Imagining the flâneur as a woman

This art icle was downloaded by: [ Universit y of Pret oria] On: 14 May 2012, At : 02: 50 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ rcsa20 Imagining the flâneur as a woman Elfriede Dreyer & Est elle McDowall Available online: 10 May 2012 To cite this article: Elfriede Dreyer & Est elle McDowall (2012): Imagining t he flâneur as a woman, Communicat io: Sout h African Journal for Communicat ion Theory and Research, 38:1, 30-44 To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 02500167.2011.634425 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Full t erm s and condit ions of use: ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- and- condit ions This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. 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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem and, or cost s or dam ages what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h or arising out of t he use of t his m at erial. COMMUNICATIO Volume 38 (1) 2012 pp. 30–44 Copyright: Unisa Press ISSN 0250-0167/ONLINE 1753-5379 DOI: 10.1080/02500167.2011.634425 Imagining the flâneur as a woman Elfriede Dreyer and Estelle McDowall* Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 Abstract Flânerie1 as an activity of strolling and looking carried out by the flâneur is a persistent motif in literature, sociology and art concerned with urban and specifically metropolitan culture. During the 19th century the flâneur was conceptualised as exclusively male, since women were not able to walk around the city with the same freedom as men. Women were firmly entrenched in the domestic sphere and it was only lower- and working-class women who entered the masculine public sphere on a regular basis (Wolff 1990, 35). Therefore, the experience of the city stroller of the modernist era was mainly attributed to the male and the idea of the female flâneur was inconceivable. In this article the flâneur is imagined as a woman – a radical shift from the 19th-century conception of the flâneur who merely consorted with prostitutes and shop girls, never seeing them as equals or as having a rightful ‘place’ in the public arena of the city. The concept of the flâneuse is investigated to ascertain the possibility of her existence and presence in the city. The article thus questions the gender of the flâneur2 and suggests that the flâneuse does not have the same freedom to stroll the streets as her male counterpart as a result of the intricate connection women have with consumerism, specifically by being an object as well as a subject of consumerism. On this account women’s position in consumer society is explored from the position of the prostitute and being the object of male gaze and desire. Reference is made to selected artworks by the South African artists Tracy Payne, Celia de Villiers and Dineo Bopape to elucidate theoretical concepts brought forward in the article. Key words: city, commodity, consumerism, desire, flânerie, flâneur, flâneuse, gaze, gender, metropolis, prostitute HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL TRACING OF THE FLÂNEUR The lâneur garners meaning from urban space, thereby adding meaning to the space itself, and can be viewed as the symbolic representation of ‘modernity and personiication of contemporary urbanity’, speciically in the realm of social and literary analysis (Ferguson 1994, 22). An important igure in the discourse surrounding modernity and urbanisation, the lâneur is and was represented as ‘a mythological or allegorical igure’ on the streets of 19th-century European cities (Wilson 1992, 93). The origin of the concept of the lâneur can be traced back to the writings of Charles Baudelaire and more speciically to its further interpretation by Walter Benjamin, who identiied Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) as the basis of the lâneur theory (Benjamin 1969, 58). This work imbued the lâneur with the idea of enjoyment at being in a crowd and taking pleasure from being absorbed in the masses of people. The lâneur extricates aesthetic experience and existential fulilment from the crowds in the city (Tester 1994, 2), but even in distancing himself from the crowds the lâneur is still deeply involved with them, alternating between accomplice and oblivious observer (Benjamin 1973, 174). * Elfriede Dreyer is professor in Visual Arts, University of Pretoria. Estelle McDowall is lecturer in Fine Arts, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa. E-mail: [email protected] Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 Imagining the flâneur as a woman 31 The emergence of the lâneur coincided with a period of great change in modern history, that of industrialisation and modern capitalism (Gleber 1999, vii). The