{"id":61185,"date":"2013-10-17T13:38:34","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T17:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=61185"},"modified":"2018-12-04T13:16:06","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T18:16:06","slug":"in-praise-of-the-flaneur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/17\/in-praise-of-the-flaneur\/","title":{"rendered":"In Praise of the Fl\u00e2neur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Little things in life supplant the \u201cgreat events.\u201d \u2014Peter Altenberg, as translated by Peter Wortsman<\/span><\/p>\n

The figure of the fl\u00e2neur\u2014the stroller, the passionate wanderer emblematic of nineteenth-century French literary culture\u2014has always been essentially timeless; he removes himself from the world while he stands astride its heart. When Walter Benjamin brought Baudelaire\u2019s conception of the fl\u00e2neur into the academy, he marked the idea as an essential part of our ideas of modernism and urbanism. For Benjamin, in his critical examinations of Baudelaire\u2019s work, the fl\u00e2neur heralded an incisive analysis of modernity, perhaps because of his connotations: \u201c[the fl\u00e2neur] was a figure of the modern artist-poet, a figure keenly aware of the bustle of modern life, an amateur detective and investigator of the city, but also a sign of the alienation of the city and of capitalism,\u201d as a 2004 article<\/a> in the American Historical Review<\/em> put it. Since Benjamin, the academic establishment has used the fl\u00e2neur as a vehicle for the examination of the conditions of modernity\u2014urban life, alienation, class tensions, and the like.<\/p>\n

In the ensuing decades, however, the idea of fl\u00e2nerie as a desirable lifetsyle has fallen out of favor, due to some arcane combination of increasing productivity\u2014hello, fruits of the Industrial Revolution!\u2014and the modern horror at the thought of doing absolutely nothing. (See: Michael Jordan\u2019s \u201cretirements.\u201d) But as we grow inexorably busier\u2014due in large part to the influence of technology\u2014might fl\u00e2nerie\u00a0be due for a revival?<\/p>\n

If contemporary literature is any indication, the answer is a soft yes. Take Teju Cole\u2019s debut novel, Open City<\/i>. Cole\u2019s narrator, Julius, wanders up and down Manhattan, across the Atlantic to Brussels and back again, while off-handedly delivering bits of wisdom and historical insight. It\u2019s not just that Open City<\/i> is beautifully written, though that\u2019s certainly true. Cole\u2019s skill manifests itself in depicting the dreamy psychogeographic landscape\u2014and accompanying amorality and solipsism\u2014of Julius\u2019s mind. Riding behind his eyes is a trip; even though we\u2019re in his head, the tone of his thoughts still sets us at a distance.<\/p>\n

Tao Lin\u2019s recently released Taipei<\/i> achieves something similar. As Ian Sansom<\/a> wrote in the Guardian<\/i>, \u201cPassage after passage in the novel dwells on the meaning of disassociation and self-exile.\u201d Examining the author himself yields a similar assessment, and Lin\u2019s often-tortured relationship with technology means he\u2019s broadcasting<\/a> at all hours, day and night.<\/p>\n

The idea here\u2014of dissociating from one\u2019s surroundings, of taking a step back\u2014is important. Thanks to Open City<\/i> and Taipei<\/i>, I feel encouraged to pursue fl\u00e2nerie; I\u2019m walking more, finding myself in secondhand stores or by the pier, in tea houses and dive bars\u2014these little things do seem to matter, not least as an effective antidote to artificial busyness and its accompanying stress.<\/p>\n

I recently attended a small breakfast panel with Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas. As the guests were mostly tech CEOs, our meal was analog, delicious, and free\u2014or, at least, paid for by somebody who may or may not have been on the penthouse floor with us. I was overwhelmed by their titles, I confess; all I know for sure is that the bar was open, and that coffee was flowing freely.<\/p>\n

Together, Cohen and Schmidt have published a book entitled The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations, and Business<\/i>, which attempts to answer the questions our global technological future will ask of us. For Cohen and Schmidt, the book\u2019s futurology makes sense\u2014after all, they\u2019re set to play a large role in developing what comes next. We sat at a long, rectangular table, much like Da Vinci\u2019s in The Last Supper<\/em>: Schmidt was in the middle, our prophet in more ways than one, while Cohen sat beside him, either Thomas or John, depending on your perspective.<\/p>\n

