Walter Benjamin's Myth of the "Flâneur"

Author(s): Martina Lauster

Source: The Modern Language Review , Jan., 2007, Vol. 102, No. 1 (Jan., 2007), pp. 139-
156
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20467157

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 WALTER BENJAMIN'S MYTH OF THE FLANEUR
The notion of theflcineur, developed by Walter Benjamin at the height of I920S
and I930S modernism when the 'surreal' potential of the previous century's
industrial urban space was explored, has exerted considerable influence on the
way we now interpret nineteenth-century depictions of the city. The concept
has gained unquestioned cognitive status-a sum of insights to be taken for
granted-in contemporary cultural theory. It is the contention of this article
that Benjamin's idea of the fianeur is not only of limited value for an under
standing of nineteenth-century urban experience, but can be seen positively
to hamper it. This detrimental effect results from Benjamin's dogmatic ap
plication of a high-modernist, aesthetic concept of self-loss, derived from a
(flawed) reading of Baudelaire and Poe, to the interpretation of earlier, journa
listic sources conceptualizing the fcitneur. Compared with the mode of viewing
formulated by Poe and Baudelaire, the kind of urban observation presented by
these ephemera of the I830s and i840s is dismissed as lacking cognitive value.
This dismissal has led to a neglect, if not downright demolition, of a whole
genre of nineteenth-century city sketches in 'deconstructive' criticism. What
has shielded Benjamin's pronouncements from being questioned is not only
their own critical thrust informed by Marxist and Freudian theory, but their
apparently solid foundation in empirical textual study. In order to question the
substance of his arguments and to expose his notion of the flaineur as a moder
nist myth, I shall first discuss Benjamin's theorizing of modernity in relation
to the idea of the city stroller. It was his aim to enlighten modernity about
itself, but his critique has, I argue, had an obfuscatory effect which was both
unintentional and necessary, given the peculiarities of his thinking, and which
has been perpetuated by Benjamin-inspired cultural theory. As a second step, I
shall discuss some nineteenth-century materials to illustrate my critical points
against Benjamin and to show that his ideas have handicapped our understand
ing of precisely those journalistic sources (e.g. the Physiologies) from the study
of which his statements derive some of their claim to authority.

Langsam durch belebte StraBen zu gehen, ist ein besonderes Vergniugen. Man wird
iiberspielt von der Eile der anderen, es ist ein Bad in der Brandung. Aber meine
lieben Berliner Mitbiirger machen einem das nicht leicht, wenn man ihnen auch noch
so geschickt ausbiegt. Ich bekomme immer mif3trauische Blicke ab, wenn ich ver
suche, zwischen den Geschaftigen zu flanieren. Ich glaube, man hilt mich fur einen
Taschendieb.'

Franz Hessel's Spazieren in Berlin (I929), from which this passage is taken,
contains motifs that are central to Benjamin's idea of the faneur. These include,
on the one hand, delight in immersing oneself in the crowd, the object of
observation, and on the other hand, being viewed with suspicion since the
keen 'reading' of urban physiognomies shows an affinity with the business of
1 Franz Hessel, 'Der Verd?chtige', in Ein Flaneur in Berlin: Mit Fotografien von Friedrich
Seidenst?cker, Walter Benjamins Skizze 'Die Wiederkehr des Flaneurs' und einem 'Waschzettel' von
Heinz Knobloch (Berlin: Das Arsenal, 1984), p. 7. The volume's text is a re-edition of Hessel's
Spazieren in Berlin.

Modern Language Review, I02 (2007), I39-56

C Modern Humanities Research Association 2007

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 I40 Benjamin's Myth of the 'Flaneur'
criminals and detectives. Given Benjamin's friendship and collaboration with
Hessel (who in I926 introduced him to the 'Kunst des Spazierengehens' in Paris
and was his co-author for a planned essay on arcades),2 it is not surprising that
the first-person observer of Hessel's Berlin sketches should be closely related to
the third-person flineur depicted in Benjamin's later work. In fact Benjamin's
review of Spazieren in Berlin, published in Die literarische Welt shortly after
the book's appearance,3 constitutes an important journalistic link in the genesis
of his concept of modernity as it was to be outlined in his I930S essays on
nineteenth-century Paris,4 and in Das Passagen- Werk, his fragmentary magnum
opus with which these essays are directly or indirectly connected. In all of them
the fluineur features among the modern archetypes.
Das Passagen-Werk also offers a clue regarding the methodological signifi
cance of the flineur. The vast array of textual snippets assembled in it includes
Benjamin's own aphoristic remarks as well as quotations from contemporary
cultural studies, and also excerpts from nineteenth-century sources dealing
with phenomena of novelty, e.g. arcades and department stores, panoramas,
exhibitions, fashion, and gaslight. The position from which all these observa
tions are made seems to be that of a strolling spectator, someone who collects
mental notes taken on leisurely city walks and publishes them in the form of
feuilleton sketches and witty essays. In short, they resemble observations of a
flaneur, the viewer who takes pleasure in abandoning himself to the artificial
world of high capitalist civilization. One could describe this figure as the view
ing-device through which Benjamin formulates his own theoretical assump
tions concerning modernity, converging in a Marxist critique of commodity
fetishism. Drawing on Hegelian-Marxist dialectical patterns, this critique is
supposed to make palpable, through precise observation, the secret mecha
nisms of capitalism which provide the key to revolutionary change:
Der Flaneur ist der Beobachter des Marktes. Sein Wissen steht der Geheimwissenschaft
von der Konjunktur nahe. Er ist der in das Reich des Konsumenten ausgeschickte
Kundschafter des Kapitalismus.5
As an observer and connoisseur of market fluctuations and as someone at the
same time on a reconnaissance mission in the consumer's realm, theflcineur pos
sesses the perceptiveness to register all the signs of commodification. Thus his
nineteenth-century view empowers the twentieth-century theorist of moder
nity, who also has an interest in overcoming alienation, to turn into a concrete,
non-theoretical vision the utopian potential inherent in industrial capitalism.
2 See Bernd Witte, Walter Benjamin (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1985), pp. 68 and 79.
3 Walter Benjamin, 'Die Wiederkehr des Flaneurs', in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Rolf Tiede
mann and Hermann Schweppenh?user, 7 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1991), in, 194-99.
This edition is abbreviated henceforth as GS.
4 'Paris, die Hauptstadt des XIX. Jahrhunderts' (1935, an expos? for the Passagen-Werk), 'Das
Paris des Second Empire bei Charles Baudelaire' (1938), and '?ber einige Motive bei Baudelaire'
(1939). They are available in English translation by Harry Zohn as 'The Paris of the Second
Empire in Baudelaire' and 'Some Motifs in Baudelaire', and by Quintin Hoare as 'Paris?The
Capital of the Nineteenth Century'; all in Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in
the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983).
5 Walter Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk, in GS, v/1-2, v/i, 537-38. Das Passagen-Werk is avail
able in English translation by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin as The Arcades Project
(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).

