La flâneuse imposibleel acto de callejear desde una lectura feminista

Abstract

In this article I defend the following thesis: the concept of the 19th century flânerie, as it was developed by Poe, Balzac, Baudelaire and its later reception in Walter Benjamin, has a patriarchal and phalogocentric point of view. In order to support this critic I analyse two features that were present in the masculine experience of the flânerie, but which are not to be found in the experience of the flâneuse: the invisibility that the flâneur enjoys and the erotic experience of the multitude. My analysis is based on the conceptual apparatus of critical authors such as Susan Sontag, Susan Buck-Morss and Judith Walkowitz. I am also going to make use of different examples of female flânerie, mainly the video of the association Hollaback that condemns street harassment, the sociological experiment “Vicky” from the NGO Mujeres en Zona de Conflicto and the transvestite walks of the 19th century writer George Sand