Another sign on the wall: Graffiti slogans between dissent and post-political dynamics

Abstract

This paper contributes to the debate on the ‘post-political city’ in urban studies. This debate has highlighted that the ‘post-political’ seems now an inherent condition of contemporary cities. However, empirical analysis reflects a more complex reality where dissent in urban space can challenge the idea of a ‘post-political city’ by default. Among the expressions of dissent within urban space, ‘graffiti slogans’ offer interesting insights if contextualised within the post-political theory. To support my thesis, I analyse the case study of Porta Palazzo in Turin (Italy), an urban area undergoing deep urban and social transformations. Drawing on Rancière, on the walls of Porta Palazzo, ‘politics’ and ‘police order’ are constantly intertwined through graffiti slogans created, modified and erased.

Keywords

Graffiti dissent post-political city urban transformation Turin

Introduction

In recent years, a burgeoning stream of literature in urban studies has intensely debated the concept of post-politics in cities (see, among others: Da Schio and Van Heur, 2022; Di Feliciantonio and O’Callaghan, 2020; Dikeç, 2005; Fearn, 2022; Featherstone, 2019; Gualini, 2015; Legacy et al., 2018; MacLeod, 2011; Novák, 2021; Oosterlynck and Swyngedouw, 2010; Paddison, 2009; Swyngedouw, 2009, 2011; Wilson and Swyngedouw, 2014). Drawing on political philosophy and post-foundational theory (e.g. Crouch, 2004; Mouffe, 1993; Rancière, 1999, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2010; Žižek, 1999), many urban scholars are questioning how cities are increasingly characterised by post-political ‘condition’.

Works on post-politicisation are of fundamental importance to stimulate critical thinking and advance knowledge about contemporary societies (Featherstone, 2019). However, some recent contributions have also highlighted the potential limitations of this concept when linked to the urban and have discussed some of the possible traps of the ‘post political city’ (see, for instance, Beveridge and Koch, 2017a, 2017b, 2019; Davidson and Iveson 2015; McCarthy, 2013; Millington, 2016; Richter and Fitzpatrick, 2018; Ruming, 2018). In particular, one problem imputed to post-political city theory is that it has become ‘something of a label for the lack of politics in and about the city’ (Beveridge and Koch, 2019: 190; see also Beveridge and Koch, 2017a, 2017b). The discussion on the post-political city constitutes therefore a very thought-provoking and fertile ground for further reflections on this topic.

In particular, I find it helpful to reflect more closely on the urban in relation to policy and politics. To do so, I take up the suggestion of some authors (among others Beveridge and Koch, 2019; Blakey et al., 2022; Da Schio and Van Heur, 2022) to engage more with the empirical world in discussing the post-political. Moreover, I argue that in considering the post-political thesis, it is crucial to distinguish between urban governance and its dynamics and the social dynamics grounded in concrete urban spaces. In order to re-discuss the concept of the post-political city, it seems to me necessary to go back to Rancière’s theories (1999, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2010). The subsequent debate on the post-political city has often adopted a binary view between policy (police) order and politics. At the same time, there may be ‘an overly limited definition of what counts as politics proper […]’ (Mitchell et al., 2015: 2636). I believe that going deeper into Rancière’s theories allow us to reconsider both these critical points. As Blakey et al. (2022) acknowledge in a recent paper, it is not a question of adjusting the definitions of police order and politics. Instead, it is vital to acknowledge how any police order necessarily takes place in the context of politics and how politics occurs in dialectical confrontation with the police order.

To achieve the above, this paper explores how dissent can be expressed – and made visible – in urban spaces. In particular, I analyse dissent in an emblematic empirical case in Turin (Italy) through urban graffiti. As McAuliffe and Iveson (2011) have noted, graffiti can be considered a ‘technology of expression’. Moreover, as some authors have already recognised, different types of urban graffiti constitute a meaningful form of expression of dissent regarding urban issues (e.g. urban transformations, climate change, gentrification processes, etc.,…) within the city (see Evered, 2019; Ferrell and Weide, 2010; Maiello and Pasquinelli, 2015; Novy, 2016; Waldner and Dobratz, 2013a, 2013b; Zieleniec, 2016). Urban graffiti as an expression of dissent can arise as a stand-alone act or be the visible sign in the urban space of other forms of dissent that are very intense but also ephemeral, such as demonstrations and other protest actions conveyed through groups of people occupying or crossing the urban space. Thus, this article focuses on what can be considered ‘political slogans’, according to semiotic studies (see Hanauer, 2011; Lynn and Lea, 2005). From here on, I will refer to them as ‘graffiti slogans’.

