Thinking the Flâneur in Late-Modern Societies Francisco Martínez

Beautiful Transgressions: Thinking the Flâneur in Late-modern Societies Francisco Martínez Introduction The present text1 has the objective of accounting for recent reincar- nations of the flâneur. The exercise is, therefore, to track this figure in late-modern societies. Also to re-think the notion of transgression, changing in a world obsessed with changes, whereby limits appear increasingly loss and ‘think out of the box’ is stressed as a mean to innovation. Methodologically, I draw on multiple examples that help to reflect on contemporary transgressions as well as on classic authors that were inspired by the flâneur. Zygmunt Bauman (1994) enhances the rehearsing character of the original flâneur, its contingency of meaning, its playfulness, bringing about its own social order. And nonetheless, Bauman argues that the transforma- tion of this figure into a costumer is practically unavoidable: “at the end of the day, the dividing line has blurred. It is no more clear what (who) is the object of consumption, who (what) is the consumer” 1 Thanks to Marcos, Marika, Max, Patrick, Pille, Simon and Siobhan for their comments and encouragement while writing this text. 403 Hopeless Youth! Remediated Youth? (ibid.: 146). With certain drops of pessimism, Bauman claims that the contemporary flâneur has been reduced to a costumer in a mall or to a travelling player. He then concludes that today anyone with passionate eyes a heroic constitution would refuse being a flâneur (ibid.: 156). I will contest this opinion by giving contemporary examples of flâneur-like acts that engage with the public space in a play- ful, transversal and affective interaction. The presence of the flâneur appears traditionally as a slap in the face of public taste, strolling around under the influence of a wonderful and strange knowledge, as though having suffered a revelation. Flâneurs are capable to test borders and establish new connections and disruptions across the public sphere. They provide an opportunity for empathy with others and recreate the limits and structure of the social system. There are some differences between the original and the contemporary flâneur, however. Nowadays they have to demonstrate a constant mastering of self-exposure and a higher degree of ambivalence in order to avoid fixation, keep the options open and demand a more inclusive organisation. For Kramer and Short, today’s flânerie translates their wanderings into a combi- nation of art and social science (2011: 338–339), while in Joel Kahn’s opinion the flâneur conjoints the ethnographic and the modern. There is even who has described flânerie as a walk science, the disci- pline of strollogie (Burckhardt 2003). The flâneur walks at will, freely and seemingly without purpose, yet deploying an inquisitive wonder and having an extraordinary capacity to absorb the activities of the collective (Jenks 1995: 146). And so away he goes, hurrying, searching. But searching for what? (Baudelaire 1863) Provincialising the flâneur The manufactured biography of the flâneur has been a succession of new beginnings. Therefore, I propose to imagine this figure in different settings and even on different continents. This has been already 404 Francisco Martínez Beautiful Transgressions: Thinking the Flâneur in Late-modern Societies asserted by several scholars. For instance, Kramer and Short claim that the flâneur of tomorrow will emerge from “shock cities” (as in the XIX century), yet this time located in other continents such as Latin America, Asia or Africa. Also Adebayor Williams argues that to adapt to the 21st century, the flâneur has to continue to develop inter-subjectivity; hence “to relinquish self-absorption and take into account the ‘tales’ of fellow flâneurs” (1997: 821). The members of the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elégante (La SAPE – ‘Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People’)2 are a good example of all this. In one of the poorest regions of Africa (Congo Brazzaville and DR), affected by several wars and with almost half of the population below the poverty line3, there are people who decide to save money in order to buy a pair of crocodile shoes. These individuals are in stark contrast with their immediate surroundings, acting decidedly eccentrically and investing all their savings in silk socks, suits and fedoras. Nonetheless, their glamour is not reducible to dressing styles, deploying also refined manners, a unique rep- ertoire of gestures and an imperative of non-violence. Apart from being creative, the sapeurs exercise their undisciplined actions in a very disciplined form, respecting ten sacred commandments among which we can find pacifism and cosmopolitanism.4 In Provincialising Europe (2000), Dipesh Chakrabarty shows the limits of Western notions of modernity and history by exploring 2 Acronym referring to the French expression ‘bien sapé’ (dressed to the nines). 3 World Bank 2012. World Development Indicators: Rep. of Congo. http://data. worldbank.org/country/congo-republic. 