city streets of the 19th century did not lend themselves to strolling, since wide pavements were the exception and the threat of vehicles was ever present (Benjamin 1969, 36). Therefore, the arcades – especially the arcades of the Paris city streets, described as passageways lined with shops – provided the city stroller with a setting and were thus inluential in the coining of the notion of the lâneur in that they formed the basis of the lâneur’s experiences. Baudelaire never described the masses or the city in which the lâneur is so at home, but he placed the lâneur in a universal urban and overcrowded environment (Benjamin 1973, 170). Fascinated by the crowds of the city, Baudelaire’s lâneur loses himself in the masses and becomes intoxicated with this abandonment, experiencing a love affair of delight and enchantment with the city (Benjamin 1969, 55). There is no antagonism or opposition towards the crowds in which he inds himself (Benjamin 1973, 171). Newcomers to urban life usually experience feelings of fear and loathing when encountering the crowds of the city; however, for Baudelaire the crowds hold an immersive ‘reservoir of electric energy’, resulting in an increase of nervous stimulation in the form of shocks and collisions (ibid., 176, 177). As a man of leisure, without the responsibility of having to attend to daily affairs, the lâneur can indulge in aimlessly wandering the streets and ‘is already out of place in an atmosphere of complete leisure as in the feverish turmoil of the city’ (ibid., 174, 175). The lâneur was privy to unexpected and unplanned sensual encounters on the streets, since the only women on the streets were prostitutes and working girls. It is here that the male gaze3 comes to the fore, where the lâneur has the opportunity to consume the women on the streets without the necessity of a monetary transaction. Flânerie requires knowledge of the being of the city, and for Baudelaire the lâneur could only be a true artist if he knew the city and how to use it (Ferguson 1994, 30). To be the creative artist-lâneur the capacity for obsessive and dispassionate observation and the ability to reduce the city to spectacle were paramount. Debord (1994, 12) argues that the spectacle ‘is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images’ and not merely a collection of images, and the lâneur surrenders to the spectacle. Since his emergence in the 19th century, the lâneur has been a common igure in discourses on the city in particular. As society’s focus shifted from production to consumption, consumption became the main signiier of contemporary life. The lâneur is drawn to the spectacle of the city and the commodities on offer and he inds himself in a pervasive mass media society which consists of simulations that are not questioned by those exposed to it (Shields 1994, 78). Faced with this excess of information the recipients are unable to respond and disseminate meaning from it; as such the lâneur as connoisseur of visual consumption ‘is a vicarious conqueror, self conirmed in his mastery of the empire of the gaze while losing his own self in the commodiied network of popular imperialism’ (Baudrillard 2001a, 211 and 2001b, 13; Shields 1994, 78). Since his inception, ‘rapid urbanization and industrialization and an increased inluence of the visual’ have been determining factors in the lâneur’s experience of reality and being (Gleber 1999, vii). As a result, when investigating the contemporary lâneur the signiicant effects of the 32 Elfriede Dreyer and Estelle McDowall Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 visual and technology cannot be discounted, as these are fundamental to his experiences and being. However, the lâneur has undergone a major conceptual shift in the past century due to the massive changes occurring in urban societies. Being an integral part of the metropolitan area, the igure of the lâneur has been transformed in the face of dramatic changes and experiences in the global urban environment since the onset of industrialisation in the 19th century. Baudelaire’s lâneur is no longer conined to the corporeal stroller who wanders the streets of 19th-century Paris (Birkerts 1982, 165); he is no longer limited to the streets and arcades, but ‘has walked into the pages of the commonplace’ and contemporary urban culture (Tester 1994, 1). As motif, the lâneur can be reconceptualised outside the parameters of the latter as he is a collection of attributes, real and imagined (Birkerts 1982, 166). Furthermore, in contemporary terms the lâneur is used conceptually as a igure to comment on the issues of urban life without limiting him in terms of time and place (Tester 1994, 16). For Keith Tester (ibid., 15) ‘lânerie is existence at a pace that is out of step with the rapid circulations