Re-Imagining The Flâneur: Chris Abani's Graceland and The Psychogeographical Experience

Abstract

Psychogeography, an experimental approach proposed by the avant-garde movements in the mid-twentieth century, emerged as a critical tool for interrogating and understanding modern urbanism. Fundamental to this discourse is the figure of flâneur, the classical male wanderer, whose sensory and ambiguous interactions with the urban landscape help to investigate the emotional impact of geographical environments on human physiology. The psychogeographical flâneur, inheriting this observational capability, seeks to modify the lived experience of urban spaces, possibly. Chris Abani's Graceland, published in 2004, is an African Bildungsroman set in postcolonial Nigeria between 1972 and 1983, amidst civil war atrocities, a military regime, and globalisation. Through the protagonist Elvis Oke, the novel subverts the classical flâneur figure, relocating him within a postcolonial African milieu. Elvis’s wanderings and interactions with the Nigerian landscapes are not purely aesthetic recollections, but rather a technique of exposing the city’s persistent socio-economic inequalities, cultural dislocations, and systemic violence. This research paper examines how the psychogeographical flâneur is re-imagined to trace the grim realities of postcolonial Nigeria using Chris Abani's Graceland.