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 MARTINA LAUSTER I41

This happens at the precise moment when the ar

such as arcades, gaslight, and panoramas, are bec
Stierle has pointed out: 'Fur Benjamin steht die Er
nicht in einem kontinuierlichen Prozef3 der Wir
ist bezogen auf den privilegierten Augenblick'
I920S and I930S when 'die abgeschiedene Moderne
words, the nineteenth-century fl6neur passes on
dynamic present-'die abgeschiedene Moderne
sopher who re-presents a past present in a mom
thinking in aphoristic images is intended to help
revolutionary transformation.
But this empowerment hinges on the assumption
flaneur's view-however sharp with regard to the
the things he observes-is obscured as by a vei
sight of the later critic to free modernity from t
consciousness of its early observers. Benjamin fo
lightening modernity about itself in terms of w
central image denoting the dream is that of the
ist der Schleier, durch den hindurch dem Flaneu
tasmagorie winkt.'7 The flkneur here views his
not as genuinely 'entfremdet', but as merely 'ver
which is that of the urban crowd. This idiosyn
jamin's allegorical thinking, needs explaining.
of pre-cinematic visual entertainment, a subgenr
where an image was projected onto a diaphanous
projector moved backwards and forwards, creati
Gothic thrill through the illusion of an approach
describing the flineur's vision of the city as pha
that it is clouded by the dream-factory vision e
tainment industry. He indirectly also refers to M
of the commodity in terms of a religious fetish,
status solely to the human brain investing it with
the community venerating the fetish, as an auto
magoric appearance, created by human craft and
of its own, also forms part of Marx's inventory
apparent independence of the commodity, resulti
social relationships producing it:
[D]ie Warenform [hat] [. . .] mit ihrer physischen
genden dinglichen Beziehungen absolut nichts zu scha
gesellschaftliche Verhaltnis der Menschen selbst, w
6 Karlheinz Stierle, Aura, Spur und Benjamins Vergegenw
Art social und art industriel: Funktionen der Kunst im Zeita
Pfeiffer, Hans Robert Jauss, and Fran?oise Gaillard (Munic
7 Ibid., p. 54.
8 See Ulrike Hick, Geschichte der optischen Medien (Munich: Fink, 1999), pp. 146-56; also
Margaret Cohen, 'Benjamin's Phantasmagoria: The Arcades Project', in The Cambridge Companion
to Walter Benjamin, ed. by David S. Ferris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
pp. 199-220 (p. 207).

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 I42 Benjamin's Myth of the 'Flaneur'
magorische Form eines Verhiltnisses von Dingen annimmt. Um daher eine Analogie
zu finden, muissen wir in die Nebelregion der religiosen Welt fluichten. Hier scheinen
die Produkte des menschlichen Kopfes mit eignem Leben begabte, untereinander und
mit den Menschen in Verhaltnis stehende selbstindige Gestalten. So in der Warenwelt
die Produkte der menschlichen Hand. Dies nenne ich den Fetischismus, der den Ar
beitsprodukten anklebt, sobald sie als Waren produziert werden, und der daher von der
Warenproduktion unzertrennlich ist.9

Benjamin's flaineur moves in the 'Nebelregion' not so much of a religious world,

but in that of capitalist reification, by perceiving the man-made, familiar city as
a phantasmagoria, an autonomous, potentially fear-inspiring world of objects
independent of himself. Yet the shock that this alienation could impart is mi
tigated by the phantasmagoric screen, the crowd in the street, which shrouds
the familiar, yet alien city in a nebulous tissue. Presumably the implication
is that the urban crowd, itself a potentially disturbing phenomenon, absorbs
the flaneur as one who feels in his element and at home in it, deriving an
aesthetic thrill by moving along incognito, and therefore not (yet) being fully
exposed to the shock of alienation. On the other hand, being at home in what is
definitely not 'home' and viewing what is familiar through a defamiliarizing veil
make Benjamin's flineur an ambiguous figure, partly perceptive of the shifts in
subject-object relationships brought about by industrialization, partly deluded
about them. His greatest delusion is spatial, since he experiences the streets as
an interior, a mixture of shopping arcade, conservatory, living-room, panorama,
music hall, cabinet of curiosities or botanical collection, and Great Exhibition
hall. This interior unites all times, all parts of the globe, and all phenomena of
contemporary society, and their availability in one moment or glance intoxicates
the flineur so that his inner life begins to tick like a clock, signifying a physical
internalization of the world of objects. The following compilation of extracts
illustrates these key points in Benjamin's vision of the flcineur:
Bekannt ist, wie bei der flanerie Lander- und Zeitenfernen [. . ] in den Augenblick
eindringen. Wenn die eigentlich rauschhafte Phase dieses Zustands anhebt, pocht es im
Aderwerk des Gliicklichen, sein Herz nimmt den Uhrtakt an.'"
Die StraBe wird zur Wohnung fur den Flaneur, der zwischen Hiuserfronten so wie
der Buirger in seinen vier Wainden zuhause ist. Ihm sind die gliinzenden emaillierten
Firmenschilder so gut und besser ein Wandschmuck wie im Salon dem Burger ein
Olgemalde; Mauern sind das Schreibpult, gegen das er seinen Notizblock stemmt;
Zeitungskioske sind seine Bibliotheken und die Cafeterrassen Erker, von denen aus er
nach getaner Arbeit auf sein Hauswesen heruntersieht. "
[With reference to the sociological sketches written by journalists of the July Monarchy,
and quoting Eduard Fuchs's work on caricature:] '[. . .] Alles defilierte voriuber . . .
Freudentage und Trauertage, Arbeit und Erholung, Eheliche Sitten und Junggesel
lengebrauche, Familie, Haus, Kind, Schule, Gesellschaft, Theater, Typen, Berufe.' Die
Gemichlichkeit dieser Schildereien paB3t zu dem Habitus des Flaneurs, der auf dem
Asphalt botanisieren geht.'2
9 Karl Marx, Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen ?konomie, vol. i, in Karl Marx, Friedrich
Engels: Werke, ed. by the Institut f?r Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED, vol. xxm, 7th
edn (Berlin: Dietz, 1972), pp. 86-87.
10 Das Passagen-Werk, GS, v/i, 528.
11 Walter Benjamin, 'Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', in Charles Baudelaire: Ein
Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus, in GS, 1/2, 511-604 (p- 539)
12 Ibid., p. 538.

