The Flâneur

This is a re-post from another writer named "Eric" on his blog called "The Elliptic Blog", circa 2003. You can link to his original post here. In it, he provides a great definition of what it means to be a flâneur, as well as offering some additional insights from a sociologist named Walter Benjamin. It seems Benjamin was a strong proponent of modern flâneurism in the early 20th century, and championed the more positive connotation to the oft-misunderstood term, severly under-utilized in modern language as a synonym for "idleness".

So please, enjoy Eric's writing, and feel free to comment at the bottom of this post. If nothing else, hopefully this article will inspire anyone who reads it to break out of the back-and-forth-to-work mentality and try exploring your own city, or a neighboring town, just for the sake of (and the joy of) wandering. Happy trails:

The Flâneur

"Let's start with a discussion of what it means to be a flâneur. A simple definition would be 'one who strolls aimlessly through urban spaces.' Often, being a flâneur is associated with idleness and with the decadent luxury of having enough time to take those meandering strolls.

Though the original use of the term might have applied to folks that were decadent dilettantes with plenty of idle time, several writers, theorists and philosophers have appropriated the term and have used it to refer to a more complex activity. Walter Benjamin, in particular, has done the most to bolster the meaning of the term. Instead of assuming that those who have the time to wander aimlessly through urban landscapes are only engaged in a cursory and leisurely survey of their environment, Benjamin brought attention to the cognitive value and pleasures associated with urban strolling.

A flâneur, under this interpretation, becomes an active sociologist or reader of the environment around him or her. As urban landscapes become more dense and the architecture more complex, opportunities to observe and interpret events and objects have increased in number and complexity. Unfortunately, this has occurred in tandem with accelerated industrialization and the entrenchment of the capitalist work-ethic.

More often than not, we spend time in our cities commuting to and from our work places; too preoccupied or tired to take note of the visual complexities around us. We rarely have time to pause and admire small details in the architecture or to pursue a reverie caused by some stranger's facial expression. Our workplaces have also become barren environments where, more often than not, visual complexity has been replaced by monotony -- all in the name of economic efficiency (i.e., cubicles).

This lack of engagement is worrisome since we are not exercising our cognitive skills to read our environment. Whether it is the result of the pressures of commuting, of our inane habit of completing errands at break-neck speeds or of simple laziness, our visual intelligence is becoming rusty. Whether it should be deemed an aesthetic and/or political movement, it is time to rekindle our abilities to engage actively with our immediate environment and resist the tendency to let it pass unnoticed as the rhythmic swaying of our bus or train lulls us into a stupor."

Eric then closes his post with a quote from Walter Benjamin himself:

“The street becomes a dwelling for the flâneur; he is as much at home among the facades of houses as a citizen in his four walls. To him the shiny, enamelled signs of business are at least as good a wall ornament as an oil painting is to a bourgeois in his salon. The walls are the desk against which he presses his notebooks; newsstands are his libraries and the terraces of cafés are the balconies from which he looks down on his household after his work is done.”
––– Walter Benjamin, “The Flâneur”

If you've never heard of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), he was an amazing writer who, in his monumental work The Arcade Project, presents a montage of quotations from, and reflections on, hundreds of published sources, arranging them in thirty-six categories such as "Fashion," "Boredom," "Dream City," "Photography," "Catacombs," "Advertising," "Prostitution," "Baudelaire," and "Theory of Progress." His central preoccupation is what he calls the commodification of things--a process in which he locates the decisive shift to the modern age.



***
Special thanks to Eric at The Elliptic Blog for writing this post (01/06/03).
TrackBack URL for his original entry is here:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d834544b5369e200d83502a2a453ef

Holiday Update

Hi everyone!

Well, after 3 crazy weeks which involved moving out of state, unpacking and organizing our new home, lots of deadlines for me at work, and a surprise visit from my sister, we are finally starting to settle back into a lite routine, just in time for it to (probably) get shaken up again for the holidays! Joy!

For anyone who doesn't know, we moved from a loft in downtown Lowell, Mass, into a 2-story apartment in Portsmouth, NH. So far, we've only been downtown PM a few times, but we've been going for walks along the beach again and are getting to know the area rather quickly. Things are laid out so sensibly around here, we're already down to only using GOS about 50% of the time.

Another cool thing is that there's a private airstrip just across the highway from us, and although there aren't many landings, the flight plan is directly over the skylight in my office. As such, the huge cargo planes, fighter jets and private planes come in at about 500 feet and I can see every detail as they come in. We've also seen some submarines and a GIGANTIC freighter in the harbor downtown. It's a great little town so far :)

Admittedly, we also love the combination of big-box retail and local businesses/restaurants available here. You really can find anything you want or need, from a mom & pop or a corporation, and there's a surprising amount of people out downtown, night after night, cold weather or not.

We had a fantastic time with Amy last weekend. We took her downtown, to the beach, and into Boston for a day, where we explored the USS Cassin Young, the Old North End, Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market, the top of the Prudential building, Newbury Street, Cambridge, Harvard Square, Harvard Yard and the financial district for some skyscraper viewing. It was her first ever trip to Boston or New England, so we tried to cram in as much as possible while she was here.

We also took her to Lowell on a cold, rainy Sunday to show her around our old digs, and enjoyed a free holiday photo shoot with Anne Ruthmann at her studio.

So now we can breathe a little bit and prepare for the mad last couple weeks of 2009. It's been another fun-filled, action-packed crazy year for us, and we're looking forward to even more adventures in 2010.

See you on the other side of New Year's!

-Tommy