hrvatski

Šetnja kroz panoptikum - Jessica Jones i sumrak flanerizma

The article critically examines the nineteenth-century literary trope of flâneur/flâneuse as found in Jessica Jones, a television series based on the Marvel Comics superheroine of the same name. Though the city stroller of the modernist period was conceptualized as exclusively male, this article investigates the concept of female flâneur, i.e. flâneuse, in order to ascertain the possibility of her presence in the streets of a contemporary metropolis. Like her male counterparts, Jessica Jones is at times represented as indifferent and passive stroller but she can also be seen playing a more active role of a private investigator and a superheroine fighting crime in the city. As a flâneuse, this superheroine embodies the characteristics of both Baudelaire’s and Benjamin’s traditional flâneur while at the same time offering a female experience of street-walking and portraying a model of femininity noticeably different from stereotypical representations. By further analyzing the protagonist’s interaction with the city, the study proposes a (re)evaluation of the very concept of flâneur/flâneuse within the functioning framework of a modern metropolis. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s understanding of space/power relationship, more precisely on theoretical concepts of dispositive and apparatus as well as the panopticon structure, this essay examines a new model of interactivity arising in the contemporary urban environment. Following the reading of cities and urban environments as instruments by which it is possible to articulate and impose discipline and/or control, the presence of the flâneurs/flâneuses on the city streets is questioned, thus also the possibility of their existence. Conditioned by power structures, their movements and knowledge are now limited and deprived of freedom. Conclusively, what is left is just walking as the only possibility of experiencing the city, transforming the strollers into “walkers” (Wandersmänner) “whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it” (de Certeau 93).

flaneur ; flaneuse ; panoptikum ; Foucault ; Jessica Jones ; dispozitiv ; aparatus

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