The Flâneuserie of "In Treatment"’s Laila Green
Waywardness, Willfulness, and the Blackqueer Art of Failure
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.5895Keywords:
flâneuserie, waywardness, willfulness, queer art of failure, Black geographies, Black ecologiesAbstract
The Parisian flâneur is a figure whose indulgent urban loitering is shaped by straight white male privilege. In contrast, this essay introduces the concept of the Blackqueer flâneuse, highlighting the radical imagination’s role in maneuvering through heavily surveilled and controlled spaces. By weaving together intersecting theories of waywardness (Hartman) and willfulness (Ahmed), it examines Black flâneuserie —both as an imaginative and tangible mode of mobility— that ingeniously subverts or sidesteps the violence of capture. Focusing on Laila Green, from the series In Treatment (2021), the essay unveils her outlaw imagination, her yearning for liberation, and her everyday practices of wandering as alternative expressions of flâneuserie. Employing the concept of queer failure (Halberstam), the analysis frames Laila’s persistent attempts at escape alongside her history of facing setbacks as a practice of flâneuserie. With the help of critical geography (de Certeau, Tuan, Cosgrove, Cosgrove and Dora) and Jungian theory, it conceptualizes Laila’s passion for high places and mountains and ultimately the realization of her passion as evidence of her individuation. Akin to the paradoxes of white male flânerie, Black flâneuserie in Laila’s case unfolds as a paradoxical journey of self-discovery, complicated by her privilege and the entanglements of her wanderings within the logic of racial capitalism.
Downloads
References
Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory. Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor. U of Minnesota P, 1997.
Ahmed, Sara. Willful Subjects. Duke UP, 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822376101
Bailey, Moya. Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance. NYU P, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479803392.001.0001
“Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook.” Landscape Performance Series, 2010. Landscape Architecture Foundation. https://doi.org/10.31353/cs1470 Accessed 1 Dec. 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31353/cs1470
Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life, Apple eBook. Translated by P. E. Charvet. Penguin, 2010.
Benjamin, Walter. 1985. “Central Park.” New German Critique, vol. 34, 32–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/488338. Accessed 2 Dec. 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/488338
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Harvard University Press, 2002.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn, Schocken Books, 1985, pp. 217-251.
Bey, Marquis. Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender. Duke UP, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023036
Brown, Adrienne Maree. Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, Kindle eBook. AK P, 2021.
Browne, Simone. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Duke UP, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822375302
Buck-Morss, Susan. “The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering.” New German Critique 39, 1986, pp. 99-140. https://doi.org/10.2307/488122 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/488122
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Kindle eBook. Grand Central Publishing, 2023.
Cosgrove, Denis. Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of The Earth in the Western Imagination. Johns Hopkins UP, 2001.
Cosgrove, Denis, and Veronica della Dora. High Places: Cultural Geographies of Mountains, Ice and Science. London and New York: L. B. Tauris, 2009. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755620357
Crawley, Ashon. The lonely letters. Duke UP, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478009306
De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. U of California P, 1984.
Diouf, Sylviane A. Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons. New York UP, 2014.
Dunn, Nick. Dark Matters: A Manifesto for the Nocturnal City, eBook, Zero Books, 2016.
Dunning, Stefanie K. Black to Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture, Kindle eBook. UP of Mississippi, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1kbgs12
Gumbs, Pauline Alexis. Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals. AK P, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3898/SOUN.78.01.2021
Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke UP, 2011. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn283
Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. Norton, 2020.
Hawthorne, Camilla. “Black Matters are Spatial Matters: Black Geographies for the Twenty-first Century.” Geography Compass, vol. 13, no. 11, 2019, pp 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12468 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12468
Herman, Alison. “HBO’s Pioneering ‘In Treatment’ Is Back for Another Therapy Session.” The Ringer, 21 May, 2021. https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/5/21/ 22446593/in-treatment-season-4-uzo-aduba-jennifer-schuur
Jung, Carl G. Man and his Symbols. Anchor P, [1964] 1988.
“Laila – Week 1.” In Treatment, created by Michelle MacLaren, season 4, episode 3, Closest to the Hole Productions / Leverage Management / Sheleg / HBO Entertainment, 24 May 2021. HBO Max, www.hbomax.com.
“Laila – Week 2.” In Treatment, created by Michelle MacLaren, season 4, episode 7, Closest to the Hole Productions / Leverage Management / Sheleg / HBO Entertainment, 31 May 2021. HBO Max, www.hbomax.com.
“Laila – Week 3.” In Treatment, created by Michelle MacLaren, season 4, episode 11, Closest to the Hole Productions / Leverage Management / Sheleg / HBO Entertainment, 7 Jun. 2021. HBO Max, www.hbomax.com.
“Laila – Week 4.” In Treatment, created by Michelle MacLaren, season 4, episode 15, Closest to the Hole Productions / Leverage Management / Sheleg / HBO Entertainment, 14 Jun. 2021. HBO Max, www.hbomax.com.
“Laila – Week 5.” In Treatment, created by Michelle MacLaren, season 4, episode 19, Closest to the Hole Productions / Leverage Management / Sheleg / HBO Entertainment, 21 Jun. 2021. HBO Max, www.hbomax.com.
