Flaneuse

Doris Lessing has lived in London since she first arrived there in 1949, from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Lessing has always expressed her passion for the city of London, which has been turned into the setting for most of her novels and short stories. In addition, in her fictional and autobiographical texts the author reveals her love for theatregoing and play-acting, as well as her perception of life as a stage. This article strives to link these two ideas (the city and the theatre) in Lessing's recent fiction, which shows an increasing interest in the image of London as a theatre, whereby the female protagonist happens to become a spectator of snippets and sketches of real-life scenes, as she strolls around the city. In the act of observing these scenes from everyday life, these twentieth-century female flâneurs render London as a potential space, a space of creativity, where mutual bonds are established between the flâneuse/spectator and the performers. In this sense, psychoanalytic criticism-for example, the concept of transitional space as defined by D. W. Winnicott-will prove to be useful in the analysis of Lessing's fiction.

The image of the urban stroller in surrealist narratives has emerged as one of the more important symbols of the movement. The male flâneur figure and his prolonged, aimless urban strolls signify rebellion against bourgeois standards like work ethic, the accumulation of wealth, and punctuality. A number of prose pieces, including André Breton’s Nadja (1928), codify what became one of the more important surrealist practices of the interwar period. But Breton fails to present the female perspective, despite the centrality of the eponymous heroine and another unnamed woman, who both inspire surrealism’s most well known description of love in the urban context. This article aims to address the void and examine the work of Léona Delcourt (“Nadja”) and Suzanne Muzard (“X”), whose female portrayal of urban surrealism highlights the benefits and consequences for the women who practiced it.

This article considers the themes that shape the female character Justine in Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet. Adopting a feminist Gothic position, I shall consider how Justine’s portrayal as a femme fatale makes her a vehicle for Durrell’s articulation of a misogynistic perspective throughout his tetralogy. Throughout the article, my contention will be that Durrell’s deployment of certain Gothic motifs, in this instance the vampire, automaton, marionette and doll alongside the trope of the femme fatale, fashion Justine’s embodiment as a monstrous-feminine Other and the locus of masculine fears. My reading will also adopt the rather unconventional position of reading art images into Durrell’s narrative, in order to become a critical interpreter of his textual-visuality

Lauren Elkins Buch ist zu einem gewissen Grade das, was im Englischen ein memoir genannt wird -eine autobiographische Erzählung, die auf einen bestimmten Lebensabschnitt der Autorin fokussiert. In diesem Fall ist es Elkins Studienzeit an der Sorbonne. Die Stärke des Buches liegt darin, dass es sich nicht bloß auf Elkins subjektives Erzählen beschränken lässt, sondern überdies auch kultur-und kunstgeschichtliche Erzählstränge geschickt mit der Lebensabschnittsgeschichte der Autorin verwebt werden. Das verbindende Glied ist dabei die Figur der Flaneuse, also die weibliche Version des Flaneurs,

A middle-class male, wandering through the streets for no apparent reason other than the mere jouissance. The Flâneur, Baudelaire's conception of such a figure, becomes problematic when feminist theorists conceptualised the flâneuse, the female wanderer, one which can only wander for a reason, to shop, whilst in the process she becomes the subject of the male gaze, possibly even the Flâneur's gaze. This essay will further explore the differing concepts of the flâneur and the Flâneuse in relation to Hatred/La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) and Vagabond/Sans toit ni Loi (Agnès Varda, 1985). The Flâneur's relevance to Hatred is associated to the boys aimless yet accessible wandering through the banlieue/cité, the Parisian housing projects, and how it differs as soon as they attempt to wander around Paris.

Using the media images from the exhibition 'The New Woman Behind the Camera' at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (31st October, 2021 - 30th January, 2022) as a starting point, this text examines the (in)visibility of the "New Woman" behind the camera. The text briefly investigates the disenfranchisement of women in 19th century through the work of George Sand and Camille Claudel; the role of the female flâneuse and the rise of the suffragettes; the relationship between two women and two men; a story; the work of two women photographers (Germaine Krull and Claude Cahun) who through photography challenged the representation of gender identity; a Zen proposition, and the particular becomes universal – in order to understand how artists, both female and male, find integrity on their chosen path.

The ubiquity of the flâneur as an observer of modern life has led various literary critics, such as Janet Wolff, Rebecca Solnit, and, more recently, Lauren Elkin to try to sketch a feminist sociology of modernity through the figure of the flâneuse, or female walker. Building on the works of these critics, this paper examines the potentiality and limitations of feminine “Fortbewegung” as a form of gendered movement differentiated from masculine forms of “spazieren.” Particularly in the early twentieth-century European metropolis, the temporality of flâneusing is framed by two specifically gendered forms of movement, namely streetwalking and strolling, both of which have strong links to the traditionally female labor of prostitution and childcare.

