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.