Modern Şehirde Flâneur, Fantazmagori ve Varoluş: Benjamin ve Sartre Üzerine Bir İnceleme

Öz

Modern şehir ethosu, 19. yüzyıl şair ve yazarı Charles Baudelaire'den bu yana sosyal ve edebi kuramlarda önemli bir tartışma konusu olagelmiştir. Baudelaire'in şehir imgeleri ve modernlik arasındaki ilişkiye duyduğu ilgi, siyaset, kültür, toplumsal cinsiyet, fenomenoloji ve ontoloji üzerine çalışan ardıllarının pek çoğuna esin kaynağı oluşturmuştur. Böylece çağdaş felsefe, modern şehri kesişimsellikler ile bezeli bir varoluş alanı olarak ele almıştır. Yirminci yüzyılın önde gelen iki düşünürü olan Walter Benjamin ve Jean-Paul Sartre da Baudelaire'in çalışmalarından modern şehir ethosuna ilişkin kuramlarını temellendirmek için faydalanmışlardır. Benjamin, modernlik deneyimini açıklamak için Baudelaire'in erken dönem modern kentlerdeki aylak, sıra dışı ve yalnız bireyleri simgeleyen flâneur kavramını kullanmıştır. Sartre ise varoluşçuluk düşüncesini ortaya koymak için romanlarında ve denemelerinde flâneur esintileri taşıyan şehir karakterlerine yer vermiştir. Her ikisi de modernite ile şehir ethosu arasındaki gerilimi, yabancılaşma, sömürü ve dışlama üreten bir muamma olarak görmüştür. Bu çalışmada Benjamin ve Sartre'ın modern kentlerdeki varoluş problemine ilişkin düşünceleri incelenmiştir. Önce modernitenin bir öznesi olarak flâneur kavramına bakılmış, daha sonra ise Benjamin ve Sartre’ın konuya temas eden eserleri sırasıyla incelenerek bu eserler arasındaki farklılıklar açıklanmıştır. Çalışma ile Benjamin'in modern şehir deneyimine sosyokültürel bir bağlam atfettiği, Sartre'ın ise probleme daha fenomenolojik bir perspektiften yaklaştığı sonucuna varılmıştır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Flâneur
• Fantazmagori
• Modern Şehir
• Walter Benjamin
• Jean-Paul Sartre

Flâneur, Phantasmagoria and Existence in Modern Cities: An Analysis of Benjamin and Sartre

Abstract

The modern city ethos has been a significant subject in social and literary theories since Charles Baudelaire, the 19th-century poet and author. Baudelaire's interest in the relationship between city imageries and modernity has inspired many of his successors that look at politics, culture, gender, phenomenology, and ontology. Thus, contemporary philosophy has approached the modern city as an intersectional sphere of existence. The two prominent 20th-century thinkers, Walter Benjamin and Jean-Paul Sartre endeavor to use Baudelaire's work as a theoretical structure to ground their understanding of the modern city ethos. Benjamin uses Baudelaire's concept of flâneur, which initially symbolizes the idle, extraordinary, and lonely individuals in early modern cities, to interpret the experience of modernity. Sartre includes city characters that resemble flâneur in his novels and essays to disclose his existentialist thought. Both see the tension between modernity and the city ethos as an enigma that produces alienation, exploitation, and exclusion. In this study, we analyze the thoughts of Benjamin and Sartre regarding the problem of existence in modern cities. First, we look at the concept of flâneur as a subject of modernity. Then we respectively explain the thinkers' works, thus emphasizing their differences. We argue that Benjamin ascribes a relatively sociocultural context to the modern city experience, while Sartre mainly looks at the problem from a phenomenological perspective.

Keywords

• Flâneur
• Phantasmagoria
• Modern City
• Walter Benjamin
• Jean-Paul Sartre

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