1Modern flâneurs, journalists, detectives, consumers, travelers, etc., appear in the 19^th century when sedentary culture became more nomadic. The Parisian boulevards and their different passageways were their regular haunts. During that period, flâneurs were mostly a limited group of people and flânerie was an activity performed in confined spaces. According to Benjamin, “Mussett referred to the boulevards unfrequented by [traditional Parisian] strollers as India.” [1]

2However, the India that symbolized places unfrequented by flâneurs does not seem to exist anymore today, as boulevards that once existed in certain sections of western metropolises are now spreading globally. Flâneurs who were once dandies and artists, have become conspicuous post-modern agents exemplifying the behavioral patterns of anonymous individuals in the fluid crowd of our times. Given such a changing cultural landscape, we highlight the (post)modern expansion and transnational transformation of flâneurs and flânerie in this special issue of “The Transnational Flâneur.”

3The ever-expanding influence of flânerie goes beyond the scales of geography. It is not too far-fetched that flânerie permeated various aspects of people’s everyday lives and thus reshape the way of life in the (post)modern era. As living conditions become more fluid, the regional flâneur as a “priest of genius loci” [2] has transformed into the trans-regional flâneur, and the flâneur in physical spaces to the cyber-space flâneur. The transformation and expansion of flâneurs and flânerie reflect revolutionary changes in the socio-technical environment, too.

4As such, flânerie still abides with us even though the flâneurs and arcades of the 19^th century have disappeared. Flânerie has taken on a larger meaning, initiated a new form of strolling and put to creative use the legacy of the traditional flâneur such as being antagonistic to the industrial system and being an unpredictable and unruly entity in society by undermining dominant ideologies and totalitarian perspectives.

5As de Certeau convincingly suggests, the walking rhetoric of flâneurs forms “the wandering of the semantic” [3] in (post)modern cities. It displaces the analytical, coherent, and proper meaning of urbanism. In this sense, we contend that flâneurs weave their own narratives of daily metropolitan life through their pedestrian movements, the narratives the geometry of urban facilities do not reveal. Accordingly, (post)modern flâneurs can be considered to be the primary agents of daily city politics and consumer culture. Furthermore, they play a critical role in examining the spatial composition of cities, and challenging gender norms, and regional hierarchies. In this special issue, we bring into sharp relief the multilayered and dynamic aspects of flâneurs and the stories they narrate by following their footsteps, diversified in the “echoing labyrinth” [4] of (post)modern cities.

6Theoretically, this issue launches into the interrogation of the cognitive and behavioral aspects that are exhibited in typical modern flâneurs, and continues to focus on the history of flâneurs’ transformation to a (post)modern mode of existence and their daily practice. In addition, we examine gender politics and consumer ideologies by observing female flâneurs and pinpoint the political eroticism of flâneurs that form the emotional bonds of the fluid mass who have replaced the defunct ideological public.

7Included in this issue is the discussion of how strolling and wandering are represented in media such as film – a flâneur-director who attempts to de-territorialize a cultural industry territorialized by capital. Several media representations portray such flâneur protagonists and adapt flâneur perspectives like optical views, thereby demonstrating how the flâneur motif has taken root deep inside contemporary media. We also trace the rapid globalization through the perspective of flâneurs and analyze the daily anxieties of metropolises that are being created, as local, national, and global boundaries become ever more entangled.

8When examining these subjects, each contributor to this issue intends to expose the tensions that exist between (post)modern flâneurs and the geopolitical, gendered, and mediated environments surrounding them, drawing more on particular regions such as Korea and Japan that traditional flâneurs did not usually frequent. When the notion of the flâneur is carried over to East Asia, it reveals the complex national, ethnic, and gender boundaries on which East Asian societies are still founded. And the experiences of regional and foreign flâneurs in this area draw little interest as the developmental narratives of modernization and urbanization still reverberate through East Asian cities.

9In order not to be dazzled by the lure of cities’ numerical statistics and physical data, we consider the sense-making and destroying potentials and activities of urban flâneurs, who impart dynamics to city spaces and create the daily political, social, and cultural undertones. We hope that our concerted efforts in this issue can uncover the daily dynamic of postmodern flâneurs in urban space and inspire more in-depth researches on the political and cultural activities of flâneurs.