of the modern metropolis’. Susan Buck-Morss (1986, 103) contends that ‘[i]f at the beginning, the lâneur as private subject dreamed himself out into the world, at the end, lânerie was an ideological attempt to reprivatise social space, and to give assurance that the individual’s passive observation was adequate for knowledge of social reality’. The lâneur, in keeping with postmodernism, is a diverse igure and a single deinition is no longer adequate to describe his existence. According to Tester (ibid., 1), ‘the lâneur has been allowed, or made, to take a number of walks away from the streets and arcades of nineteenth-century Paris’. The lâneur is thus consensually viewed as both a product of the city and an author of the city in the way he experiences the city (Gleber 1997, 67), and its experiences are gained from ordinary activities such as shopping, strolling and socialising, lured by the magnetism of the streets and the sensual pleasures of the crowds (Burns 2000, 74). However, even though lânerie is subject to certain universal experiences, the contemporary lâneur in the urban milieu is faced with additional and unique challenges and experiences, and has been reimagined in terms of its gender. STEREOTYPING GENDER IN THE CITY Within the constraints of patriarchal legacies, women have been seen to represent disorder, chaos and sexuality, and men rationality and control; therefore women were viewed as not compatible with the male conception of an ordered, utopian metropolis. Yet, at the same time in the 19th century the industrialised city was viewed as a site of decadence and as a ‘realm of uncontrolled and chaotic sexual licence’ (Wilson in Massey 1994, 259), which its in with the conceptualisation of the lâneur as a male strolling in the city and gazing at the city as a female-gendered construct. The lâneur has been articulated as searching for pleasure in the metropolis and taking ‘visual possession of the city’ as ‘the embodiment of the male gaze’ (Wilson 1992, 98). As women were not allowed to roam the city streets freely in the 19th century, their position in the urban milieu has been questioned ever since. Spaces are gendered; public spaces are associated with men and private spaces with women. This gendering of space becomes clear in the 19th century as Imagining the flâneur as a woman 33 Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 ‘the rise of the aesthetics of modernity can be associated with particular spatial and social practices that privileged the male’ (Van Eeden 2006, 68). During this time a clear division between work and home is established and, by implication, due to social norms, women are associated with the private domestic sphere and men with the public sphere (ibid., 69). Men were, and still are, able to engage freely with the public domain and its attractions. Women’s position on the streets has therefore always been marginal, and their experiences limited and regulated (Gleber 1997, 69). Through the advances of feminist thinking and subsequent women’s rights, it is unfair to conjecture that this is the way women are still perceived in contemporary society. However, much of the advertising seen on the city streets perpetuates this ideal and leaves women confronting this gendered stereotype (Sachs 1990, 4; Slachmuijlder 2000, 97).4 The position of the female lâneur or lâneuse5 remains a contentious issue, even in contemporary times where women are perceived to be free from discrimination in principle. Feminist Griselda Pollock (1988, 71) contends: ‘Indeed woman is just a sign, a iction, a confection of meanings and fantasies.’ Similarly, Anke Gleber (1997, 72) afirms the problematic notion of the female lâneur by stating that she ‘is considered to be absent, “invisible”; she is not presumed to have a presence in the street’. Janet Wolff (in Pollock 1988, 71) claims that there is ‘no female equivalent of the quintessential masculine igure, the lâneur; there is not and could not be a female lâneuse’. However, in contemporary times, where gender roles are no longer seen as exclusive binary oppositions but rather as luid between the two poles, it is dificult to accept the notion that there can be no female lâneur. Even though the female is often used as a metaphor for the city, women in general have an ambiguous relationship with the city and being present in the city. The urbanisation of people has resulted in the symbolic marginalisation and ‘entrapment’ of women, as cities are designed to isolate women and subject them to the patriarchal system (Soja 1996, 110). Woman as commodity Contemporary societies are characterised by a market-driven economy that is dominant, if not oppressive, and illed with the excesses of the media so that public space has been taken over by advertising. Ideologically