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 MARTINA LAUSTER I43

Der Stadter, dessen politische Uberlegenheit fiber das

vielfach zum Ausdruck kommt, macht den Versuch, da
Die Stadt weitet sich in den Panoramen zur Landschaf
spater fur den Flanierenden tut.'3
Die Erscheinung der Straf3e als Interieur, in der die P
zusammenfaf3t, ist von der Gasbeleuchtung nur schw
brannte in den Passagen.'4

Benjamin thus creates an interdependency betwee

cise registering of a nineteenth-century environ
by an unprecedented process of 'Verdinglichun
tory mental state on the other hand. He clearly
fetishization-a term which he, psychologizing th
as the endowment of inanimate things with sex-
the city dweller's anxieties and desires. The fldn
world of commodities and his position in the com
in an equally ambiguous manner so as to highlight
type one who has the potential, but not the illus
his own commodification:

als Flaneur begibt [... .] sich [der Literat] auf den Markt
und in Wahrheit doch schon, um einen Kaufer zu fin

The idea of the writer/flaneur's unconscious prost

is then heightened by the image of entering
tertainment in which the writer/viewer/flaneur
determined, partial vision to an illusion of total
Der Schriftsteller, der den Markt einmal betreten hat
Panorama. '8

The nexus between fljneur and modern writer or

Baudelaire long before Benjamin, with similar acc
its thrills. Indeed, following Benjamin's essays on
knowledge associates the conceptual origins of the
firmly with Baudelaire,'9 that is to say, with his
Poe's story 'The Man of the Crowd' and with his c
Constantin Guys. One of the most famous passag
13 Das Passagen-Werk, GS, v/i, 48.
14 'Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', p. 552.
15 See Hartmut B?hme, 'Fetischismus im neunzehnten Jahr
Analysen zur Karriere eines Konzepts', in Das schwierige neun
Tagung zum 65. Geburtstag von Eda Sagarra im August igg8, e
and Roger Paulin (T?bingen: Niemeyer, 2000), pp. 445-65 (
16 'Die Mode schreibt das Ritual vor, nach dem der Fetisc
verkuppelt den lebendigen Leib der anorganischen Welt. [
Appeal des Anorganischen unterliegt, ist ihr Lebensnerv' (Wa
des XIX. Jahrhunderts', in Das Passagen-Werk, GS, v/i, 81
17 'Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', p. 536.
18 Ibid., p. 537.
19 See the Wikipedia entry 'Fl?neur', which attributes not
type to Baudelaire, but even the Benjaminian phrase describin
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur) [accessed 10

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 I 44 Benjamin's Myth of the 'Flaneur'
de la vie moderne', in which Baudelaire discusses 'The Man of the Crowd' in
the context of Guys's work, celebrates self-loss in the crowd as a precondition
of artistic creativity. Benjamin includes this passage in his collection for the
Passagen- Werk:20

Pour le parfait flaneur, pour l'observateur passionne, c'est une immense jouissance que
d'e1ire domicile dans le nombre, dans l'ondoyant, dans le mouvement, dans le fugitif
et l'infini. Etre hors de chez soi, et pourtant se sentir partout chez soi; voir le monde,
etre au centre du monde et rester cache au monde, tels sont quelques-uns des moindres
plaisirs de ces esprits independants, passionnes, impartiaux, que la langue ne peut que
maladroitement definir. L'observateur est un prince qui jouit partout de son incognito.
[. . .] C'est un moi insatiable du non-moi, qui, a chaque instant, le rend et l'exprime en
images plus vivantes que la vie elle-meme, toujours instable et fugitive.2'

It is well worth pointing out that this passage refers entirely to the 'painter of
modern life', Constantin Guys, and that Baudelaire at no point associates the
fldneur with the unknown 'man of the crowd' espied by the narrator in Poe's
story. The reason Baudelaire enhances his essay on a visual artist by referring
to a narrative work is the fresh, unconditioned perception of the people in the
street that Poe's narrator, in Baudelaire's view, shares with Guys. Yet to see the
object of the narrator's vision, the 'man of the crowd', as a flaneur is absolute
nonsense; if anything, it is the observing narrator who could be labelled thus.
Benjamin, however-as John Rignall has pointed out22-contrives the glaring
misinterpretation of Poe's hunted, unknown man as a fldneur. The 'man of
the crowd' becomes identical for him with 'the' flaneur at an advanced stage in
his development, just as, Benjamin claims, Baudelaire saw him in Poe's story,23
i.e. as the bohemian outcast hiding in the crowd, moving in the jungle of the
city, and succumbing in the end to the lure of commodities in the jungle of a
department store. Hence posterity has become accustomed to thinking of Poe
and Baudelaire as twin names with regard to the flaneur, i.e. the 'man of the
crowd'. This is one particularly persistent facet of the Benjaminian myth of the
flaneur which I want to address.
Benjamin's carelessness with regard to his sources, conducive to myth
making, does not end here. When he eventually realizes that Poe's protagonist
is not a flineur, he corrects himself in his second essay on Baudelaire ('Uber
einige Motive bei Baudelaire'), but corresponding statements in the Passagen
Werk have been left unchanged, such as:
Dialektik der flanerie: einerseits der Mann, der sich von allem und allen angesehen
fiihlt, der Verdichtige schlechthin, andererseits der vollig Unauffindbare, Geborgene.
Vermutlich ist es eben diese Dialektik, die 'Der Mann der Menge' entwickelt.24

20 Das Passagen-Werk, GS, v/i, 556.

21 Charles Baudelaire, 'Le peintre de la vie moderne', in uvres compl?tes, ed. by Claude Pichois,
2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1975-76), 11 (1976), 683-724 (pp. 691-92).
22 See John Rignall, Realist Fiction and the Strolling Spectator (London and New York: Rout
ledge, 1992), p. 13.
23 '[. . .] ein Unbekannter, der seinen Weg durch London so einrichtet, da? er immer in ihrer
[=der Menge] Mitte bleibt. Dieser Unbekannte ist der Flaneur. So ist er von Baudelaire auch
verstanden worden, als er in seinem Guys-Essay den Flaneur "l'homme des foules" genannt hat'
('Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', p. 550).
24 Das Passagen-Werk, GS, v/i, 529.