By reading Robert Walser’s novella "Der Spaziergang" (1917) in conjunction with Virginia Woolf’s 1927 essay “Street Haunting,” I propose that walking can function as a radically anonymous, androgynous act which involves an erasure of gender, social class, and age. This ambulatory androgyny results in a kind of “sich verlieren” or self-effacement which has a liberating function for both Walser’s and Woolf’s walker. The tension between gendered and anonymous movement foregrounds a central but suggestive paradox: walking both actualizes the self while at the same time effacing it as a materially and socially constructed being.

This research paper is going to revolve around Paul Auster’s urban dystopia entitled In the Country of Last Things. Yet, my claim is that the novel may also be categorised as an American city novel in which a flâneuristic account plays a significant role. The focal point of the paper is going to be the comparison between the Austerian figure of the urban stroller with a traditional one as developed in the 19th century Paris. Since there have been numerous transformations and reformulations regarding literary representations of the city walker, I shall examine the protagonist Anna Blume in reference to features characteristic of a traditional, 19th-century urban stroller. Some theorists claim that women cannot be regarded as city walkers; nevertheless, the aim of the research paper is to prove that Anna, although a female character, can be considered as a postmodern variation of the flâneur.

Auster’s fictional world might be compared to Lewis Mumford’s “theater of social action” where the inhabitants’ quotidian drama is staged. This urban theater functions A fertile ground for city walker’s observations, investigations, as well as subsequent artistic productions. A traditional flâneur is characterised as an aimless stroller for whom the very act of the ‘inspection’ of the crowd is a source of leisure. However, his desire is not only to experience the surroundings, but also to observe the physical construction of the city as well as its social dimension – the people around. Taking into consideration the very specificity of the flâneuristic figure, Anna Blume, despite representing the female part of society, can be regarded as a postmodern urban stroller since her only means of discovering and ‘learning’ the space is by walking in the city. Hence, the character created by Auster both diverges from the conventional image of the city walker in terms of characteristic features andis consistent with it when the scope of the flâneur’s activities is considered.

In literature on modern urban life, a flâneur is a man who wanders seemingly aimlessly but with the intention of observing people or events in urban life and perhaps recording these observations in text or images. This article shows how contemporary women artists in Hong Kong-a city in late capitalism, perform the role of the flâneuse, the female counterpart of the flâneur. The article analyses Stella Tang's series of paintings Sauntering Through My City Series (2009-2016) and Annie Wan's ceramic works Looking For Poetry in Wanchai (2005) and Collecting Moonlight (2017). The article takes a nomadic nondialectical approach to explore how the two women artists practise their flâneurie, and how they transform such experiences into art projects that are different from the conventional flâneur art. I identify three aspects of the alternative representation of urban space in the works of the two flâneuses: reconfiguration of conception, the creative appropriation of alternative art forms and public engagement.

“‘Mitä sinä tässä kävelet?’ Naisiin kohdistettu katse Helsingin julkisissa tiloissa 1900-luvun vaihteen kirjallisuudessa.” (“What Are You Walking Here? The Male Gaze in Helsinki’s Public Space in Literature of the Turn of the Century.” In Rossi, Riikka & Isomaa, Saija (eds.): Kirjallisuuden naiset. Naisten esityksiä 1840-luvulta 2000-luvulle (“Literature’s Women. The Representation of Women from the 1840s to the 21st century”). Helsinki: SKS, 2013, 141–164.

