From Flâneur to Web Surfer: Videoblogging, Photo Sharing and Walter Benjamin @ the Web 2.0

Abstract

In the “Mirror file” of The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin describes a popular fascination with looking glasses, lenses and image stimulation. He talks about an ocular passion marking the late nineteenth century when mirrors were incorporated into strangely named machineries of image production: kaleidoscopes, phantasma-parastasia, phanoramas, stereograms, cycloramas, kigoramas, myrioramas etc. This paper explores and illustrates how Benjamin’s analysis of the nineteenth century culture of consumption might contribute to an understanding of the new communal formations and self-reflexive subjectivities of the Internet in the twenty first century. Theoretically, this is done with a specific focus on the concept of the flâneur as discussed in The Arcades Project, and on some lines of reasoning that are central to his essay on “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” The empirical emphasis is on two examples of so called Web 2.0 technologies: The photo sharing service of flickr and the videoblogging functionality of YouTube. The paper firstly addresses how the notion of the flâneur needs to be updated and modified to work in an analysis of Web 2.0 technologies. Secondly, it brings the contemporary examples of online photo sharing and videoblogging into the discussion. Thirdly, it revisits some key passages of Benjamin’s writing and tries to apply them to these examples before returning to the overarching question concerning the continued usefulness of Benjamin’s theory.