoor shopping mall located in downtown San Diego and remarkable for its bright colors, architectural tricks and odd spatial rhythms. It stands on six and a half city blocks and is adjacent to the city's historic Gaslamp Quarter. ...
and Universal CityWalk
Universal CityWalk
Universal CityWalk is the name given to the entertainment and retail districts located adjacent to the theme parks of Universal Parks & Resorts. Originating as an expansion of Universal's first park, Universal Studios Hollywood, CityWalk serves as an entrance plaza from the parking lots to the...
projects around the idea of providing surprises, distractions, and sequences of events for pedestrians.
Photography
The flâneur's tendency toward detached but aesthetically attuned observation has brought the term into the literature of photography, particularly street photographyStreet photography
Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions and other settings....
. The street photographer is seen as one modern extension of the urban observer described by nineteenth century journalist Victor Fournel before the advent of the hand-held camera:
This man is a roving and impassioned daguerreotypeDaguerreotypeThe daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate....
that preserves the least traces, and on which are reproduced, with their changing reflections, the course of things, the movement of the city, the multiple physiognomy of the public spirit, the confessions, antipathies, and admirations of the crowd. ("Ce qu'on voit dans les rues de Paris", What one sees on the streets of Paris)
The most notable application of flâneur to street photography probably comes from Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
in her 1977 essay, On Photography. She describes how, since the development of hand-held cameras in the early 20th century, the camera has become the tool of the flâneur:
The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.' (pg. 55)
Exhibition
Dana Brand, an American literature scholar, notes that in mid 19th century "[t]he New York flaneurs were always comparing their productions to panoramaPanorama
A panorama is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film/video, or a three-dimensional model....
s, diorama
Diorama
The word diorama can either refer to a nineteenth century mobile theatre device, or, in modern usage, a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum...
s and daguerrotypes", and they often visited and described Barnum's American Museum
Barnum's American Museum
Barnum's American Museum was located at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York City, USA, from 1841 to 1865. The museum was owned by famous showman P.T. Barnum and his partner and original owner, John Scudder. Prior to their partnership, the museum was known as Scudder's American...
. Brand argues that "[t]hese panoramic spaces, containing the entire multiplicity of the world and presenting it as a spectacle to be consumed, appeared to spectatorial narrators to be the most representative spaces in their respective cities, the one true metaphor for the whole." (Spectator and the City in Nineteenth-Century American Literature)
Cornelia Otis Skinner's flâneur
See also
- Decadent movementDecadent movementThe Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
- PsychogeographyPsychogeographyPsychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Another definition is "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for...
- DériveDériveIn psychogeography, a dérive is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, where an individual travels where the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct them with the ultimate goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic...
- "The Man of the CrowdThe Man of the Crowd"The Man of the Crowd" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe about a nameless narrator following a man through a crowded London, first published in 1840.-Plot summary:...
": a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe about a nameless narrator following a man through a crowded London.
External links
- The Arcades Project Project: The Flaneur
- La Société des Flâneurs Sans Frontières
- The Flâneur :: 'modern hypertext, fin de siècle flair'
- Dandyism.net
- Flâneur.org
- Georg Simmel: The Metropolis and Mental Life
- The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris (2001) by Edmund White
- Women's Passages, a Bildungsroman of female flânerie. (2005) by Karen Van Godtsenhoven