Not Your Grandparents' Flâneur: The Afropolitan Detective in the Urban Crime Novels of Quartey and Crompton

In The Arcades Project (1927-40), Walter Benjamin gave special, albeit scattered, attention to the flâneur, sketching a literary evolution from bohemian idler of urban myth, to observer driven by dogged curiosity (Poe), to consummate tracker and reader of signs (Cooper). Extending the topographies t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAfrica today Vol. 65; no. 4; pp. 61 - 82
Main Author Fox, Patricia D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Bloomington Indiana University Press 22.06.2019
Subjects
Benjamin, Walter
Cities
Conferences and conventions
Conventions
Crime
Crime fiction
Crime novels
Crime scenes
Curiosity
Darko, Amma
Detective fiction
Genre
God
Grandparents
Modernity
Mysteries
Narratives
Novels
Urban crime
Urban folklore
New York
United Kingdom
Ghana
France
Kenya
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Summary:In The Arcades Project (1927-40), Walter Benjamin gave special, albeit scattered, attention to the flâneur, sketching a literary evolution from bohemian idler of urban myth, to observer driven by dogged curiosity (Poe), to consummate tracker and reader of signs (Cooper). Extending the topographies traversed by the flâneur-as-detective, this essay explores Afropolitan reincarnations in The Hour of the Red God (Crompton 2014) and Children of the Street (Quartey 2011), set in African megalopolises, scenes of conflicting aspirations and shifting temporalities and subjectivities. Informed by theoretical insights forwarded by Nuttall and Deleuze and Gautarri, this approach encourages more nuanced critical discussions of the genre conventions and narrative strategies at play in the growing number of African urban crime novels (Darko, Braithwaite, Ngùgì) and other metropolitan-centered texts.
ISSN:0001-9887
1527-1978
DOI:10.2979/africatoday.65.4.05