The Flâneur: An Aesthetic Urban Voyager or an Accomplice of Commodity Capitalism

In this paper, I will argue that Walter Benjamin's reading of Baudelaire serves as a powerful example of "cross-temporal reading."Benjamin was a sympathetic and careful reader of Baudelaire, and he found much in Baudelaire that he used in his own theorizing. Indeed, one can make the case that along with Marxism and Judaism, Baudelaire is one of the most important influences upon Benjamin. While, Benjamin's reading of Baudelaire has become highly influential in contemporary readings of Baudelaire, there are certain fundamentally different even contrary accentuations in the two writers. Not the least of these is their respective attitudes to "art for art's sake"and art as a political force. At the core of this difference are the very respective times and social-political circumstances to which the two are responding. For Benjamin fascism was the most malfeasant symptom of modern capitalism and the reality of fascism drives his diagnosis of modernity. In Benjamin's his hands, Baudelaire supplies material for the apocalyptic political struggle that Benjamin is caught up in. Benjamin's reading is both productive and distorted. And the question remains whether Baudelaire's own emphases can still speak to us. Looking at such examples as the ragpicker, "flâneur", and the prostitute, I will examine their respective "positions".