From their book:<\/p>\n

The internet is among the few things humans have built that they don\u2019t truly understand \u2026 [It] is the largest experiment involving anarchy in history. Hundreds of millions of people are, each minute, creating and consuming an untold amount of digital content in an online world that is not truly bound by terrestrial laws \u2026 This is the Internet, the world\u2019s largest ungoverned space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What might Open City<\/i>\u2019s Julius make of that? A New York Times<\/i> opinion piece<\/a> published last February by Evgeny Morozov, a Belarusian technology writer, sees it as a death knell; he waxes nostalgic about the early days of the Web, comparing the evolution of the Internet to Baron Haussmann\u2019s violent reconfiguration of Paris. \u201cTranscending its original playful identity,\u201d Morozov writes, \u201c[the Internet is] no longer a place for strolling\u2014it\u2019s a place for getting things done.\u201d<\/p>\n

I agree, in a sense: corporations like Facebook divide the Web into increasingly well-defined, dedicated avenues, and, on the surface, there does appear to be a lack of diversity, idiosyncrasy, or whatever essence it is that drives fl\u00e2neurs to fl\u00e2nerie. But I\u2019d also argue that we are still here, driven underground, in a way, to keep the lifestyle alive. Even within mainstream communities you\u2019ll find heterogeneity bubble up if you\u2019re searching for air; because the Internet is unfathomably vast, claiming that its most popular parts are everything<\/i> misses the rest of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

No less remarkable than that moment when electric lights first blinked brightness across the world, the last few decades have changed the way we interact with the digital: we\u2019ve gone from dial-up to broadband, from flip phone to smartphone, from local community to a global one. Our doubled lives enable fl\u00e2nerie\u2014how often do we search our physical surroundings for things to post on Instagram? How long do we wander the depths of the Internet to find the perfect GIF? How many hours do you spend clicking the random button on Wikipedia? Where is real<\/i> life?<\/p>\n

Morozov mourns the death of the old Internet communities, but he misses the essential point: new arenas, new arcades have replaced them, and they\u2019re no less valid than the old. Real life hasn\u2019t changed, and twentieth-century France was no different. Though Baron Haussmann\u2019s avenues made fl\u00e2nerie more difficult, and though the rise of street traffic may have endangered those brave fl\u00e2neurs who walked their turtles, the fl\u00e2neur\u2019s raison d\u2019etre\u2014to participate fully through observation\u2014has always remained the same. Now that we\u2019re comfortably into the era of the postmodern, perhaps it\u2019s time to take a brief stroll into the past, to sample its sights and its sounds.<\/p>\n

Bijan Stephen wears round glasses. His work has appeared in the <\/em>Huffington Post, <\/em>Quartz, <\/em>VICE, and <\/em>Kill Screen, among other places; if you do some creative googling, you\u2019re bound to find more elsewhere. He gives great tweets at @bijanstephen<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little things in life supplant the \u201cgreat events.\u201d \u2014Peter Altenberg, as translated by Peter Wortsman The figure of the fl\u00e2neur\u2014the stroller, the passionate wanderer emblematic of nineteenth-century French literary culture\u2014has always been essentially timeless; he removes himself from the world while he stands astride its heart. When Walter Benjamin brought Baudelaire\u2019s conception of the fl\u00e2neur […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":609,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[2654,12046,1045,12045,12048,8757,12012,1725],"class_list":["post-61185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-charles-baudelaire","tag-eric-schmidt","tag-google","tag-ian-sansom","tag-jared-cohen","tag-tao-lin","tag-teju-cole","tag-walter-benjamin"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIn Praise of the Fl\u00e2neur by Bijan Stephen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 17, 2013 \u2013 Little things in life supplant the \u201cgreat events.\u201d \u2014Peter Altenberg, as translated by Peter Wortsman The figure of the fl\u00e2neur\u2014the stroller, the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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