Lauren Elkin | Flâneuse

“Virginia Woolf’s 1927 essay ‘Street Haunting’ is an attempt to claim an ungendered place in the city by walking through it. Out in the street, we become observing entities, ‘part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers’. Whether or not we want to be androgynous eyes taking in the city, or bodies inviting desire, or any of the myriad ways of being in between, Woolf is telling us that we can integrate ourselves into the world of the city by becoming attentive to the shifts in the affective landscape. It is only in becoming aware of the invisible boundaries of the city that we can challenge them. A female flânerie – a flâneuserie – not only changes the way we move through space, but intervenes in the organization of space itself. We claim our right to disturb the peace, to observe (or not observe), to occupy (or not occupy) and to organise (or disorganise) space in our own terms.” Lauren Elkin