ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth century, Paris was the epicentre of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror but also of Enlightenment thought. In the late-nineteenth century, it wore its world-leading fashion in display windows and elegant gardens. Paris has epitomized medieval scholasticism, aristocratic neoclassicism, and absolute monarchism, revolutionary liberation and violence, bourgeois haute couture, early communist experiments, expatriate bohemian culture, occupied fascism, and post-war postmodern intellectualism—often through theatrical urban gestures or in literal theatres. The past century has internationalized the image-destination of Paris beyond Europe, while simultaneously drawing a large proletariat from North Africa and the Middle East that remains even more marginalized than the old French working class. Paris is uniquely oriented towards people-watching, from cafe tables to park benches. Every city reveals its invisible infrastructure at times, but there is something about the curated elegance of the inner arrondissements that makes Paris’s interruptions feel like a tear in a landscape painting.