the city has become a ‘site of consumption’ (Baudrillard 1988, 19, 20) and shopping: ‘the deining activity of public life’ (Miles 2010, 8, 9). Consumption has overtaken production and consumer goods; places of expenditure have developed into the main ingredients in the postmodern city; and the architecture of cities has become what and where we consume (Featherstone 1991, 13; Miles 2010, 1). Entrance to the urban milieu for women emerged as cities transformed into sites of industrialisation, and consumerism became vital due to urbanisation. Women’s ‘problematic’ relationship with the city is thereby entrenched as they are ‘seen to “enter” the city through the route of commerce and consumption’ (Swanson 1995, 89). In the city women are seen as part of the urban ‘architecture’, something to be observed by the lâneur, therefore they become part of the urban drama to be ‘consumed’ together with the other components of the city (Ferguson 1994, 28). Women and 34 Elfriede Dreyer and Estelle McDowall Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 images of women are objects of desire due to their implicit association with commodiication, where consumer products are the objects of desire in the city. Traced back to the prostitute in the 19th-century metropolis (Buci-Glucksmann 1986, 224), women-as-spectacle-and-presence-on-the-street, thereby as commodity, has been well established (Van Eeden 2006, 69). Women’s disempowered position in the public sphere is reinforced by the presence of the prostitute on the street (Gleber 1997, 72). The lâneur is seduced by everything the city streets offer; as such, the prostitute is part of the commodities found on the street and is an ‘objective emblem of capitalism’ (Pile 1996, 233). Tracy Payne’s Coastal resort (1996) (Figure 1) illustrates the notion that women are treated in a similar fashion to commodity items. The broken mannequin of Coastal resort lies discarded amidst the debris of the city, an item that is no longer needed, without value. Figure 1: Tracy Payne, Coastal resort (1996). Pastel on paper, trash and cast resin frame. 115 x 84.5 cm. Source: Williamson and Jamal 1996, 116. 333 x 451mm (72 x 72 DPI) Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 Imagining the flâneur as a woman 35 Contrary to the traditions of the 19th century, where women are limited to the domestic sphere, the prostitute is visible on the street and is there to be purchased and consumed (Buci-Glucksmann 1986, 224). The prostitute and commodity culture are analogous with each other, since both represent wares to be displayed, purchased and consumed. Christine Buci-Glucksmann (ibid.) makes it clear that the prostitute is the precursor for the manner in which women are equated with commodities in the city and thus by association also as an object to give pleasure. Although the prostitute is often mentioned as a female equivalent of the lâneur, she does not have the freedom of the lâneur to pursue the pleasures of the street and her presence is a result of economic necessity (Gleber 1997, 78). Gleber (ibid.) argues – whether it is the prostitute, the homeless or the shopper – are not equal to the lâneur, and that ‘within the public facets of female lives, these women form nothing if not the cynically distorted female images of consumption and lânerie in an age of capitalist and sexist exploitation’. Not only does the prostitute represent the commodiied female on the street, but she is also representative of the ‘sexual, social and economic relations’ in the city as a ‘relection of sexual difference and the mainstream secure forms of masculine social identity’ (Swanson 1995, 85). Women’s presence in public spaces has conlated the concepts of commodity and seller, as they embody both (Friedberg 1991, 421). They are ‘not the observers, but objects in the Panopticon of the sexual market’ (ibid.), since they are usually the objects of the gaze in urban space (Koskela 2000, 255). It is for this reason that prostitution is seen as symbolic of the rise of consumer culture, urbanisation and the loss of nature (Wilson 1992, 105, 106). The prostituted body in Coastal resort, as a metaphor for the disorder, waste and abjection evident in an urban environment, is suggested by the disarray of debris surrounding the mannequin (Wilson 1992, 92). Furthermore, the meticulous rendering of the model of Coastal resort reveals the artist’s fascination with the domination of surface in a hyper-real world (Williamson and Jamal 1996, 115). As a result, the fragmentation and disigurement of the body represents the prostituted body as a commodity and a simulation of reality (Buci-Glucksmann 1986, 226). Coastal resort is a celebration of waste, fetish, beauty and degradation, similar to the prostitute who is an emblem of