agora provides a gathering-as-communion, in which interactivity is
always modelled on face-to-face exchange.The sense of community made possible by flânerie
The practice of flânerie– a form of pedestrianism which sought the sensa-
tion of crowds for its own sake – is, as it has appeared at different times
in the development of cities, I argue, indispensable for understanding
virtual Internet communities, which can be viewed as a continuation of
flânerieby other means.
We have seen already the difference between Gemeinschaftand
Gesellschaftinherited from classical sociology. As narrated by Tönnies, this
difference is borne out by the contrast between city and village. The village
is itself an agorareplete throughout its entire aspect, whereas in the city
certain places are set aside especially for the conduct of interaction. As is
prevalent in much of the literature, the virtual community takes the village,
or the ‘global village’, as its analogue, with a selective interpretation of
McLuhan providing a ready-made justification. In the next two sections,
I am going to argue that cyberspace does not signal the return of the com-
munitarian agora, but is in fact a continuation of the cosmopolitan agora.
Such an agorais not distinctly European but can be found in all cultures
which undergo rapid urbanization. It has more to do with the culture of
cities than with culture ethnically defined; indeed, this is what makes the
flâneursuch a precursor of a global form of cosmopolitan identity.
But to understand this, we must understand the changing practices
of flâneriewhich emerged in European modernity. Up until the mid-
nineteenth century in Europe and Russia the public promenades of the
great cities drew massive crowds, where individuals began a practice that
is scarcely visible today, but which has been heralded as a defining prac-
tice of modernity – that of the pedestrian who seeks out the crowd. Two
principal savantsof flânerie are Charles Baudelaire (1972) and Walter
Benjamin (1977), who describe how, at the height of the period of flânerie,
flâneurs revelled in their anonymity. Published in 1863, Baudelaire’s
benchmark essay ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ declares of the flâneur: ‘The
crowd is his domain, just as the air is the bird’s, and water that of the fish.
His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd’ (Baudelaire,
1972: 399). In the rapidly populating cities, in the tumult of the revolu-
tionary world, the individual becomes at once an outsider and singular,
but, as Featherstone (1998) notes, there is a recognizable social type: ‘the
flaneur moved through the crowds with a high sense of invisibility – he
was in effect masked and enjoyed the masquerade of being incognito’
(913).^14 The kind of space which the cosmopolitan agoraoffered to the
flâneurwas not one which redeemed Gemeinschaftin the midst of the mul-
titudes. Nor did it produce anomie either (Tester, 1996: 7). Rather, for the
bourgeois stroller, it was a place of intense fervour and passion.^15Telecommunity 197Holmes-06.qxd 2/15/2005 1:03 PM Page 197