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Flânoir
The noun, flâneur, of French origin, is described in the Oxford English Dictionary as: “A lounger or saunterer; an idle ‘man about town’”. Within the urban sphere, he is a wanderer of the city streets and seer of urban affairs; he is a man of the commons and a 19th-century archetype of metropolitan modernity.
Flâneurie (the act of flâneur-ing) is often associated with high regard or with nostalgic reverence. A recent New York Times Article, “The Art of Being a Flâneur,” describes the life of a flaneur with romanticism, using adjectives like ‘dream’, ‘sensuous’, ‘drift’, and ‘wonder’. Images of the archetype grace academia in the writings of Walter Benjamin and Edgar Allan Poe, and in paintings of Edouard Manet. The flâneur sits in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., at the epicenter of American affairs, but the entire persona of the flâneur is authentically un-American.
A Flâneur knows leisure well. He knows nothing of loiter laws, and although he has no legal means of purposeful public presence, he is welcome to the sights and sounds of the city. No one knows how he makes his money, but that is of no significance to this flâneur, for that is his business and his alone. He is always stylish, in contemporary fashion, sporting a wool coat and top hat – never a puffer or snapback. He is unfamiliar with padlocked public restrooms, and although a connoisseur of the inner-city, he takes no regard for the phrase, “Smile, you’re on camera”. Frisk, to him, is a term to describe playful frolicking. It does not involve stopping except to watch warmly, and it never involves his body. Most notably of all, this flâneur only comes in white.
Is there a Black flâneur… or let alone any flâneur that isn’t white? Where is his city? Where does he saunter? How is he revered?
Dialectically, a black flaneur manifests as a loiterer. Similar to the definition of flâneur, the Oxford English Dictionary uses the definition as one who idles, “To linger indolently on the way when sent on an errand of when making a journey; to linger idly about a place; to waste time when engaged in some particular task.” What is the real difference between the use of words, and why does one exist in the nostalgic realm of the romantic white metropolis, while the other is an urban criminal delinquent at task? The goal of this letter is to conjure the idea of a Black flâneur because he is not real. He doesn’t exist.
He occupies the imaginary where his character is not belittled to a common criminal, bum, or deadbeat. He exists where his occupation of the street corner didn’t result in the opening of a bank. Jeremy Young of JP Morgan Chase bank shared with the Tampa Bay Times in 2013, “Our goal is to have the most convenient, most visual banks. We pick the best corners. We don't sacrifice location." What is the need for the eyes of a flâneur when the state has access to 24/7 surveillance? “A survey of 342 Black entrepreneurs released in May 2022 found that anti-Black systemic racism, particularly at banks, creates widespread barriers, revealing that only 19% of Black entrepreneurs trust banks to do what is right for them and their community.
In 2018, The New York Times reported Starbucks’ public apology for the arrest of two Black men in Philadelphia who sat in a Starbucks waiting for the arrival of another member of their party. They were deemed trespassers for occupying the space without having purchased a coffee. In the Fall of 2023, A Walgreens in San Francisco decorated their storefront with planters to occupy space in an effort to deter loiterers, while in the UK, blasting opera music outside of the 7-Eleven has been a tactic used to prevent loitering groups. And in October of the same year, the Albany Common Council in New York passed a loitering ordinance to reinforce existing loitering laws, which rely on public police reporting of loiterers in order to clear the streets.
The error of our society and its relationship to the flâneur lies in the fact that his character originates in Baudelaire’s book A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. If there is anything to be understood about capitalism, it is that because the system is profit-based, the attributed value to a thing, being object or laborer, inheres that the person or thing maintains a commoditized value within the system. Once value is removed from a person or thing, the person or thing is apt for discard. In colonialism, the flâneur is white and was only meant to be white because the black body, and every other non-white body, maintains a numerical value. When free, extractable value is null and void. Hence, a white idler is a flâneur, and a black idler is a loiterer.
So, I ask again, is there a Black flâneur… or let alone any flâneur that isn’t white? Where is his city? Where does he saunter? How is he revered?
I don’t know any Black flaneur outside of my mind, but I can create one:
Flânoire is a man I met many years ago in the streets of Bologna. He was friendly and kind. He was also one of the few black bodies outside of my own to be observed in space. He was not selling “fazzoletti” to those in the cold to make a living, because his only purpose on the street was to enjoy the surroundings of this new nation that he found himself in. He wore a long brown coat and had a striped scarf. He walked near and far all day long, just in awe of this medieval place. I found him again in a coffee shop outside of his rounds. He smiled warmly and asked me about my studies. He never sat because he did not need to sit; he, of course, was a flânoire – there was no need to sit. He smiled warmly and left. I never saw him again, but I think of him often when I think of that place.
The sadness of the flânoire to me is that even in my mind, they exist with the requirement of a negation of truth. A truth that is a direct influence of systemic oppression against that which is black. The flaneur is an archetype of leisure, the flânoire is an archetype of oppression, but both are emblematic of the metropolis. Both are essential members of the public, and both have mastered what time and time again has been regarded as an art of wandering. Why then is there only reverence for one?
Now I ask, who is the flânoire? What is his story? Where does he saunter? How is he revered?
Written by Keren Dillard