4 When they go out, the sapeurs turn their humble environment into a catwalk, independently of their living conditions, age and profession. “For some [sapeurs] it is an obsession”, argues Héctor Mediavilla, a photographer who began documenting La Sape in 2003, explaining this practice as “a way of presenting their lives and being somebody in a society that doesn’t give you many opportunities... It’s about [being] conﬁ dent in oneself despite the circumstances”. See Evancie, Angela 2013. ‘The Surprising Sartorial Culture Of Congolese “Sapeurs”’. National Public Radio, 7 May. http://www.npr.org/ blogs/pictureshow/2013/05/07/181704510/the-surprising-sartorial-culture-of- congolese-sapeurs (21.03.2014). 405 Hopeless Youth! Remediated Youth? how European intellectual dominance was locally translated and negotiated.5 Chakrabarty’s (post)colonial critique should be brought also to the analyses of flânerie and transgression. The provincial- ised flâneur dismantles discourses of purity and is doted of mimicry capacity. This character is almost the same as the European, but not quite; almost the same as everybody else anywhere, but not quite (Bhabha 1994: 86). Following Homi Bhabha line of thought, we can imagine the flâneur as a crafty ‘subaltern’ that encounters ambig- uous characters loitering in colonial cities. In Bhabha’s view, both core and peripheral identities are hybrid – they are mutually con- ditioned although still distinct (ibid.). In short, non-Eurocentric flâneurs remain influenced by the European experience, but reshape back the notion of flâneur. They learn Western codes, but make them their own. From its very beginning, La Sape has practiced a re-appropriation and re-territorialisation of the master’s style, originally estab- lished by the colonial authorities and later by post-colonial tyrants.6 The first sapeurs appear in the 1920’s, being those people who went from the colony to Paris and came back wearing the clothes of the masters. Initiated as a dressing war, it soon gained a loosely political touch, turning later into an anti-colonial exercise. Paradoxically, this was exerted by young urbanites of Kinshasa and Brazzaville who were related to music scenes (particularly to the rumba night clubs).7 However, the economic crisis and political chaos of the late sixties (once these countries gained the independence) closed down most of the music venues where the sapeurs gathered. The new govern- 5 Chakrabarty points out how in “the academic discourse of history... ‘Europe’ remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories.... There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variations on a master narrative that could be called ‘the history of Europe’”, locating other histories in a position of subalternity (2000: 27). 6 In their civilising mission, French colonisers gave clothing instead of money to the naked Africans in compensation for their work. 7 As with the debates about the origin of yerba mate and Carlos Gardel between Argentina and Uruguay, the paternity of La Sape is subjected to dispute between both sides of the Congo River. 406 Francisco Martínez Beautiful Transgressions: Thinking the Flâneur in Late-modern Societies ments also prompted campaigns to eliminate La Sape from public spaces, imprisoning some of the members. All in all, the political charge of this group was never clear. For instance, La Sape has been seen as “a way to fight against the imposition of the abacost, a local version of the three-piece suit and a quasi-official uniform for men when Mobutu was in power” (De Souza 2011: 109). Nowadays, the La Sape is being presented in Brazzaville as a marker of Congolese identity. To a great extent, this revival has been supported by the government of Denis Sassou Nguesso, which has declared this practice ‘Cultural Heritage’ (invit- ing the sapeurs to official exhibits of fashion and crafts).8 The insti- tutionalisation of the La Sape has reached even the global media (ie. Guinness is using it to promote its beer). Les Sapeurs negotiated ‘normality’ through deviancy, self-exposure and refraction. None- theless, the transgressive charge implicit in this practice came to an end once La Sape was hijacked by the intellectual elite and presented as merely a leisure activity. The group originally combined both a liminal and a liminoid character, appearing as heroes to young listeners (Njoya 2009: 348) and seeking to fulfil their functions as men in the community through rituals that they themselves choose and created. As described by Vic- tor Turner, in pre-modern societies, rites of passage reinforces social order by reintegrating dialectically the ‘anti-structure’. However, in industrial societies, liminoid phenomena appear often as inverting the order and related to leisure activities, feature that makes these phenomena easily transformable into a commodity (Turner 1974). Through the re-appropriation, translation and integration of for- eign models into the local culture, La Sape entered into a phase of liminality and subtle put down the central values of the society, but this transgression lasted until the La Sape was re-integrated back into the system.

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