has argued, is the proper state of the flaneur-becomes his poetic principle. The flaneur

prefers the surprise of aesthetic discovery over the conclusiveness of scientific inquiry.

 Like Epstein's moment of photogenie, fldnerie begins with an instance of visual

delight. Indeed, the flaneur's gaze anticipates the distracted mode of viewing practiced by

the rail traveler, the window shopper, and ultimately, the cinema spectator. Friedberg

deftly demonstrates the relationship among these viewers, arguing that "[t]he same

impulse that sent fldneurs through the arcades, traversing the pavement and wearing thin

their shoe leather, sent shoppers into the department stores, tourists to exhibitions,

spectators into the panorama, diorama, wax museum, and cinema" (94). But the flaneur

does more than become entranced by fascinating objects on his walks through the city.

Just as the collector turns a commodity into a souvenir, "detach[ing] the object from its

functional relations" (AP, "H [The Collector]" 207), the flaneur transforms his

wanderings into an avant-garde aesthetics. On a walking-tour of Paris, he also becomes

its intellectual historian. As Jonathan Mayne suggests in his analysis of the Baudelairian

flaneur, "The starting point is nearly always volupte-the shock of pleasure experienced

in front of a work of art; the poet-critic then proceeds to examine and analyze the

pourquoi-the why and the wherefore-until finally he is able to transform this initial

shock of pleasure into knowledge-the volupte into connaissance" (x). This new

knowledge is different from what is acquired through traditional modes of research. It is,

as Mayne argues, "charged and quickened by the pleasure which has logically preceded

it" (x).

 The next section attempts to make this transformation, of the initial moment of

visual pleasure into knowledge, with the stuff of cinema. That knowledge would belong