Reading the Text as Flanerie across Urban Landscapes (The Case of One Way Street and The Arcades Project)

Document Type : Original Research Article

Author

Faculty of Cinema and Theater, University of Art, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Walter Benjamin, a philosopher, and theorist associated with Frankfurt School, is known as one of the leading figures in studies about urban modernity. The point that “modern city” is the central theme of many of Benjamin’s works, has been investigated in several studies. However, what has been mostly neglected is the influence of visual/spatial qualities of the modern city on shaping Benjamin’s method for thinking, thereby writing, and forming the perceptive experience of readers while facing such texts. The present research, which is qualitative and fundamental research based on qualitative content analysis, correlates the origins of visual and spatial qualities in Benjamin’s writings with his interest in images and his studies on visual arts and the visual culture of the modern city. Concentrating on two chief works by Benjamin about city, One Way Street and The Arcades Project, the article tries to review the specifications of this method of writing. It is discussed that as Benjamin considers “flaneur” as the archetype of modernity who wanders across the urban landscapes, his writing method recalls a reader who seeks flanerie among textual landscapes. This research seeks to understand what perceptive qualities emerge for the audience-flaneur among the urban landscapes of Benjamin’s texts that distinguish this experience from the experiences of reading traditional forms of text? Thereafter, it is concluded that in opposition to traditional forms of reading based on the perception of an isolated, motionless, concentrated subject, the flanerie-like encounter with the text is a distracted reading which is shaped in an absent-mindedness condition. The subject of such a reading is a collective, corporeal, and moving subject. In this regard and while reading, the audience experiences the text through collective corporeality, similar to the mass experience of the modern metropolis.

Keywords

References

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MANZAR, the Scientific Journal of landscape
Volume 13, Issue 57
December 2021
Pages 52-63

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