the instabilities of the city (Swanson 1995, 80; Williamson and Jamal 1996, 115). Furthermore, the prostitute is clearly associated with the sexual, and ‘the public woman [is] used as a sign of urban pathology’ (ibid.). The prostitute becomes the object of desire for commodities and power for the lâneur (Pile 1996, 233). Conversely, the prostitute is regarded as an ‘unproductive commodity, without value and eroding value’ (Swanson 1995, 83). Buck-Morss (1986, 119) is of the opinion that the sexual degradation of women and their presence on the street further the oppression of women. Hille Koskela (2000, 255) afirms this and states that ‘looking connotates power, and being looked at powerlessness’. Renditions of woman ‘as object of desire and endless exchange’ (Petro 1997, 56) and as fragmented and abstracted become symbolic of the processes of desire and consumerism entangled in the context of the spectacle. 36 Elfriede Dreyer and Estelle McDowall Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 Woman as object Unable to escape their position as object, women remain situated as the object of the lâneur’s gaze (Pollock 1988, 71). They are seen as objects to be gazed at, and ind it dificult to free themselves from this association. Women cannot take ownership of the streets as they are always subject to public conventions that afirm their position as object of the male gaze (Gleber 1997, 72). The commodiication of women is used to stimulate desire as they are both there to be consumed as well as to be consumers (Lefebvre 2002, 135). As such women are seen as being mass-produced and generally available (Buci-Glucksmann 1986, 222). Woman’s status has been reduced to being on ‘constant display, exhibition and exposition as the object of male desire’ and she experiences being visually evaluated and assessed whenever she roams the streets (Gleber 1997, 81). However, the commodity in a culture industry has become an image and representation, which becomes the core of social life (Swyngedouw 2002, 159). The male gaze, informed by the image of woman as commodity, is reinforced by the ‘modern sexual economy’ and ‘enjoys the freedom to look, appraise and possess, in deed or in fantasy’ (Pollock 1988, 79). Women are usually the objects of the gaze (Berger 1972, 47)6, they are looked at and objectiied in a different manner to men as ‘the offensive gaze belongs to men’ (Koskela 2003, 301). Women have never enjoyed the freedom of the lâneur, who has the ability to gaze without being watched in return (Pollock 1988, 71). Being the object of the male gaze7 cannot be reversed or changed, as it is so deeply entrenched in the psyche of both men and women (Gleber 1997, 74). Gleber (ibid.) argues that naturalised views that women are objects of the gaze allow ‘the absence of female lânerie [to] appear not as any individual lack or incapacitation but as a crucial blind spot of society that converges to illuminate the limitations that conventions impose on women’s lives’. Furthermore, Gleber (1999, 177) maintains that ‘confronted with a social environment in which they cannot be present as undisturbed observers, as they themselves are made the “natural” objects of observation, women are excluded at once from public present and spectatorship’. Looking for pleasure is informed by the societal model of active male and passive female where women signify ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ (Mulvey 1989, 19). Women in shopping malls As Buci-Glucksmann (1986, 228) maintains, women are intricately linked to consumption, both as those who are responsible for shopping and as a metaphor for commodity, i.e. an object to be consumed. The feminisation of consumerism, especially shopping, ensures the continual dominance of the patriarchal gaze (Friedberg 1991, 422). Woman’s identity is thereby reduced to erotic commodity, an object to be appraised and purchased. Van Eeden (2006, 72) is of the opinion that the liminal or in-between spaces of the department stores of the 19th century encourage ‘a culture of sexual display’ analogous to the display of wares Imagining the flâneur as a woman 37 Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 in stores. In the context of the latter, it is clear that shopping is a continuation of the prostituted female body as a commodity. Shopping malls have become ‘icons of urban space’ as a result of radical changes in the ontology of capitalism that relects a complete embracing of consumerism. They are also sites of social interaction (Koskela 2000, 246; Van Eeden 2006, 61). The purpose of the shopping mall is not only to make economic transactions convenient, but is also rather seen as a space associated with leisure and the search for pleasure, thereby making shopping an experience (Featherstone 1991, 