ARI Working Paper Series

This Working Paper explores Seno Gumira Ajidarma’s book, Kentut Kosmopolitan (2008). I argue that Seno’s essays present a particular way of reading Jakarta and draw on and reflect practices of flânerie. His essays are both of contemporary urban conditions as well as an articulation of various specific social, cultural and political trajectories. In these essays, Jakarta is a site of contested urban meaning and interactions. Seno, through postmodernist observations, explores the manner in which power relations are formalised, strengthened and challenged. I show how Seno’s essays in Kentut Kosmopolitan explore the dichotomies of ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ public space, global and local cultures and the borders of ‘public’ and ‘private’ space. Seno’s essays are significant for they develop notions of the flâneur and flânerie as well as questioning, interrogating and negotiating the idea of public space.