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 MARTINA LAUSTER I45

It is also worth pointing out the inconsistency

interpretation when he reaches the discussion
culmination-point of his chapter on the flaine
Second Empire bei Baudelaire'. Here he asserts
one wrongly identified by him as aflkineur), wh
department store, has lost his way in the labyrin
earlier type of flineur had lost his way in the laby

Wenn die Passage die klassische Form des Interieurs

Flaneur darstellt, so ist dessen Verfallsform das Wa
letzte Strich des Flaneurs. War ihm anfangs die Straf
wurde ihm dieses Interieur nun zur Stral3e, und er irrt
vordem durch das stadtische. Es ist ein groBartiger Zu
friihesten Schilderung des Flaneurs die Figur seines E

Seeing the flineur epitomized in Poe's 'man of

labyrinth of merchandise as he was before in the
jamin flatly contradicts his former assertion abo
familiar, homely spaces by the flineurs of Paris.
to imply that these strolling observers (represent
before I840) constituted an 'initial' version if P
story first published in I840) is deemed both t
the type and an anticipation of his demise in the
of capitalism. Unconcerned by either of these con
reiterates his point about exterior spaces being t
flaneur, arguing that while the arcades had repre
environment as which the street offered itself to
which the arcades are degenerating now becomes
of streets for him, as the city had been to him befor
twists, theflaineur is represented as offering himself
turned into interior) and in the department store
as a commodity to any interested buyer; unconsc
implied expression 'auf den Strich gehen' sugg
for the associative freedom of Benjamin's though
called that-is simply absurd, though it has not p
being turned into interiors and urban observers p
market from becoming part of the critical canon.
How reliable, one wonders, is Benjamin's whole c
25 'Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', p. 557.
26 The idea of a fl?neur turning exteriors into interiors appe
'Nineteenth-Century Urban Sketches: Thresholds of Fictio
'Many [. . .] urban sketches contain the presence [. . .] of a
if he were to depict only the publicly observable life of the
Benjamin notes, turn the exteriors into interiors, impart to the
forms of external urban life potentially available' (p. 236). Th
sketches whose lightness of touch masks his commodified bus
'Effortless Art: The Sketch in Nineteenth-Century Painting
349-64, where she deals with Washington Irving's introduc
Crayon (1820): 'His "sauntering gaze" makes him a perfect
wanders through the city streets, apparently a man of leisure
a "strolling commodity"' (p. 354).

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 146 Benjamin's Myth of the 'Flaneur'
is not only self-contradictory, but has no solid foundation in Poe's or Baude
laire's work either? Let us first recapitulate the main qualities of the icon of
modernity that the flaeneur has become through Benjamin's writings. He is a
type that prefers arcades and gaslight, looks at the city as if it were a panorama
or indeed a phantasmagoria, turns the boulevard into an interieur, collects
urban physiognomies like a botanist collecting specimens, and, as a 'Literat'
prostituting himself on the market, shows an affinity with the commodities he
gazes at in window displays. This icon, for sure, is not a type that ever existed
in social history, but a literary reflection of a complex kind, resulting from a
triple reading (or misreading) process from Poe via Baudelaire to Benjamin.
Benjamin, as John Rignall has remarked, himself invests an epistemological
figure Baudelaire's 'observateur passionne' denoting a manner of viewing
with the qualities of a material type, expressive of developments in the era of
High Capitalism.27 By virtue of the flaneur's sturdy afterlife in cultural studies,
where he occupies the place of a type, a nineteenth-century literary cipher of
vision has thus become a myth, i.e. something that is believed to have materially
existed.
Benjamin cannot be held responsible for what posterity has done with his
ideas, but the myth of the flatneur can be seen as a direct result of his own habit
of condensing conceptual understanding into idiosyncratic images. His inten
tion to strip nineteenth-century modernity of its fetishist veil has backfired
in the sense that the phenomena he discusses (arcades in particular) and his
highly imaginative way of interpreting them have themselves, paradoxically,
acquired iconic status in contemporary cultural and literary studies. In Hart
mut B6hme's terminology, these contemporary critics are trapped in a process
of unintentional 'fetishization' which already bedevilled the work of their cri
tical models, from Marx via Nietzsche to Freud, the very thinkers who drew
attention to fetishist phenomena in enlightened Western societies:
Der Fetischismus, der dem Kapitalismus einwohnt oder auch ihm nur imputiert wird,
prigt sich der Kritik in seltsamen Inversionen auf. Die obskure koloniale Herkunft des
Fetischismus-Konzepts implantiert ins Denken eine fatale Bindung ans Objekt, welches
doch iuberschritten werden soll. Die Geste der Kritik bleibt beherrscht durch eine Art
religiosen Bann. [. . ] Philosophie wird zum Ikonoklasmus. [. . .] Diese kritische Wucht
aber setzt sich bei Marx wie bei Nietzsche, und spater auch in der Psychoanalyse, in eine
Bewegung um, welche zur Kreation neuer Idole und Fetische fiihrt, deren Bannkraft
im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert vielleicht alles iibertrifft. (Bohme, p. 465)

I would not go so far as to describe an uncritical adoption of Benjamin's 'idol'

of the flineur as fetishistic, but the way in which nineteenth-century depictions
of metropolitan viewing have acquired typological solidity in the form of 'Ben
jamin's flaneur' certainly resembles the process of fetishization in criticism as
analysed by Bohme. My own critical intention is therefore not to attack the
fetish, since this only confirms its iconic status, but to counteract myth-making
through an examination of texts-Benjamin's own as well as those he draws on.
27 'The fl?neur is seen here as a social phenomenon, the object of the materialist historian's
gaze rather than the exponent of a certain kind of vision, the seeing subject himself (Rignall,
p. 14). In this context Rignall also refers to Adorno's early critique of Benjamin's first essay on
Baudelaire, focusing on the lack of 'mediation', 'the very mediation that the concept of the fl?neur
as representing a way of seeing provides'.

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 MARTINA LAUSTER I47

For the myth of the flineur has blocked critical path

source materials that fall within the remit of the Pa
to unblock our approaches to documents of ninetee
tion, which is tantamount to removing the phantasm
interpretation itself has drawn over them. Benja
Parisian sketches of the i83os and i840s in the Pa
them in his essays. They include the Physiologies, a
illustrated booklet depicting social types and pheno
swamping the Parisian book trade between i 840 an
hints at the fact that physiology and zoology were p
early days of sociology, and that the empirical scie
methodological framework from the sciences of lif
These sketches show that the interest of urban ob
other hybrids between exterior and interior spaces,
other hand, street life proper, particularly modes of
attracts the highest interest. Benjamin, while amassi
in the Passagen-Werk, says almost nothing about th
laire and Paris. Moreover, the sketches prove that the
as both a social type and a cipher of modern vie
a number) was part of common knowledge as ear
thus not first conceptualized by Baudelaire in his
I859-60, first published in I863), but much earli
give the flaineur a meaning which significantly diff
concept of the Second Empire, in other words, t
ited from Baudelaire and Benjamin. Rather than
demonic, prince-like, man-of-the-world artist, they
city-dweller, a Mr Anybody, in other words, as preci
the 'man of the crowd' celebrated in Baudelaire's eu
tic reflection. Richard Burton has categorized this
the pre- and the post-I850 incarnation of the flineu
'roving empiricist' and to the latter as 'little less tha

