On the Notion of the Counter-Flâneur: A Response to Cecile Sandten

This essay responds to Cecile Sandten’s article “‘Vancouver Walking’: Con­temporary Canadian Urban Poetry” and critically examines the concept of the “counter-flâneur.” Sandten adopts it from Isabel Carrera-Suarez, defines it in opposition to a supposedly unified conceptualisation of the “modernist flâneur” and employs it as an analytical tool in the study of contemporary flânerie texts. The essay challenges this binary framework by arguing that there is no single, coherent idea of the modernist flâneur. Instead, it suggests that the history of the trope is marked by internal tensions and contradictions that have always allowed for practices resembling counter-flânerie. To substantiate this claim, the essay first delineates the heterogeneity present in classic literary descriptions and theoretical accounts of the flâneur. It then examines the relationship between privilege and precariousness in the history of flânerie, before concluding with a re-reading of Meredith Quartermain’s poem “Thanksgiving” that is grounded in the assumption of diverse traditions of flânerie.