Parisian Drifters: Flânerie and Dérive

Blair, Gregory

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-95747-0_3

Gregory Blair²

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1 Citations

Abstract

This chapter investigates and frames the urban walking of several Parisian drifters, including Charles Baudelaire, Guy Debord, and Michèle Bernstein, as errant bodies. By reviewing the methods of their walking activities (flânerie and dérive), as well as their political motivations, each one is demonstrated to be an errant body that utilizes movement through the city to actively resist and critique popular culture. A further claim is made that Bernstein’s proposal of dérive is perhaps the most radical because of its thorough infusion into the everyday as an ontology of getting out-of-place.

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Notes

1.
Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Paris as Revolution: Writing the Nineteenth-Century City (University of California Press, 1997). 81.
2.
“Flâneur – A Person Who Walks the City in Order to Experience It,” Lightgraphite, December 7, 2011, accessed April 19, 2017, https://lightgraphite.wordpress.com/art-and-design-in-context/flaneur-a-person-who-walks-the-city-in-order-to-experience-it/.
3.
Paul Gavarni, Le Flâneur, 1842 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, accessed June 26, 2018, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rosler-LeFlaneur.jpg.
4.
Charles Baudelaire and Jonathan Mayne, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (London: Phaidon Press, 1995). 9.
5.
Julian Brigstocke, “The Life of the City: Space, Humour and the Experience of Truth in Fin de Siecle Montmartre,” Studies in Historical Geography (Farnham, Surrey, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014). 66.
6.
Charles Baudelaire and Jonathan Mayne, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (London: Phaidon Press, 1995). 12.
7.
Ibid. ix.
8.
Francis Scarfe in Baudelaire, Charles, Baudelaire, trans. Francis Scarfe, French and English ed. (Penguin Books, 1967). xxiii.
9.
Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil (San Jose: Writers Club Press, 2000).
10.
Walter Benjamin and Michael William Jennings, The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 4.
11.
Ibid. 3.
12.
Julian Brigstocke, “The Life of the City: Space, Humour and the Experience of Truth in Fin de Siecle Montmartre,” Studies in Historical Geography (Farnham, Surrey, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014). 66.
13.
Walter Benjamin and Michael William Jennings, The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 14.
14.
Ibid. 48.
15.
Ibid. 145.
16.
Bobby Seal, “Baudelaire, Benjamin and the Birth of the Flâneur,” Psychogeographic Review, November 2013, accessed May 4, 2016, http://psychogeographicreview.com/baudelaire-benjamin-and-the-birth-of-the-flaneur/.
17.
Walter Benjamin and Michael William Jennings, The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 165.
18.
Ibid. 2.
19.
Francis Scarfe in Baudelaire, Charles, Baudelaire, trans. Francis Scarfe, French and English ed. (Penguin Books, 1967). xxx.
20.
Although Debord never explicitly identifies Baudelaire as the inspiration for dérive, he certainly would have been aware of Baudelaire and the concept of the flâneur as evidenced by his naming of Baudelaire in his 1957 essay “One More Try If You Want to be Situationists (the SI In and Against Decomposition).”
21.
Several examples are found in the anthology by Aruna D’Souza and Tom McDonough, eds., The Invisible Flâneuse?: Gender, Public Space and Visual Culture in Nineteenth Century Paris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008).
22.
Janet Wolff in Aruna D’Souza and Tom McDonough, eds., The Invisible Flâneuse?: Gender, Public Space and Visual Culture in Nineteenth Century Paris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). 19.
23.
McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (Verso Books, 2011). 24–25.
24.
Ibid. 25.
25.
Guy Debord, “Theory of the Dérive,” Situationist International Online, accessed May 21, 2017, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). 336.
28.
Ibid. 361.
29.
Henri Lefebvre interviewed by Kristin Ross in Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents, Tom McDonough, Ed. (MIT Press, 2004). 272.
30.
Thomas F. McDonough, “Situationist Space,” October 67 (1994). 60.
31.
Ibid. 64.
32.
McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (Verso Books, 2011). 61.
33.
Kelly Baum “The Sex of the Situationist International,” October, Vol. 126 (Fall, 2008), 23–24.
34.
Ibid. 23.
35.
Ibid. 25.
36.
Ibid. 25.
37.
McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (Verso Books, 2011). 3.
38.
Jacqueline de Jong in McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (Verso Books, 2011). 23.
39.
Michèle Bernstein, “Dérive by the Mile,” Potlacht: Bulletin of the Letterist International, accessed March 17, 2017, http://www.notbored.org/derive-by-the-mile.html.
40.
Michèle Bernstein, “Note-on-SI,” accessed May 16, 2017, http://www.notbored.org/Note-on-SI.pdf.
41.
Alan Reed, “Alan Reed on Michèle Bernstein & Everyone Agrees: La Nuit + After the Night,” Lemonhound.com, November 22, 2013, accessed May 15, 2016, https://lemonhoundcom.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/alan-reed-on-michele-bernstein-everyone-agrees-la-nuit-after-the-night/.
42.
McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (Verso Books, 2011). 79.
43.
Michèle Bernstein, The Night (Paris, France: Buchet/Chastel, 1961). 18.
44.
Bill Brown, “At Dawn: the Novels of Michèle Bernstein in Historical Perspective,” accessed May 21, 2017, http://www.notbored.org/michele-bernstein.pdf.
45.
Joshua Clover, “Partisans of Oblivion: A Situationist Novel,” The Nation, January 5, 2009, accessed March 18, 2017, https://www.thenation.com/article/partisans-oblivion-situationist-novel/.
46.
Bill Brown, “At Dawn: the Novels of Michèle Bernstein in Historical Perspective,” accessed May 21, 2017, http://www.notbored.org/michele-bernstein.pdf.
47.
McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (Verso Books, 2011). 79.
48.
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). 336.

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Northern State University, Aberdeen, SD, USA
Gregory Blair

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Blair, G. (2019). Parisian Drifters: Flânerie and Dérive. In: Errant Bodies, Mobility, and Political Resistance. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95747-0_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95747-0_3
Published: 04 September 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95746-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95747-0
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