Whereas the pre-I850flaneur strives to understand the in

otherness, the homme desfoules, as described by Baudelair
quasi-mystic (or quasi-orgasmic) fusion with 'la foule' con
and anonymous mass.28

This difference could also very probably be seen as

cursive, non-fictional treatment of the new social t
'visionary' transformation in prose fiction as well as
aesthetics. Why does Benjamin, the materialist h
aesthetic variant for his own theoretical conclusion
does he include the early journalistic sources in the
Passagen-Werk, but dismiss them as of little intrin
essays? Because journalism is unproductive in terms
sion, which ultimately has to rely on the 'Kunstwe
28 Richard D. E. Burton, The Fl?neur and his City: Patterns
(Durham: University of Durham, 1994), p. 5.

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 I48 Benjamin's Myth of the 'Flaneur'
metropolitan fiction-conveying the shock effect of modernization. Benjamin
sees the whole genre of quotidian sketches, subsumed by him under the broad
heading of feuilleton, as a sedative for the middle class, i.e. as socially and ideo
logically suspect and therefore unreliable:
Die beruhigenden Mittelchen, welche die Physiologisten [writers of Physiologies] feil
hielten, waren bald abgetan. Der Literatur dagegen, die sich an die beunruhigenden
und bedrohlichen Seiten des stiidtischen Lebens gehalten hat, sollte eine grof3e Zukunft
beschieden sein. Auch diese Literatur hat es mit der Masse zu tun. Sie verfahrt aber
anders als die Physiologien. Ihr liegt an der Bestimmung von Typen wenig; sie geht
vielmehr den Funktionen nach, welche der Masse in der groBen Stadt eigen sind. [ ...]
Hier erscheint die Masse als das Asyl, das den Asozialen vor seinen Verfolgern schutzt.
Unter ihren bedrohlichen Seiten hat sich diese am zeitigsten angekiindigt. Sie steht im
Ursprung der Detektivgeschichte.29
Der urspriingliche gesellschaftliche Inhalt der Detektivgeschichte ist die Verwischung
der Spuren des Einzelnen in der Grof3stadtmenge.30
Benjamin here assigns aesthetic durability and hence quality to 'Literatur' in
the form of the detective story (to which he unscrupulously also subsumes
Poe's 'Man of the Crowd', as a kind of 'X-rayed version' of the genre)3' and
declares the Physiologies written by journalists to be transitory and therefore
worthless. Since detective fiction engages with the phenomenon of masses in a
way that does justice to the unsettling experience of the individual's anonymity
and loss of moral ties in the 'asylum' of the crowd, it points forward to the
twentieth century, even if it is itself part of the nineteenth-century fldneur's
delusion.32 This seemingly avant-gardist, but in fact quite conventional value
judgement is predicated on the devaluation of entertaining journalism-the
typological portrait written for the day-as a genre providing something more
dubious than phantasmagoric illusion, in other words, opiatic medicine ('Mit
telchen'). In Benjamin's view, it numbs the authentically experienced anxieties
of readers in an increasingly threatening urban environment. The non-fictional,
witty proto-sociological study of type is thereby denied any cognitive capacity.
This problematic judgement is informed by the suspicious attitude of Ger
man Kulturkritik towards the 'billige Eleganz' of the feuilleton,33 even though,
paradoxically, journalism and its ruses (such as recycled aphorisms) very often
provide the very medium in which this cultural criticism is expressed.34
Kai Kauffmann has noted the tendency to see the newspaper press as the
'letzte Verfallsform' of narrative communication in Benjamin's criticism of the
29 'Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', p. 542.
30 Ibid., p. 546.
31 'Poes ber?hmte Novelle "Der Mann der Menge" ist etwas wie das R?ntgenbild einer Detek
tivgeschichte. Der umkleidende Stoff, den das Verbrechen darstellt, ist in ihr weggefallen' (ibid.,
P 55o):
32 With reference to works such as Dumas's Mohicans de Paris, Benjamin writes: 'Welche Spur
der Flaneur auch verfolgen mag, jede wird ihn auf ein Verbrechen f?hren. Damit ist angedeutet,
wie auch die Detektivgeschichte, ihres n?chternen Kalk?ls ungeachtet, an der Phantasmagoric
des pariser Lebens mitwirkt' ('Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', p. 543).
33 See ibid., p. 529.
34 One striking example of Benjamin's own recycling can be seen in the image of the street as an
int?rieur which appears in his 1929 review of Hessel's Spazieren in Berlin ('Die Wiederkehr des
Flaneurs', GS, in, 194-99 (p. 196)) as well as, almost verbatim, in Das Passagen-Werk, GS, v/i,
533, and 'Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', p. 539.

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 MARTINA LAUSTER I49

Physiologies and the press.35 This devaluation of

mann argues, is part of a selective reading proces
in turn has established a Benjaminian 'myth of m
Benjamin gewinnt an Baudelaires Schriften die Beg
der modernen Grof3stadt prigen: Begriffe wie Reiziibe
Sinn-Verlust, Entfremdung, Diskontinuitat etc. Trotz
Hans Robert Jaul3 [in Literaturgeschichte als Provoka
Schriften 'einseitig als Zeugnis fur das denaturierte D
interpretiert und dariiber die dialektische Kehrseite de
sage an die Natur freigesetzte, neue Produktivkraft d
Benjamins Interpretation fulr die neuere literaturwis
dernen Grof3stadt maf3geblich geworden. Baudelaires
Kritiken sind in Benjamins Lesart zu den wichtigst
der modernen GrofBstadt avanciert, die von der Liter
Ersch6pfung bemiiht werden. [. . .] Auf diese Weise e
raturwissenschaftliche 'Mythos der Moderne'. (Kauffm

