Embodying parkour’s visual subculture: ethos, style and the emergence of a visual habitus

Abstract

This article describes parkour's visual subculture as a form of subcultural capital that has developed with the rise of this alternative sport. It examines the recent history of its visual media as well as a visual habitus to understand the ways in which a collective gaze is produced and performed. Furthermore, the text locates the parkour practitioner – the traceur – as a key actor of an aesthetic system, a relatively autonomous figure that embodies an underlying visual symbolic structure and mobilizes a scopic system through different interactions with social media. By analysing three key elements through which traceurs have developed a visual tradition and a corresponding ethos, this article seeks to explain how parkour has been adapting to changing technical and sociocultural conditions, showing thus the complexities and nuances of a sophisticated visual world.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [Grant Number Stile des Lebens 2.0 – Zur Genese und Struktur q].

Notes on contributors

Javier Toscano

Javier Toscano is an interdisciplinary researcher in the fields of cognitive anthropology, migration studies, political philosophy and philosophy of technology. In his work he embraces notions of care as he collaborates with minorities, communities and groups with disabilities towards the production of alternative narratives of self-affirmation and existential exploration. He has been a post-doc researcher in media politics in Paris (Université Paris IV: Sorbonne), Berlin (Freie Universität) and Chemnitz (Technische Universität).