O flâneura spojrzeniu w przeszłość albo o antyturyście (na marginesie cyklu Szary Paryż Bogdana Konopki)

• Authors: Szalewska Katarzyna
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The paper concerns the relationship between the flâneur (a category common in the contemporary anthropological discourse) and the past. The Baudelaire’s and Benjamin’s figure of flâneur is defined as opposite to the conception of tourist (in the meaning Zygmunt Bauman attaches to it), and flâneur’s gaze is compared to the one of photographer’s, while taking sophisticated pictures of the city (as the subject of the paper are the shots of Paris taken by Bogdan Konopka, gathered in the cycle Paris en gris). Flâneur can be seen as a kind of historian-amateur, who – doing his stroll – ‘reads’ the city’s pastwritten in the architectural monuments, in the maze of the streets and courtyards, and seeks the ‘passages’ into the past (in this special meaning ‘passage’ – the term commonly referring to the arcades – is a metaphor naming a process of meeting the past, as well as a unique place in the space of the city, that makes this meeting possible). But the past is never there. It is gone and the only way to make it present again is to read its traces as allegory (according to Paul de Man, allegory – unlike the symbol – refers to the emptiness left after its referent’s disappearance).

Keywords

PL

Bogdan Konopka; flaneur; turyzm; antyturysta; Szary Paryż

• Publisher: Wydział Filologiczny Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego
• Journal: Panoptikum
• Year: 2009
• Issue: 8(15)
• Pages: 45-60

Contributors

author

Szalewska Katarzyna