“Laila – Week 6.” In Treatment, created by Michelle MacLaren, season 4, episode 23, Closest to the Hole Productions / Leverage Management / Sheleg / HBO Entertainment, 28 Jun. 2021. HBO Max, www.hbomax.com.
Leff, Carol. The Afropolitan Flâneur in Literature. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022.
Lorde, Audre. A Burst of Light and Other Essays. Ixia P, 2017.
Martínez, Francisco “Beautiful Transgressions: Thinking the Flâneur in Late-Modern Societies.” Hopeless Youth! Edited by Francisco Martínez and Pille Runnel, Estonian National Museum, 2015, pp. 405–34.
McHenry, Jackson. “The Making of In Treatment’s Luxe, Colorful Home Turned Office.” Vulture, 28 May, 2021. https://www.vulture.com/article/in-treatment-office-production-design-clothing-season-4.html
McKittrick, Katherine. “Commentary: Worn out.” Southeastern Geographer, vol. 57, no. 1, 2017, pp. 96–100. https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2017.0008 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2017.0008
McKittrick, Katherine. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
McKittrick, Katherine. 2013. “Plantation Futures.” Small Axe, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2378892 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2378892
McKittrick, Katherine, and Clyde A. Woods. “No One Knows the Mysteries at the Bottom of the Ocean.” Black Geographies and the Politics of Place, edited by Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods, South End P, 2007, pp. 1–13.
Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. Vintage International, 2004.
Moten, Fred, and Saidiya Hartman. “The Black Outdoors: Humanities Futures after Property and Possession.” YouTube, uploaded by the Duke Franklin Humanities Institute, 5 Oct. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_tUZ6dybrc
“Mount Rainier.” 2023. Encyclopedia Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. 23 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/place/Mount-Rainier. Accessed 14 October 2023.
Newman-Bremang, Kathleen. 2021. “In Treatment’s Uzo Aduba Finally Brings Depth to the “Black Lady Therapist” Onscreen.” Refinery 29, 20 May 2021. https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/05/10480534/uzo-aduba-interview-in-treatment-black-women-therapy-tropes
Poniewozik, James. 2021. “Review: ‘In Treatment’ Thinks You could use a Session, America.” The New York Times, 21 May, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/ 05/21/arts/television/in-treatment-review.html
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Routledge, 1994. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203202210
“spuyaləpabš: syəcəb ʔə tiił ʔiišədčəł” [Puyallup Tribe: The Story of Our People], 2023.
http://puyallup-tribe.com/ourtribe/ Accessed 21 Oct. 2023.
Quashie, Kevin. Black Aliveness, or Poetics of Being. Duke UP, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478021322
Quashie, Kevin. “The Matter of Black Sentences, or Here is the Hour.” Infrastructures of Racism and the Contours of Black Vitality and Resistance. 24 Mar. 2023, University of Torino, Torino. Keynote Address.
Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. University of North Carolina P, 2005.
Scheper, Jeanne. 2008. “The New Negro Flâneuse in Nella Larsen’s ‘Quicksand.’” African American Review, vol. 42, no. 3/4, pp. 679–95.
Serlin, David. 2006. “Disabling the Flâneur.” Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 193–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412906066905 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412906066905
Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham: Duke UP, 2016. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822373452
Shields, Rob. 2015. “Fancy Footwork: Walter Benjamin’s Notes on Flânerie.” The Flâneur, edited by Keith Tester, Routledge, pp. 61-80. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203420713_chapter_4
Shullenberger, Geoffrey. “That Obscure Object of Desire: Machu Picchu as Myth and Commodity.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia, vol. 17, no. 3, 2008, pp. 317–333, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569320802544237 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569320802544237
Sobande, Francesca, et al. “Strolling with a Question: Is It Possible to Be a Black Flâneur?” Independent Social Research Foundation, 21 May 2021, https://www.isrf.org/2021/05/21/strolling-with-a-question-is-it-possible-to-be-a-black-flaneur/
Stevens, Anthony. Jung: A Very Short Introduction, Apple eBook. Oxford UP, 2001.
Tester, Keith. “Introduction.” The Flâneur, edited by Keith Tester, Routledge, 2015, pp. 1–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203420713_chapter_1
Titizano, Cecilia. 2017. “Mama Pacha: Creator and Sustainer Spirit of God.” Horizontes Decoloniales / Decolonial Horizons vol. 3, pp. 127–59. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.13169/decohori.3.0127 Accessed 2 Dec. 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/decohori.3.0127
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Romantic Geography: In Search of the Sublime Landscape. U of Wisconsin P, 2013.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Columbia University P, 1990.
“What’s in a Name?” YouTube, uploaded by KCTS 9. 22 July 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD54UdIaxYg&t=7s
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Dorottya Mozes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors retain copyright of articles and authorize Journal of English Studies the first publication. They are free to share, redistribute, and/or reprint the article without obtaining permission from the publisher as long as they give appropriate credit to the editor and the journal.
Self-archiving is allowed too. In fact, it is recommendable to deposit a PDF version of the paper in academic and/or institutional repositories.
It is recommended to include the DOI number.
This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