103; Miles 2010, 7, 99). The emergence of shopping malls as an extension of the department store drastically changed the ontology of the lâneur in its generic derivation. According to Benjamin (1969, 54), the bazaar or department store is the inal retreat for the lâneur and ‘he roamed through the labyrinth of merchandise as he had once roamed through the labyrinth of the city’. In the mall, as in the department store, there is no longer distance between the lâneur and the commodity, and his aloof approach to the city is compromised by being the observer as well as the observed (Ferguson 1994, 35). It is here where lânerie is feminised and the lâneuse becomes part of the process of commodity exchange. Women in the public sphere are associated with consumption rather than production, and their presence in shopping malls is ubiquitous (Van Eeden 2006, 71). The shopping mall is emblematic of the ‘physical domination of consumption upon the urban fabric’ (Miles 2010, 98). It is in the shopping mall where women conform to the constructs associated with lânerie as they are afforded a sense of anonymity and the freedom to roam without a goal in mind (Van Eeden 2006, 72). Figure 2: Celia de Villiers, Post-human consumerism (2009). Resin casting, plexiglass. Dimensions variable. Source: Dreyer and Lebeko 2009, 35. 211 x 123mm (72 x 72 DPI) 38 Elfriede Dreyer and Estelle McDowall Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 Celia de Villiers’ use of shoes8 in Post-human consumerism (2009) (Figure 2) is emblematic of the erotic object9 and plays on the desire created by the culture industry (De Villiers 2009, 34). The shoe is no longer valued for its use, as De Villiers has altered the original so that it cannot be worn, and it becomes a fetishistic object of desire (Dreyer in Dreyer and Lebeko 2009, 25). Accordingly, the arrangement of shoes is a relection of the manner in which the media create a desire for objects by means of display, and the way the latter manipulate artiicial ideas surrounding women (De Villiers 2009, 34). The negation of the use-value of the shoe is in keeping with the constrained position of the lâneuse on the streets of the metropolis, as it focuses attention on the inability of the lâneuse to function in the same manner as her male counterpart. Figure 3: Dineo Bopape, Dreamweaver (2008). Video. 7 minutes 53 seconds. Source: Dreyer and Lebeko 2009, 51. 413 x 515mm (72 x 72 DPI) Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 Imagining the flâneur as a woman 39 Dineo Bopape illustrates this concept of the aimless roaming of the lâneuse in her video Dreamweaver (2008) (Figure 3). The rather oversized glasses remind one of blindness and refer to the inability of the protagonist to ind her way in the city. She creates the impression that she is groping in the dark, without knowing what her purpose in this environment is. The mind can, therefore, not attain the knowledge that is necessary to reach its end goal or telos (MacIntyre 1990, 5). In addition, the protagonist’s metaphoric blindness alludes to the false sense of security the independent woman fosters when strolling the streets. Bopape (in Bosland 2008, 114) states that the protagonist is ‘multi-sexed’ and that the ‘igure become[s] androgynous’ as it is combining masculinity, the beard and white y-front underpants, with femininity, the presence of breasts. She thereby negates the idea of gender stereotypes where women are the object of the gaze. However, the dress made of stuffed plastic bags reinforces the female aspect of the igure, as women are typically associated with shopping. Even though Dreamweaver is not an overt objectiication of the female, it reafirms a scopophilic notion of looking as well as solipsism. The viewer is a secret spectator of the dancer, thereby evoking voyeurism, and by watching her experience pleasure by using her image as an object of sexual stimulation (Mulvey 1989, 18). The artwork depicts woman as the passive, consumed object of desire as well as the active consumer in a (blind) search for goods. In contemporary times, shopping is still seen as a female activity, even though the traditional notions10 of the woman as gatherer and being excluded from the world of commerce are no longer irrefutable. Shopping is gendered as female due to the fact that in the department stores and bazaars of the 19th century women were the shop assistants and patrons (Van Eeden 2005, 61). Women’s tentative freedom from the constraints of the patriarchal system is facilitated by the ‘privilege of shopping’ (Friedberg 1991, 421). Shopping is seen as part of domestic labour, as well as a leisure activity related to femininity and a system of false needs (Van Eeden 2005, 61, 62). Shopping is not only an activity aimed at obtaining goods, but also