The flâneur in his territory(ies): From modern to contemporary milieus

Abstract

The way The Cure reinterpret Baudelaire`s “petit poème en prose” “The Eyes of the Poor”, included in his “Le Spleen de Paris”, allows us to introduce the subject we propose for this text: to question the territory(ies) and the territoriality of the flâneur concept in contemporary times. Being the romantic and romanticized idea of flâneur a construction of modernity, which is often represented by an idle figure, ready for a stroll through the city (almost always, through the centre of the city…), and highly marked out by class, gender, and often by an overt and even ostentatious attitude or pose, what sense will it make to a flanêrie which seems gradually democratized and potentially available to (almost) everybody, in cities increasingly fluid, diversified and spatially complex as those of today? In which territories could and would the contemporary flâneurs want to wander? Which is the space to practice the idleness (otium) in a life that is doubly submerged by the lack of time and by the sphere of business (nec otium)? To what extent would or could flânerie continue to be a result of a clear intentionality? To what extent would contemporary flâneurs want to dissipate in the crowd and to pass more and more unnoticed in their drifts through the city? And to what extent would the outcomes of this flânerie in present-day territories be easily shared and assimilated by others, in a world marked by mediation and legitimation processes which are increasingly complex and fluid, and where, at its limit, each one of us is left wandering in a bubble more and more particular and specific to each one, determined by the multiplicity of these conditioning mechanisms, and so that therefore our flânerie in the city may be no more than an opportunity for the expression of our “individuation” (Remy and Voyé, 1992) and for the individual awareness of the city that is around each one of us?