With regard to literary studies, this myth means

'beunruhigend' and 'bedrohlich' constitutes th
of nineteenth-century urban depiction is meas
to be 'beruhigend' and 'harmlos' (Benjamin's co
noted epithets) must be aesthetically worthless a
raises the question as to why critics following B
listic city sketches at all, if the only insight they
of their superficiality; often, of course, also the
Benjamin's reading, combined with a notion o
cault, makes it possible to dismiss the whole gen
make a threatening urban environment controllab
in particular serves as a most convenient instrum
nineteenth-century specialists or cultural theoris
as critical interpreters. One example is Richard
lition of the Physiologies published in I985. For h
is their 'perfect harmlessness', which allows him
is fundamentally petit-bourgeois, virtually lacki
insight'.3 Without further ado, arcades are decla
innocuous social botanizing is practised by the fl
mass-produced Physiologies then have the plea
social botanists and as viewers who can move aro
about others without being laughed at-but, little
victim to a cosmic phantasmagoria:
35 See Kai Kauffmann, 'Es ist nur ein Wien!' Stadtbeschr
Geschichte eines literarischen Genres der Wiener Publizistik (
1994), PP- 27-28.
36 The reference to Jauss's Literaturgeschichte als Provokat
a.M.: Suhrkamp),p. 58.
37 Richard Sieburth, 'Une id?ologie du lisible: le ph?nom?ne
(T985), 39-60: 'Comme Walter Benjamin fut le premier ? le m
la parfaite bonhomie de la satire contenues dans les physiolog
damentalement petit bourgeois, virtuellement d?pourvu de v
38 See Benjamin's statement on the 'Habitus des Flaneurs
geht' ('Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', p. 538).

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 I50 Benjamin's Myth of the 'Flaneur'
Acheter une physiologie c'est donc se procurer un acces indirect a toutes les prerogatives
de la flanerie: oisivete, curiosite, ubiquit& et par dessus tout la certitude que la ville peut
etre connue et maitris&e comme un jeu pred&termine de signes ... .]. ... .] Le succes de
cette 'litterature panorama' de l'6poque a sans doute quelque rapport avec l'assurance
de pouvoir voir sans etre vu. Un reve semblable d'invulnerabilite [. . .] est sous-jacent
au mecanisme renconfortant de la satire dans les physiologies, car il rend leurs lecteurs
capables de jouir de la superiorite (diabolique, comme le dirait Baudelaire) du rire sans
etre eux-memes impliques comme cibles du ridicule. (Sieburth, pp. 57 and 58)
[Les physiologies] iraient finalement moins dans le sens d'une apprehension de la realite
sociale que vers son occultation systematique dans ce que Walter Benjamin nomme
'l'univers d'une fantasmagorie'. (p. 46)

This regardless of the fact that the physiologies are a parodistic genre,39 poking
fun at the more 'serious' sketch collections, such as the serial Les Franfais peints
par eux-memes (I839-42), and their exercises in social classification. Nor does it
in the least take account of the fact that these socially classifying sketches, which
the physiologies parodistically respond to, created a portrait of the metropolis
in collections of hundreds of individual contributions-not dissimilar, in fact,
to Benjamin's own synthetic picture of modernity in the Passagen-Werk, 'ein
Bild des i9. Jahrhunderts [. . .], das die Leuchtkraft des Traums oder der
unwillkiirlich sich 6ffnenden Erinnerung hat' (Stierle, p. 39), which is com
posed of hundreds of (usually discursive) fragments. Benjamin himself draws
the analogy between sketch collections and huge circular paintings by describ
ing them rightly as moral panoramas, but this analogy does not do them jus
tice if, as he and his followers believe, they merely replicate the entertaining
and informative medium of the visual panorama.40 The cognitive claim, for
example, of Les Franfais peints par eux-memes to synthesize an Encyclopedie
morale du XIXe siecle (thus the serial's subtitle from Volume iv onwards) from
a vast number of individual typological sketches is as serious as that of the
Passagen-Werk to construct an 'Urgeschichte der Moderne' from scraps. Ac
cording to Stierle, Benjamin reads the nineteenth century in such a way 'daB
aus Detail und Bruchstiick immer neue Bilder und Konstellationen entstehen.
[.. .] Fur diesen Bricolage des historischen Sinns ist alles brauchbar: Zeitungen,
ephemare Schriften, Plakate, die abgelegensten Buicher wie die groBe Literatur'
(Stierle, p. 40). I would argue that, since collections such as Les Franfais peints
par eux-memes construct proto-sociological 'encyclopaedias' of the nineteenth
century from observation (including observations of seemingly insignificant
trivia, of the observer himself as well as of media of observation and popu
lar entertainment), their cognitive value for a concept of modernity is in fact
39 As Nathalie (Basset-)Preiss already pointed out in 1984: N. Basset, 'Les physiologies au xixe
si?cle et la mode: de la po?sie comique ? la critique', Ann?e balzacienne (1984), 157-72; and as she
has amply demonstrated in her book: N. Preiss, Les Physiologies en France au XIXe si?cle: ?tude
historique, litt?raire et stylistique (Mont-de-Marsan: ?ditions InterUniversitaires, 1999).
40 Benjamin says that the 'panoramatische Literatur' of the sketch collections (e.g. Le Livre des
Cent-et-un, Les Fran?ais peints par eux-m?mes, Le Diable ? Paris, La Grande Ville) enjoyed the
same popularity as the visual panorama and worked with similar devices: 'Diese B?cher bestehen
aus einzelnen Skizzen, die mit ihrer anekdotischen Einkleidung den plastischen Vordergrund
jener Panoramen und mit ihrem informatorischen Fundus deren weitgespannten Hintergrund
gleichsam nachbilden' ('Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire', p. 537); see also the section
'Panorama' in Das Passagen-Werk, GS, v/2, 655-65 (p. 659), with a characteristic imprecision in
terminology: 'Sie sind gewisserma?en moralische Dioramen'.

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 MARTINA LAUSTER I51

PAR E.UX-MI11MIIS.

FIG. i. Lavieille after Gavarni, frontispiece in Les Franfais peints par

eux-memes, 8 vols (Paris: L. Curmer, I840-42), ii (i840). Wood engraving.
superior to Benjamin's idiosyncratic picture constructed from prejudiced and
incorrect readings of texts.
From these sketches a reading of modernity in terms of a dynamic public
sphere becomes possible which differs fundamentally from Benjamin's. More
over, modernity is not something that only a present-day reader would be able
to reconstruct from sketch collections of the I 830s and I 840s, but it is their own

