Tumulte

Abstract

Up until the mid-nineteenth century, the term dandyism was used in a derogatory sense. But everything changed when that great French poet devoted one of his treatises to this figure. Charles Baudelaire’s Le Peintre de la vie moderne is a quintessential text for understanding modernity. This treatise is set up around a strong antagonism of harmony on the one hand and everything that threatens this harmony, such as noise, triviality, anarchy, tumulte, on the other. Following this textual logic, this chapter reconstructs the politics that lies hidden in this treatise. The dandy, as the one who combats triviality, turns out to be the main protagonist of this political imagination. And Baudelaire, too, uses the insect metaphor to describe this figure. Dandies, the poet claims, are prodigeux myrmidons. That is to say, dandies are ants turned into men, that try to build a future, harmonious community.