ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the construction of the virtual flâneur through a comparative analysis of two examples of this phenomenon: an open-world video game partially set in eighteenth-century Havana that allows players to explore and roam the colonial city as they see fit (Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag) and a web-based application that invites users to explore the city of Bogotá in an interactive and two-dimensional way (Caminando Bogotá developed at Universidad Javeriana). This chapter traces a genealogy of flânerie from print to film to new media and explores how the digitally enabled experience of flânerie in the two examples mentioned above either rely on or alter previously established topoi stemming from the literary and cinematic representation of the Latin American flâneur and his crucial role as a chronicler of Latin American modernity.