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 I152 Benjamin's Myth of the 'Flhneur'
self-conscious point of reference, as Gavarni's frontispiece to Volume ii of Les
Franfais peints par eux-memes makes strikingly clear. An allegorical, angelic
demonic figure viewing him(?)self in a mirror while writing is seated on a pile
of books which can be identified as works of the great moralists (La Bruyere's
name is legible on one of the spines). The figure can thus be seen as an allegory
of the modern sketch-producer, engaged in adding live, present-day moral ob
servations collected in notebooks to those of literary history bound in books.
The main difference between historical, 'pre-modern' moral observation and
the kind of sketches the reader will find in the present collection, however, is
their apparent immediacy, capturing the here-and-now in an unprecedented
interplay between writing and drawing or letterpress and graphic image. The
fact that Les Franfais peints par eux-memes is an illustrated work can be gleaned
from the poster advertising the series in the background and the 'graffiti' of
Parisian types below. On close inspection of the way the sketch-writer holds
the mirror, the viewer becomes aware that what is reflected in it must be more
than the writer's face and include images of his environment, i.e. the kind of
urban scenes that become the subject of sketches. The wall with its poster and
graffiti would be just one of this sort. The very medium of reproduction of
fers a 'mirror image' of the artist's drawing, as Gavarni's reversed signature
implies. Sketches thus present themselves not as naive and spontaneous depic
tions, but as a sophisticated genre working with reflections, and these reflections
include the medial conditions under which the genre operates, such as print
on an industrial scale, the collaboration of many in drawing the self-images of
the nation, and the continuity-through print-of the moralist tradition. The
composite nature of the figure, uniting angel, devil, and fool in a gesture of
vanity, hints at the old theatrum mundi and, at the same time, indicates the
loss of authenticity in a world of reproduction and commodification-a world
which Les Franfais, a publisher's commercial enterprise in the first instance,
eminently represents. Benjamin could have found a prime example here of how
modernity is 'critiqued' by a medium he deems incapable of penetrating vi
sion. Accepting in one's own creations the 'Zertriimmerung der Aura', which
Benjamin sees as the heroic achievement of the lyric poet Baudelaire, is surely
also Gavarni's achievement, but it lacks heroism and therefore iconic potential
because it is an acceptance without communicating a 'Chocerlebnis'.4'
The way in which panoramic (or encyclopaedic) sketch collections present
their views of the city can often be described as an inversion of the traveller's
view of foreign places in a critical self-inspection of the social body. Their syn
thetic structure responds to the increasingly diversified environment in which
social sign-reading has to be practised. In this context, the flaneur emerges
as one of a countless number of ordinary city-dwellers who read metropolitan

41 In Nietzsche's terms borrowed by Benjamin, Baudelaire has achieved modern astral status,
the status of a star without an 'aura' or atmosphere: '[Baudelaire] hat den Preis bezeichnet, um
welchen die Sensation der Moderne zu haben ist: die Zertr?mmerung der Aura im Chocerlebnis.
Das Einverst?ndnis mit dieser Zertr?mmerung ist ihn teuer zu stehen gekommen. Es ist aber
das Gesetz seiner Poesie. Sie steht am Himmel des zweiten Kaiserreiches als "ein Gestirn ohne
Atmosph?re" [Nietzsche, Unzeitgem??e Betrachtungen]' (Walter Benjamin, '?ber einige Motive
bei Baudelaire', in Charles Baudelaire: Ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus, GS, 1/2,
509-690 (p. 653)).

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 MARTINA LAUSTER I53

surfaces-a far cry from the prince moving abou

kicks out of the experience. One publication of
dismissively is the collective serial Paris, ou Le L
It features a sketch of theflaneur which reads in
of its time. The type is described as able to sh
tions of their surroundings:

Rien n'echappe a son regard investigateur [. . .], tout

texte d'observations. [... .] Sous quel aspect inattendu
demonstrateur, le panorama mobile qui vous environn

Unlike Benjamin's assertion that the medium of th

illusionary veils through which the flaineur view
it clear that the readers are thought to perceive
terms of a 'mobile panorama'. Mobile panoram
used in stage shows of the i82zos, which depic
Champs Elysees and were run across the prosc
had the impression of moving themselves.43 The
presenter who teaches the audience to take a fre
to see through the 'veil', as it were, of a popular
vironment, and thereby doing precisely the oppo
'unusual' angle from which to view the city is th
servation, and its medial paradigm is not the pan
Sketches self-reflectively demonstrate their own
over popular optical media, uniting as they do
phering in the immediacy of reading, which is ta
of the signs on the page.44 Semiological decoding
therefore the business of urban depiction in t
Burton's comments on the flaineur make abunda
To describe the flaneur as a semiologist avant la lettr
into the past preoccupations of the present. On the co
consisted of a multiplicity of interlocking semiotic sy
city was, by definition, meaningful was so widesprea
Paris as to be virtually platitudinous [. . .]. (Burton, p

Reading surfaces was one thing; another was the

of interlocking semiotic systems' which no singl
available. The interpreter of signs was therefore
tiplicity' of readers engaged in the same business
author of the sketch 'Le flaneur a Paris' in the (al
des Cent-et-un is himself listed as 'un flaneur'. An
42 Un fl?neur, 'Le fl?neur ? Paris', in Paris, ou Le Livre des
1831-34), vi (1832), 95-110 (pp. 101 and 102).
43 See Bernard Comment, The Panorama, trans, by Anne
1999), PP 63-65.
44 Two better-known examples are Dickens's 'Rapid Diora
Italy (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1846), and Balzac's 'Histo
Paris', from the second volume of Le Diable ? Paris (Paris:
of these can be found in my forthcoming book Sketches o
Journalism and its 'Physiologies', 1830-50 (Houndmills, Bas

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 I54 Benjamin's Myth of the 'Flaineur'
a Baudelairean 'man of the crowd', but the new social type. The portrait of the
professional decipherer of the city by a professional decipherer, in a collective
medium which is itself characteristic of the changing social fabric of the July
Monarchy, therefore possesses the highest cognitive interest both for writers
and the reading public at the time and for nineteenth-century specialists today.
Like the other journalistic collections following in its wake,45 the Livre des
Cent-et-un presents the fl?ineur as a new type whose existence is defined by
externality, by abandoning private space and moving in the streets as well as by
extroverting meaning which used to be hidden so that it becomes accessible in
urban physiognomies. The flaineur is thus also, from the start, a cipher for the
deciphering view which thrives in its proper environment, the urban crowd.
This crowd is not to be understood as an object which the flaineur and the
reader of a physiological sketch need in order to reassure themselves of their
diabolical superiority as decipherers. Nor are they, from an ostensibly secure,
static, unseen position, able to laugh about the other, as Sieburth argues, follow
ing Baudelaire's theory of laughter and indirectly Benjamin's and Baudelaire's
view of the princely observer enjoying his incognito here (Sieburth, p. 58). The
fantasy of seeing without being seen is exactly that of the i820S 'swell' observ
ing the city from the 'snugness' of a camera-obscura viewer, as in Pierce Egan's
Life in London (I 820-2 I).46 Contrary to this perspective, the I830s observer is
included in the crowd as its reflective viewing device, and the same technique
of 'reading externality' that he applies to the city needs to be applied to him as
a type. Social anatomy, in other words, has passed to collective ownership.
The sketch portraying the flineur in the sixth volume of the Livre says that
it is unnecessary to catch a glimpse of the domestic secrets of the professional
stroller. Why? Because he has none. His ambience is the public sphere, and
in order to understand him you need to watch him move about the streets.
The type whose definition it is to be outside reading surfaces is himself crying
out to be deciphered as a meaningful external phenomenon, and the author of
the sketch is significantly named 'un flaneur'. 'Nothing', we learn, 'escapes his
investigative gaze' as he moves forward 'in the middle of the crowd of which he
is the centre'-not an unseen centre of power, but a recognizable type on whose
reflections the seen world centres. This type, himself subject to analysis, is pre
sented as an integral part of the general 'movement' on which his vision vitally
depends. From the latest display of luxury and lithographs in shop windows
to the progress of a building forever under construction, and a never-seen face,
'everything is to him a text of observation'.47 This compulsive sign-reading is