1900-luvun  alun kirjallisuudessa  Helsinki  näyttäytyy  paitsi  modernisoituvana  ja  poliittisesti jännittyneenä kaupunkina myös vahvasti sukupuolittuneena ja sosiaalisesti jakautuneena tilana. Vuosisadanvaihteen  kirjallisuudessa  naiset  joutuvat Suomen  pääkaupunginjulkisessa  tilassa toistuvasti  miesten  katseiden,  arvostelun,  ajoittain  myös  väkivallan  kohteeksi.  Julkisessa kaupunkitilassa  koettu  ahdistelu  kytketään  kaunokirjallisissa  kuvauksissa  ajankohtaisten sosiaalisten,  moraalisten  ja  poliittisten  kysymysten  pohdintaan.Tarkastelen  tässä  artikkelissa naisten  ja  miesten  välisiä  sukupuolittuneesti  latautuneita  kohtaamisia  Arvid  Järnefeltinromaaneissa Veljekset (1900) ja Veneh’ojalaiset (1909), Eino Leinon Jaana Rönnyssä (1907),sekä Kyösti Wilkunan Vaikeassa tiessä (1915). Esitän, että aikalaiskirjallisuudessa tematisoidut sukupuolittuneet  kohtaamiset  paljastavat  julkista  kaupunkitilaa  säätelevän  koodiston,  jonka mukaan  yksin  liikkuva  nainen  tulkittiin  helposti  langenneeksi  naiseksi.  Teokset  kuitenkin kyseenalaistavat    ja    kumoavat    miesten    ennakkoluuloja    ja    oletuksia    naispuolisesta kaupunkikävelijästä.    Suomalaisissakaupunkiromaaneissa    Baudelairen    suurkaupunkia tarkasteleva  flanöörin  hahmo  saa  omanlaisen  muunnelman: kirjallisuudessa  esitetyt  naiset toimivat  miespäähenkilöiden  yhteiskunnallisen  vastuuntunnon,eivät  niinkään  halun  tai moraalisen  arvostelun  herättäjinä.  Naishahmojen  kuvaus  kutsuu  miespuolista  (pää)henkilöä toimimaan.    Myös    routavuosien    poliittiset    jännitteet    näkyvättavassa    hahmottaa sukupuolittuneita kohtaamisia kaupunkitilassa. Ennen kaikkea Eino Leinon routavuosiromaanissa Jaana  Rönty julkisessa  tilassa  vastaantulevan  naisen  hahmoon  liitetään myös poliittisia merkityksiä. Kuten analyysini osoittaa, nainen ei tässäkään tapauksessa pääse vapaaksi  miehisen  merkkijärjestelmän  piiristä:  nainen  ei  muodostu  merkiksi  omasta  itsestään tai  omasta  elämäntarinasta,  vaan  valjastetaan  symboloimaan  mieskatsojan  yhteiskunnallista ohjelmaa.

Resumen. Este estudio se fundamenta en las bases de la deriva artística, como técnica etnográfica para explorar el territorio urbano, iniciada por Surrealistas y Situacionistas. La autora investiga las particularidades de ser flâneuse (observadora deambulante de las ciudades) en París, durante un mes, desde una perspectiva feminista de esta práctica. Desde una mirada docente se observa la ciudad como lugar de aprendizajes del futuro profesorado para su formación inicial. El objetivo es hallar estrategias artísticas de diseño cartográfico asociadas a derivas, con las que reflexionar visualmente sobre la experiencia de la ciudad y aplicarlas a la formación inicial del profesorado de secundaria en artes visuales. Se emplea la A/R/ Tografía como método propio de la Investigación Basada en las Artes que permite combinar los intereses artísticos, de investigación y docentes. Se analizan las experiencias de deriva y se clasifican según distintas categorías, que emparejan modos opuestos de experimentar la ciudad: sola o en compañía familiar; a paso lento o corriendo; en superficie o subterráneas. Los resultados son 6 cartografías que muestran diferentes formas de representar los resultados de las derivas: estética, técnica y conceptualmente. Estas cartografías visibilizan el modo de experimentar la ciudad por una mujer y sirven para ejemplificar a futuros docentes su uso en el registro de aprendizajes. Palabras clave: Deriva; cartografía; flâneuse; formación inicial del profesorado. [en] A flâneuse teacher in Paris. Cartographies in initial teacher training Abstract. This study is based on the foundations of artistic drift, as an ethnographic technique to explore the urban territory, initiated by Surrealists and Situationists. The author investigates the particularities of being flâneuse (wandering observer in cities) in Paris, for a period of one month, from a feminist perspective of this practice. From a teaching point of view, the city is seen as a place of learning for future teachers in their initial training. The objective is to find artistic strategies of cartographic design associated with drifts, with which visually reflect on the experience of the city; and apply them to the initial training of secondary school teachers of visual arts. The A/R/Tography is used as a method of Art Based Research that allows combining the artistic, research and teaching interests. Drift experiences are analyzed and classified according to different categories, which match opposite ways of experiencing the city: alone or with family; at a slow pace or running; on surface or underground. The results are 6 cartographies that show different ways of representing the results of drifting: aesthetically, technically and conceptually. These cartographies highlight the way of experiencing the city for a woman and serve to exemplify to future teachers their use in the learning register.

The article underlines the connection between the flâneur, as described in Benjamin's studies, and the emblematic places of the modern consumer society centered on the symbolic value of the merchandise. First of all, the philosophical meaning of the word "phantasmagoria" will be clarified, analyzing its origin and use, particularly with reference to the Marxist critical tradition that goes from Adorno to the more recent works of Andreotti and Lahiji. The origins of the flâneur in nineteenth-century Paris will be investigated, emphasizing the relationship between the character of the walker in the metropolis and the literary tradition, the new aesthetics, and the lifestyle that defines modernity. Finally, in the central part of the essay, the stages that have marked the history of phantasmagoria will be examined, considering the technological evolution and the type of experiences offered to the consumer: the Parisian passages, the modern metropolis, the department stores, the world’s fair, the shopping malls, the theme parks, the "superplaces" and, finally, the spaces of the virtual architecture. In particular, the latest trends in experiential and omnichannel shopping will be highlighted to demonstrate the impact of media technology on the use of real and virtual consumer spaces. Therefore, the hypotheses I am trying to demonstrate are the following: 1. The historical continuity between 19th-century European modernity and the contemporary world. 2. The centrality of the flâneur in the urban scene, considered as an observer and user of the spectacle of the metropolis and the aesthetic experience it offers. 3. The importance of shopping as a ritual, an activity that seems to meet a fundamental need of today's man.

