2. Ambiguity, Paradox, and Dialectic in
the Definitino of the flâneur
• The differentiation of male and female modernism in the relative
status of the flâneur:
• (1) the characteristics of the modern artist (遊走-觀察-創作)
• (2) the artist’s modes of observation (身處人群-瞰查人群)
• (3) the public space portrayed
th
• The dictionary definition of flâneur: idler working artists 19 century
Mid
• Baudelaire-urban observers
• Simmel-the urban Psyche
• Benjamin-the passages of urban history Masculinized;
Changes in its
• Wolff-the separate sphere significance
• Pollock
• Wilson
Contemporary feminists
3. Ambiguity, Paradox, and Dialectic in
the Definitino of the flâneur
• Spectator v.s. flâneur v.s. dandy
• dandy v.s. flâneur v.s. prostitute v.s. rag-picker
• Marginal mode of observation:
The dominant walker: rag-picker
• Benjamin x Baudelaire: (urban-observer-artist)
4. Simmel-the urban Psyche
• The gendered mass
(female presence, male anxiety)
－the orientation of “femininity”:
unconscious, amorality, materiality, sexuality
－feminine/masculine – interior/exterior – passive/active
• The city as a site of spectacle on display;
the urban dwellers as part of spectacle
psychological detachment, indifference: blasé attitude
• Baudelairian observer
v.s. Simmel’s urban personality
(physical closeness, mental aloofness) (artistic gaze)
v.s. Benjamin’s observer-artist (man of the crowd-window)
(Baudelaire: the wandering, subversive, marginal ambiguity)
(Simmel+Benjamin: Detachment, self-assertion, bourgeois-control)
5. • Unbound by geographical and temporal place
• Impressionists
• The urban dweller -mental isolation (detached)
The artists -growing individualism (subjective)
social detachment that suggests an aestheticized,
harmonizing view of life.
• Flâneur:
observer and controller of the urban spectacle
(spectacles become diversified and fragmentary)
withdraw; assign the coherence of urban landscape
from a panoramic, totalizing, highly individualistic
point of view. (The ultimate end of flâneur)
6. Benjamin-the passages of urban history
• Baudelaire’s representation of city dwellers v.s.
Benjamin’s theorization
(modernity x socio-historical experience of the city)
• “The flâneur”
a man of the crowd; empathy
a 19th century man of leisure; elbow room; involve
the act of walking, as a body within the city
spectator: scopic authority, optimistic, Enlightened London
想體驗城市，想被人群包圍 (hypersensitive, responsive):
the fascinated, absorbed, wandering Baudelairian flâneur
out of place, attempt to attain an authoritative, superior vision from a
paranomic perspective
• “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”
a man at the window; distinction/retreat from the crowd, interior
-flanerie, +immobile observation
a metaphor for the dialectical urban aesthetics; idv control
為保護自我不被城市過多的衝擊擊潰故抽離心智
7. • Marginal mode of observation, the Baudelairian dominant
walker: rag-picker
• Benjamin x Baudelaire: (urban-observer-artist)
not a detached voyeur, but who interacts with the city
and makes a collage out of fragments.
• Prostitute: personifications of the characteristic aspects of
modernity, spectacle, and transitoriness. The object of
poetic urban gaze, of commodity and open to consumption.
• Flâneur: masculine as a bourgeois male of privacy and
leisure, but feminine as passively stimulated by the city,
dandiacal in dress and on the margins of the public city
world.
8. Feminism and Public/Private Space in the City
• Wolff-the separate sphere
• pure male experience
• Pollock
indirect angles, high viewpoint
Wilson
• male anxiety, bewilderment
• discard evidence of possibilities
• flanerie: search for identity in modern world
• {Pilgrimage}, {street-haunting} : leisure,
adventurous
9. • What are the “mythologies of modernity”?
Why are they called “mythologies”?
• How do these mythologies established in
literary tradition?
• What role does the flâneur figure play in the
(mythologies of) modernity?