a leisure activity or a means to escape the conines of patriarchal domesticity. It is responsible for the increasing visibility of women on the streets as well as in shopping malls aimed at female consumers (ibid., 75). According to Ferguson (1994, 27), women cannot disconnect themselves from the attraction of the city, speciically in the activity of shopping. Shopping undermines the ‘posture of independence’ that identiies and deines the (female) lâneur (ibid.). It becomes an intense engagement and integration with the urban environment, therefore the objectivity and neutrality required of the (female) lâneur is no longer possible (ibid.). Women’s restrictions on the street Due to women’s position in society11 they cannot enjoy the same freedoms as men. The female stroller has to continually assert her position as lâneuse on the street, in order not to be perceived as the object of the male gaze, thereby further negating the possibility of having the same disinterested attitude of the lâneur during his aimless walks along the streets (Gleber 1997, 76). Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 40 Elfriede Dreyer and Estelle McDowall Women on the streets have traditionally been the victims of the gaze and are ‘absent as subject and yet overpresent as object’, and this seems to be the case even in contemporary times (Petro 1997, 43). Even though female lânerie is limited by women’s vulnerable position in the city, it does not mean women are not pursuing a sense of freedom from oppression in the streets of the city. Women are in a position to go beyond the limits of being a mere object of the gaze, especially when acting with a sense of independence (Lauter 1985, 80). However, women are unable to be completely at ease in the metropolis, especially at night when the level of danger increases, and as a result they are unable to ‘indulge their full fascination with the metropolis’ (Gleber 1999, 176, 177). Furthermore, the lâneuse is usually the victim of discrimination and harassment and carries a fear of crime – whether these fears are justiied, or not – in her surroundings. Bopape repudiates mainstream ideas regarding female objectiveness, as the protagonist is not presented as someone to be desired since she does not conform to society’s concepts of attractiveness. Moreover, the glasses suggest that she is blind to the ideals of society. She conforms to Lauter’s (1984, 95) statement that women need to part with conventional ideas in order to undertake a journey in the public sphere. Although women can overcome their vulnerability, they are still at a disadvantage and marginalised as a result of their innate relationships with commodiication and physical limitations, as well as the consequent danger of assault and harassment. Even though woman’s position as a lâneuse is contested in the city, women have relative freedom in the liminal spaces of shopping malls to engage in the pleasures of looking, socialising and strolling (Wilson 1992, 101). Women are thus more likely to engage in lânerie in the shopping mall, which is seen as a ‘safe’ area. The mall allows women to escape from the conines of the domestic sphere, as set upon them by a patriarchal system (Van Eeden 2006, 63). Moreover, it affords women a relatively safe environment to wander at will, even though privacy is reduced as a result of the intense use of surveillance as a system of control and exclusion. For this reason, the perceived dangers of the street are kept at bay in the mall (Friedberg 1991, 424). Window-shopping affords women an escape from the domestic sphere, as well as the opportunity to compare and evaluate goods (Van Eeden 2006, 73). Gleber (1997, 74) states that ‘[d]espite women’s formal equality and democratic rights, the uncommented, uninhibited, and unobserved presence of a female person in the streets is in no way acknowledged as a self-evident right’. Women’s movement in the city is thus restricted to a much greater degree than that of men, and there is a marked difference between their respective experiences which is not readily quantiiable. CONCLUSION The spectacle of the metropolis is an overwhelming phenomenon and its inluence on the lâneur is signiicant. Considering women’s position in society it can be contended that their empowerment is not real, as it is based on the false desires of the spectacle. As such the characterisation of the lâneuse should be differentiated from that of the lâneur, although the two types mostly reveal commonality. Women mostly function as lâneuses in the semi-public space of the shopping mall, and for them to entertain the idea of complete freedom and independence whilst venturing onto Imagining the flâneur as a woman 41 the streets to engage in the activity of lânerie they need to break ‘with the values