Flaneurs In New Generation Novels

Flaneur is a type of modern urban image originated in the19th century Paris and then spread around the world, centering on Personal and perceptual, they detest material civilization and the urban industry in capitalist society and chase a survival mode of art, and relates to city in an ambiguity way. Thanks to the attention coming from Baudelaire and Benjamin etc. the image became a special angle of view to investigate Modernity. Focused on different kinds of flaneurs in New Generation Novels, this article inspects the expression and the development of the flaneurs’perceptual from the appearing of Person to the recoded of it, and then takes a restricted glance on contemporary China’s modernity.The full paper is composed of six chapters and the main content of each is as follow.Introduction poses questions from the intensive wandering in New Generation Novels, and then combs the concept of Flaneur and draws a conclusion:Since the Consumption Age, the concept of Flaneur, with the Flanerie which "seeking for new feeling, space and style" as the core, form a triple concept circle revolving around "the classical flaneur". The innermost layer is the classical flaneur, which has irony attitude and strong personality, and shows romantic attitude. At the outermost layer is the urbanite hanging out on the street, which reflects the attraction and the oppression coming from consumer culture. And in the middle of the circle is the "men of letters" changing from the personal flaneur to the public flaneur thanks to the transform from Industrial city to Consumption city. They endure continuous conflict between poetic passion and tough of survive. On the basis of the combing, the paper then analyzes the relationship between city and flaneur:confronting city, discovering city, depending city and surrendering to city. After clearing up the theory premise, this text combs the flaneurs in Chinese contemporary literature in brief, and raises the main reason of focusing on the flaneurs in New Generation Novels. At the last of this chapter, the paper summarizes correlational research, and put forward the research thought and the frame of this paper.With Zhu Wen’s and Han Dong’s novels as the main objects, the first chapter mainly discusses a type of flaneur characterized by research, who concentrates on looking for new value. The value system and conception of history formed in the "short20th century" were turned around in1990s, which lead to the value collapse and a desire to find new value. This type of flaneur, with "go out" as the basic stance, drifted apart from political system and commercial system, and looked for the possible dimension of Metaphysical value. But the way of "going home" was blocked off, the traditional poetry attached to country and history also went bad under the enormous adsorptive power of city,"going back" turned out to be a type of imagine. The reconstruction of body led to the separation between love and sex when it liberated desire, the endless circulation between desire and nihil induced to a transcendental thought on sex, but this type of flanuer, with skepticism as the core of his thought, could not find a actual way to combine sex with idealism. Thus, they fall into boredom and enjoying boredom from the feel of nihility. Xiao Ding in Zhu Wen’s novels is a typical representative of this type figure.The second chapter mainly analyzes a type of flaneur named as "replacement" with Qiu Huadong’s and Zhu Wen’s novels as main objects. Replacing unified self with diverse self, and replacing ultimate value with appreciating the beauty in city, this type of flaneur suspended the thought to value, activated the visual sense to city, and formed a new and modern aesthetics standard. The main features of them are enough curiosity, anonymous aesthetic perspective and concerns on the edge. This type of flaneur was derived from the rapid expansion of urban society and their acceptation to the fragmented survival mode. They inspected city by strolling and tracing, through the former, they discovered momentary beauty, experienced shocking, intoxicated and loneliness, and through the latter, they experienced a type of euphoria derived from crossing a border, and then they constructed a type of "smell" through "collecting" to call a world "not only far away in time and space but also more beautiful". A type of flaneur in Qiu Huadong’s novels shows this aesthetic survival full of heroism.Start from novels of Diao Dou and post-80s writers, the third chapter discusses a type of flaneur characterized by "feeling". They put body feeling first and paid attention to action, It was the main marking to them that "chasing new feeling, space and style constantly". The main background to their appearing was that aesthetic form had moved from beauty sense to pleasure, the influence of global subculture and the requirement to self-identification were also important reasons. Decadence was the core of this type of flanuer. With the goal of happy, they practiced a "activism", and from body to action, they both sticked out "style" to chase self-expression. In view of the important significance of bar to them, this chapter divides their strolling space to two:inside bar and outside bar. They chased desire in bar and tried hard to personalize it through many unusual action, and pursued stimulation of beyond the mark, experienced the survival of oneself through risk and mischievous outside bar. Due to the advancement and be colonized of their action, their seeking, by means of body pleasure and reconstruct significance, became a resistance ceremony finally.The forth chapter analyzes a type of flaneur characterized by "selling" with "Beauty Writers" and their writing as the main objects. This chapter aims at "men of letters" and prostitute in commercial age, who were special focused by Benjamin, and inspects the domestication which commodity logic put on them. The spreading of consumer culture in contemporary China had led to consumption-oriented sex and sex-oriented consumption, and the middle class interesting had also become the mainstream culture in society with it, all these were the main reason to the commercialization of flaneur themselves. With characterized by sexualized, signifying, and kitsch, they sold desire, attracted attention, but differed from one another. The peddling of prostitute was based in the desire liberating of themselves, and this action meanwhile showed a striving to get through material desire and Eros. As an object of desire, they aimed at not only the satisfying of erotism, but also desire of crossing the border, seeking dreams and self-actualization. They provided a way to break a taboo and to release desire, but at the same time, they were instruments to discipline desire."Beauty Writers" was a typical case to the commoditizing of "men of letters", who peddled desire through materialization-oriented body and autobiography-oriented writing, and at the same time, they packed desire by craved grace. This "personification writing" just reflected consumer society’s discipline put on personality.Conclusion part analyzes why it is so weak when realizing personalization through both sides of subject and object. One side, because of the breakage to traditional and without thinking copy to western culture, the personalization flaneurs chasing in contemporary China was congenitally deficient. On the other hand, consumer society’s commercial mechanism had strong power. So, the personalization of flaneur became some gesture. But it showed a perceptual care after all that elite class in system intervened in where traditional capitalist unable to concern, such as creativity, imagination, freedom and possibility. It can be expected that personalization maybe become challenging power outside system again when true Chinese experience become the firm spiritual prerequisite of flaneur.