Yes, I am a sandwichman.

 

Yes, I am a sandwichman.  For the sandwichman, “[t]he double exposure of past and present is presented here as a riddle, in which knowledge of the past doesn’t historicize present truth, but crystallizes it” (Buck-Morss 1986:109).  And I am certainly an ethnographic flâneur—“The sandwichman is the last incarnation of the flâneur” (W. Benjamin V 565)—for the flâneur is understood as a native of his locality while maintaining his individuality, detached from the crowd.  A flâneur is thus a social observer of the public sphere in the cities and an allegorical figure who synthesizes his activities of reading and writing with the added meaning of his both belongingness and detachment of the crowd.