that conine them within ordinary life’ (Lauter 1984, 95). The lâneuse has to realise a new subject position, someone who becomes a ‘new igure of a resistant gaze’ (Gleber 1997, 84). This position must be in opposition to the traditional roles of women and their reality as images to be looked at and to be offered on the streets as a visual commodity (ibid.). However, as Gleber (ibid., 75) maintains: Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 As long as a woman’s movement in the streets involves facing more forms of intrusion, surveillance, and violence and requires more self-determination and self-conidence than a man’s, female lânerie does not really come into its own. As long as the empowered position of the male gaze prevails, females are unable to move at will. In light of the problematic position of women in the public spheres of the city, this article posed the question whether a lâneuse can indeed exist. Women’s continuing oppressed position has been investigated and the conclusion can be reached that they still do not enjoy the same freedom on the city streets as men, due to a variety of reasons. Women’s presence on the street is equated with pleasure – whether to be consumed or be the consumer – and the feminisation of consumerism continues women’s position as object of the gaze that is magniied by their socialisation as being the object of the gaze. Therefore women’s disempowerment in the public space of the city streets entails a continuation of the igure of the prostitute, whose presence on the streets was accepted in the 19th century as a commodity to be consumed. ENDNOTES 1 2 3 4 5 Flânerie as activity is more than just strolling, and is articulated by Rob Shields (1994, 65) as ‘more speciic than strolling. It is a spatial practice of speciic sites: the interior and exterior public spaces of the city.’ Flânerie is speciically concerned with the city and the lâneur is characterised by walking in the city. The journey is the essence of his existence on the streets, as walking is ‘an elementary form of [the] experience of the city’ (De Certeau 1984, 93). The lâneur is a concept irst associated with Western industrialised cities, speciically European cities. For this reason the article considers only a Western paradigm of thinking regarding the lâneur and the city. Furthermore, the position of women in the city and society as a whole is considered to be where women have the same legal rights as men, and are not seen and treated as second-class citizens. The male gaze refers to the idea that men are the bearers of the look, whereas women are objects to be looked at. Male pleasure and knowledge are embedded in this process of ‘looking’. The gaze should not be confused with voyeurism, which is concerned with gaining sexual pleasure from watching others secretly, thus invading their privacy. Advertising in general tends to revert to traditional stereotypes of women and fails to portray women consistently in diverse roles and situations, thus failing to keep up with the changes in women’s position in society at large (Slachmuijlder 2000, 97). Although ‘lâneur’ is a generic term, it cannot be comprehended outside of its genderised origination, which was essentially male. Therefore the feminising of the term needs to be indicated as ‘female lâneur’. The term ‘lâneuse’ is a neologism. 42 Elfriede Dreyer and Estelle McDowall Downloaded by [University of Pretoria] at 02:50 14 May 2012 6 Women are still the object of the gaze, even though they are able to resist the oppression of the sexualised gaze by means of direct eye contact and technologically mediated looking (Koskela 2003, 301). 7 Norah Vincent (2006) conirms this notion by her social experiment where she presented herself as a man to society for a year. As she walks the streets disguised as a man, she realises that she is now afforded some sense of respect by not being stared at. She mentions that ‘as a woman, you couldn’t walk down those streets invisibly. You were an object of desire’ and the stares of the men assert their dominance over the women passing them in the street (Vincent 2006, 2, 3). 8 The purchase of shoes far beyond obvious need is seen as a quintessentially female weakness in popular thinking. 9 Foot fetishes are traditionally explained by Sigmund Freud, who claims that the reason for such fetishes is that the foot resembles the penis; however, Dr VS Ramachandran, a neuroscientist, claims that it has nothing to do with the anatomical shape of feet but rather is a result of brain mapping, as described by Dr W Penield (Ramachandran and Blakeslee 1999, 26). 10 According to Van Eeden (2006, 73, 74), shopping is gendered female, based on the nature-overnurture and nurture-over-nature theory. 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