Le flâneur comme lecteur de la ville contemporaine

Abstract

The topic of the lover of street-life, the observer, the urban stroller and the wanderer, first appeared in Edgar Allan Poe's The Man of the Crowd. However, it was Charles Baudelaire who introduced the concept of the flâneur to the humanities and later, owing to Walter Benjamin, the flâneur was established as a central figure of modernity. Recent studies in the humanities and the social sciences have renewed discussions about the flâneur and the urban phenomenon of the flânerie. The roles of the flâneur in a contemporary city are described with the help of the two criteria: the degree of involvement of the flâneur in the urban environment and her capacity to transform the meaning of urban space. According to these criteria, we can distinguish the flâneurs who are active researchers of the city and those who participate in political activities. On the other side, there are more passive observers of the city life and consumers who aimlessly walk in postmodern shopping malls. The aim of the article is to analyze the evolution of theories of the flânerie and introduce an alternative approach to the concept. The approach is based on the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur that views the flâneur as an active reader, actor-user of public space, and constructor of collective memory.