45 Apart from Les Fran?ais peints par eux-m?mes, they include serials such as Nouveau tableau
de Paris au XIXe si?cle, 7 vols (Paris: Librairie de Madame Charles-B?chet, 1834-35); Mus?um
parisien (Paris: Beauger and Aubert, 1841); La Grande Ville, 2 vols (Paris: Maresq, 1844); Le
Diable ? Paris, 2 vols (Paris: J. Hetzel, 1845-46); and others.
46 '[. . .] safety [. . .] should be the primary object of the traveller. The curious, likewise, in their
anxiety to behold delightful prospects or interesting views, ought to be equally careful to prevent
the recurrence of accidents. The author, in consequence, has chosen for his readers a Camera
Obscura View of London, not only from its safety, but because it is so snug, and also possessing
the invaluable advantages of seeing and not being seen' (Pierce Egan, Life in London; or, The Day
and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq. and his Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom [. . .], 3rd issue
(London: Sherwood, Jones & Co., 1823), p. 18).
47 'Le voyez-vous mon fl?neur, [. . .] comme il s'avance librement au milieu de cette foule dont

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 MARTINA LAUSTER I55

further described as a phenomenon and actually

tion at an advanced, 'aged' ('vieillie') stage. Becaus
division of labour, the flaneur has a single occupati
see everything, like his ancestor, the serpent of Pa
towards knowing and exposing becomes 'useful' ('ut
cause the observer is himself part of the crowd cul
enjoying the privilege of diabolical insight, he shar
interested and by virtue of having his portrait, wr
stroller, published in a collective volume. 'Harmless
jamin remarks with regard to all the types analysed
beside the point. What matters centrally is the fact
privileges attached to it, not even those of 'great li
of the Livre des Cent-et-un, this heir of Satanic vis
general, an emeritus professor, a former merchant
off duty'."5 As he hardly ever leaves his own quart
tant and every regular' ('chaque habitant et chaque
and he is himself known to the staff in all the rest
mid- i84os the suggestion of personal acquaintanc
his environment will have gone. However, even the
the fkaneur as being in his element on the street is
making a threatening environment look familiar, bu
the penetration of surfaces.
To conclude, streets are definitely not turned into
servers of the i83os and I840s. Although the flaneu
who has abandoned his private space, this does n
experienced as 'familiar' instead. The dwindling o
more fruitful concept for an understanding of so
of observation during the period in question. The w
form social anatomy suggests a turning inside out,
private, internal spaces, rather than a turning outsid
of public, external space. In the same context one c
a perception of the urban environment as nature (s
the panorama to landscape and of theflaneur to a b
notations that are alien to the observers of Parisian

il est le centre [. . .]! Tout, autour de lui, ne para?t marcher, co

ses yeux, provoquer ses r?flexions, animer son existence de ce
languit. Rien n'?chappe ? son regard investigateur: une nouve
magasin somptueux, une lithographie qui se produit pour la pr
d'une construction qu'on croyait interminable, un visage inacc
texte d'observations' ('Le fl?neur ? Paris', p. 101).
48 See ibid., pp. 96-98.
49 'Nirgends durchbrachen diese Physiologien den beschr?nkte
den Typen gewidmet hatten, kam die Reihe an die Physiologie
nuit", "Paris ? table", "Paris dans l'eau", "Paris ? cheval", "Pari
auch diese Ader ersch?pft war, wagte man sich an die "Physiolo
die "Physiologie" der Tiere, die sich seit jeher als harmloser Vo
Harmlosigkeit kam es an' ('Das Paris des Second Empire bei Ba
50 '[. . .] un g?n?ral en retraite, un professeur ?m?rite, un an
disponibilit?' ('Le fl?neur ? Paris', p. 100).

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 I156 Benjamin's Myth of the 'Flineur'
urban environments in terms of natural history, but only inasmuch as 'life sci
ence' (anatomy, physiognomy, zoology, and physiology) is a paradigm for social
science. No Physiologie or related publication would at any point suggest that
a place shaped by human history is to be understood as natural space. This
kind of understanding, which does also exist in metropolitan sketches, has, as it
were, an axe to grind. It is a reactionary view formulated against the Western,
historical, and dynamic interpretation of the city, as becomes evident from a
Viennese panoramic collection, Wien und die Wiener.5' But even this collection
engages with the process of sign-reading in a democratized and everyday sort of
way. The light in which the sketch industry of the I83os and I840s needs to be
interpreted is that of the Enlightenment project making its way into quotidian
knowledge on a massive scale. This happens thanks to the very progress of
reproductive technologies (such as the use of stereotypes for reproducing texts
and images quickly and cheaply, and in high print-runs, on the steam-powered
press) that prepare the ground for the 'post-auratic' forms of art of photo
graphy and film. While Benjamin appreciates their revolutionary potential in
'Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit', he denies
such a capacity to the mass-produced illustrated sketch, not a 'Kunstwerk', but
a form that nevertheless points to its own reproducibility in such a way as to
imply a critique of modernity. Benjamin's keen interest in the figure of the col
lector, and his own activity as one of the kind, is clearly prefigured in the huge
collections of contemporary types and phenomena that the nineteenth-century
sketch industry provided. But, like the Jlineur, this type appears in sketches
as a significant common figure of the time, occupying an important place in
an environment characterized by 'Verdinglichung', and not as our latter-day
Benjaminian icon of modernity, a 'Schicksalsdeuter' and 'Allegoriker' of the
object world.52
UNIVERSITY OF EXETER MARTINA LAUSTER
51 Wien und die Wiener, in Bildern aus dem Leben, ed. by [Adalbert Stifte
and Carl Edmund Langer] (Pesth: Gustav Heckenast, 1844).
52 See the section 'Der Sammler' in Das Passagen-Werk, GS, v/i, 269-80
279-80.

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