Navigating the Masses: Black Cyberflaneurs Disrupting the Net in Stealth

How is Benjamin’s ”nineteenth-century flaneur” useful for Everett’s theorization of black “cyberflaneur subjectivity?

A simple google search of "Flaneur" yields results such as: a four word definition ("an idler or lounger"), a Paris Review article entitled, "In Praise of the Flâneur" and a series of questions spanning "What is a Flanuer man" to "What are characteristics of the flâneur?" Walter Benjamin, a philosopher, cultural critic and essayist of German-Jewish origins, meditates on this concept of the flaneur in his unfinished text, Arcades Project. Everett in her chapter, "The Revolution Will Be Digitized" quotes Benjamin's thinking of the Flaneur's construction/purpose. "The Social Base of flanerie is Journalism" she lifts this quote to set a basis for understanding the potential for/practice of knowledge sharing, community building and overall dissemination of "counterhegemonic agendas" of Afrogreeks worldwide (Everett, 167). Furthermore, Everett lifts a passage from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, to convey how hyper-Black invisibility, although overtly oppressive and dehumanizing, reveals to the Black subject(s) made invisible "strategic advantages in being unseen.

Everett cites three examples of Cyberflaneur's in action, they are: Sam Greenlee's novel/film, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Nigerian scientist Philip Emeagwali (who CNN named a father of the internet), and pioneering Afrogeek and Chief Inspiration Officer of Black Geeks Online, Anita Brown. In their own manner, Greenlee, Emeagwali and Brown used the anonymity of the Black masses (and the lie of Black inferiority) and enacted "stealth practices of community-oriented Black Cyberflanerie in transforming, respectively, a "token Black" CIA social worker turned Chicago revolutionary, a highly trained scientist stealthily working as an unpaid intern to gain access to high-functioning computers, and a desktop graphic designer of non-traditional technology training turned online community organizer bringing together over 30,000 register users on her site by 2001 (before Facebook y'all).  

The Black Cyberflaneur becomes an agent that simultaneously works for the Black masses as it is protected by the mass itself. The flâneur, as conceived in art and literature, contrasts with the image of the Badaud, gawker or bystander. The baduad is believed to be gullible, provoked by the spectacle, essentially drawn by everything around. While the Flâneur is posited as the ideal stroller: free, detached from society yet its keen observer. The lie of Black of inferiority creates misconceptions about the Digital Divide though it also creates the conditions for Black Cyberflaneurs that can do radical, revolutionary work unbeknownst to the power structures above which view the non-white/male/heteronormative masses as Badaud.  

-Jorrell