This article focuses on the experience of walking, cycling, the emotional experience of mobility and (in)visibility in urban space in rhizomatic urban spaces in different cities in the Netherlands by an architect flaneur/flaneuse, presented in an autoethnographic interpretation. The flaneur/flaneuse interprets the urban narrative and lived space through direct encounters and experimentation with everyday practices. This subjective experience leads to questions on the kinds of articulation that rhizomatic cities and architecture weave for the flaneur/flaneuse and architecture. How does a contemporary flaneur/flaneuse locate him/her being in an urban space in this era? Can a flaneur/flaneuse, today, set down roots in a home environment emotionally? How does contemporary architecture embed its dwellers or temporary perceivers in this era? As in Rilke’s experience of a single lighted house, mentioned by Bachelard, are we confronting more solitary houses in urban space that remind us of our isolatedness and separatedness as a contemporary flaneur/flaneuse? Where does the warmth of the house/home start, when we have already started living in a world of “designed” narratives of housing policies? Therefore, the research highlights the experimentality of Dutch architecture based on the author’s personal experience with urbanism in Utrecht, Rotterdam, Delft, and Amsterdam.

The dissertation proposes a reading of the photographic work of Sophie Calle (1980-1999), which draws on the writings of Walter Benjamin principally 'On Some Motifs in Baudelaire', and Georg Simmel, for their theses on the effect of city-dwelling on the figure of modernity. The four pieces discussed are presented as a representation of the female experience as modern urban subject.
Using the work of theorists Miriam Hansen, Rita Felski and Janet Wolff, it will examine the use of the auto-biographic tradition to, to present a body of art work which problematises reading in it's combination of the texts of photographic image and printed narrative (it's storytelling devices). In do so, it investigates the possibility of the reinstatement of Benjamin's notion of aura, through Sophie Calle's work.

KEYNOTE | New Ethnographic Perspectives in Urban Settings
Can new methods be developed to capture urban dynamics and transformation processes? How can an interdisciplinary perspective between ethnography and geography help us?

ABSTRACT | As an urban ethnographer doing research in the field of human geography, Carolin Genz was speaking about new crossroads when it comes to research methods in the urban field – this is to be understood as an interdisciplinary approach on both sides: Geographers doing Ethnography to capture everyday urban life; and Ethnographers doing Geography during the rise of Big Data and urban analysis. Finding tools to structure and materialize our own sensing through creative ways of visualization is one approach to find the blind spots and culturally meaningful spaces and places in urban context. How can we uncover the knowledge people already incorporate and their perceptions of the city? One can write field notes as densely and reflexively as possible, following the influence of Geertz’ (1973) Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” Another approach would be to map it. Mapping (Cognitive Mapping) helps in getting access to interpretations of symbolic structures of the city (Greverus 1972, 1994). A map can be understood as “legible notes.” Mapping helps to enter spatial and social structures of the urban fabric and figure the meaningful spaces and places of districts and neighborhoods as well as our own blind spots. During the talk, Carolin Genz gave insights into the various forms and different types of mapping approaches.

For the upcoming workshop day, Carolin Genz created the “Fold-Up Mapping Booklet” to achieve the scale of tangible materialization. Next to Cognitive Mapping the urban ethnographic data only becomes “thick” in the following three layers: (1) Mapping by drawing spatial observations; (2) Writing by structured field notes; and (3) Walking & Talking by using words and language to explain the collected data e.g. Go-Along Method (Kusenbach 2003). Only in the three layers of this methodological research approach can the urban ethnographic data become “thick.” At the end of her talk, Carolin Genz was pointing out the interdisciplinary research gaps in the intersection of Urban Anthropology and Geography.

Текст является попыткой анализа фотопроекта «Способы городского картографирования: опыт flaneuse?», а также его обсуждения в Интернете. Размышления автора во многом спровоцированы тем, как беларусские фотографы и близкие к арт-среде люди обсуждали выставки «женской» фотографии на сайте Zнята. Статья рассматривает то, каким образом фотографы и критики обозначают на этом форуме проблемы женского авторства, гендерной чувствительности и дискриминации по признаку пола, а точнее – отказываются говорить об этих проблемах всерьез. Автор пытается расшифровать то, что на самом деле стоит за обсуждением выставок, посвященных опыту flaneuse, – то есть, какие общественные и культурные ценности отстаивают участники дискуссии, говоря о «женских» проектах.