The Prostitute and the Dandy; or, The Romantic Complications of Capitalism as Viewed from New Orleans

Abstract

Walter Benjamin used the archetypes of the Prostitute, the Dandy, and the Gambler to understand the human-commodity relation. Here I push Benjamin’s allegories by examining the actual lived lives of prostitutes, dandies, and gamblers in New Orleans, circa 1820–1920. There have always been actors who played the game with more of a double consciousness than a false consciousness. And they were able to do so because they grasped the romantic and irrational potential of transactions that articulated with sexual desire, emotional comfort, and aspirational fantasies. They were also masters of disguise and commodity props. Fancy prostitutes and dandies performed a kind of drag of consumer respectability, while the professional gambler threatened to reveal the act of faith that all money transactions depend upon. Viewed from the consumption end of the market spectrum, the commodity becomes a fetish through the considerable agency of the seller-seducer.