Lauren Elkin

Die Flâneuse - Virginia Woolf in London ist eine von ihnen, Jean Rhys in Paris, Holly Golightly und Patti Smith in New York. Sie alle erobern sich selbstbewusst Städte, Menschen und Gedanken. Sie sind neugierig, klug und unabhängig, reisen, wohin sie wollen und genießen die Freiheit der Großstadt. Die Autorin und Essayistin Lauren Elkin folgt den Spuren außergewöhnlicher flanierender Frauen, indem sie selbst durch das heutige Paris, New York, London, Venedig und Tokyo spaziert. Sie lässt sich treiben durch Städte, Literatur, Kunst und Geschichte und zeigt in ihrer Geschichte des weiblichen Flânierens wie berauschend es sein kann, sich eine Stadt zu erobern, was lange nur Männern vorbehalten war.

Frauen erobern die Stadt - in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venedig und London

Flâneuse

Cassandra Tang

That was the definition of freedom. Not just the time, and not just the transit: being able to do that in an environment that felt created for people, not machines, shaped and sustained by some kind of belief in having nice places for people to be, together, in public. 

I am always looking for ghosts on the boulevards. So many people have passed through Paris; did they leave any residue? 

We want to make choices, and have some agency in getting lost, getting found. We want to challenge the city, and decipher it, and flourish within its parameters. Anruf we should confront the Minotaur, we want to be able to get back out again.

I think people are made of the places not only where they've been raised, but that they've loved; I think environments inhabit us. By understanding people you understand places better, by understanding places you understand people better. 

I was just someone who happened to have moved countries. Displaced, dislocated, I wanted to be re-placed, re-located. 

Environments inhabit us. These places that we take into ourselves and make part of us, so that we are made of all the places we've loved, or of all the places where we've changes. We pick up bits and pieces from each of them, and hold them all in ourselves. 

Flâneuse quotes

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