Who Has the Right to Walk?
On the female flâneur, the plight of visibility, and why the history of walking requires revision.
On the female flâneur, the plight of visibility, and why the history of walking requires revision.
There are really two types of walkers: those who are just looking to get from place to place, and those who are looking while going from place to place. Although Walter Benjamin would turn flânerie into a scholastic pursuit in the 20th-century, it was Charles Baudelaire who first established the idea of the flâneur. A flâneur, literally meaning a “stroller” or “saunterer” in French, is someone who falls into the second category. He is an urban explorer, a street connoisseur, a person who walks as a means to reflect on a city’s history, and, as a writer carries his pen, the flâneur carries a deep knowledge about industrialization, architecture and urbanity with him everywhere he goes.