This paper is organised as follows: The first section explores graffiti slogans as a meaningful form of dissent expression in the urban context. Reasoning on Rancière’s notions of ‘police order’ and ‘politics’, I discuss how the creation of graffiti slogans in urban areas, their erasure/modification and the re-emergence of other graffiti is emblematic of the intertwined between police order and politics. In the second section, I present an empirical examination of graffiti slogans on the walls of Porta Palazzo, a progressively gentrified neighbourhood in Turin. Field research was carried out between January 2019 and December 2020¹ and was followed by a subsequent delicate phase of interaction with some of the graffiti authors and other actors in the neighbourhood. Indeed, these graffiti slogans express dissent towards a seemingly consensual urban transformation project that has led to the gentrification and touristification of the area in recent years. Finally, in light of what emerged empirically, the conclusion discusses the concept of the post-political city and suggests further points for reflection: if graffiti slogans are recognised as a form of political expression, I argue in conclusion, the city results less post-political than it may appear at a first glance, when the strategies of post-politicisation are in focus and not the resistances to them.

Graffiti slogans: Dissent and post-political theory

Dissent in urban space regarding urban issues can occur in various manners; consider, for example, street demonstrations, sit-ins or squatting (Murru and Polese, 2020; Polese, 2021). There are high-intensity but relatively ephemeral forms of expressing dissent, such as demonstrations. There are also forms of expressing dissent that are less intense but more enduring, such as graffiti slogans. These different modes of expressing dissent are often interrelated, e.g. graffiti are a tangible expression of dissent that has emerged strongly during a street demonstration.

It is not the intention of this paper to make a typological survey of all phenomena of expressing dissent within cities (in this sense, please refer to Allegra et al., 2013; Bragaglia and Krähmer, 2018; Holm, 2020; Klandermans et al., 2014; McAuliffe and Iveson, 2011; Rafail, 2018; Young, 2014). On the contrary, the paper intends to investigate graffiti slogans as a peculiar phenomenon of dissent expression that occurs in urban space and acts on it. Indeed, in graffiti slogans, the greatest importance is attached to dissent’s spatial expression. They constitute a subgroup of the broad spectrum of graffiti and street art which are explicitly political in their claims. I see ‘graffiti slogans’ as a specific form of political agency to express dissent, which differs from more ‘heroic’ and exceptional forms of dissent (Swyngedouw, 2017). As some authors point out, post-political theory sometimes ‘diverts attention from politicising moments and more everyday struggles’ (Fearn, 2022: 2; see also Beveridge and Koch, 2017a, 2017b, 2019; Fearn and Davoudi, 2022) while reducing politics to rare transformative and disruptive moments (Barnett, 2017).

Several authors recognise the whole universe of urban graffiti as a territorial phenomenon (see Cresswell, 1992, 1996; Dovey et al., 2012; Ferrell and Weide, 2010; Ley and Cybriwsky, 1974; Mcauliffe, 2012; Megler et al., 2014; Mubi Brighenti, 2010). Unlike other graffiti types, such as throw-ups, blockbusters, or murales, graffiti slogans are often purged of any artistic connotations. As Dovey et al. (2012) point out, graffiti slogans are generally purely textual. They may present counter-hegemonic perspectives or reflect the socio-economic conditions of a particular community or place. According to Lynn and Lea (2005), this kind of graffiti is designed for the collective audience, so they differ from the whole universe of tags of private character (e.g. love declarations) or ‘latrinalia’ (for instance, racist, sexist or homophobic graffiti). Thus, to view this type of graffiti as merely illegal and anti-aesthetic practice risks masking its counter-hegemonic ambition, which is what this paper aims to consider. It is not my task to give a moral judgment on the right or wrong of writing graffiti slogans on walls nor pass a verdict on their removal. On the contrary, I intend to analyse the phenomenon of creation, modification, and removal of graffiti as an interesting phenomenon to advance new discussions on the concept of the post-political city.

In the specific case of graffiti slogans, the spatiality of their appearance is rarely accidental. Tactical or strategic reasons can dictate the creation of graffiti slogans in a particular location. For example, graffiti slogans can be created during and along the street demonstration path because it is easier to go unnoticed. Creating graffiti slogans is often anonymous, and authors look for situations which guarantee their anonymity (e.g. during the bustle of a demonstration or at night). Evered (2019) clearly explains how the graffiti slogans that appeared in the Gezi Park area in Istanbul have been a direct consequence of the protest sit-ins that occurred in the area. So graffiti slogans are both often deeply space-dependent and claim a contested urban space.

Graffiti slogans carve in stone a message that can strike an audience with the same intensity until its natural or intentional disappearance. Alternatively, graffiti slogans can be explicitly made in certain spots for visibility or on buildings with symbolic value. For example, the placement of graffiti can be chosen to reach a large audience, or it can be linked to a building’s relation to a power against which dissent is directed. In any case, the ‘where’ of graffiti slogans is often a crucial aspect of understanding how dissents resurface in a seemingly consensual environment. It is not by chance that neighbourhoods with massive ongoing physical and social transformations present an exceptionally high number of graffiti slogans. Vasilena and Norum (2019) have recently shown how walls in specific Berlin neighbourhoods undergoing urban renewal processes (such as the Tempelhof area) ‘speak’ of discontent concerning urban issues.

Graffiti such as ‘fuck/stop gentrification’ or ‘No more hipsters’ have become common slogans on walls in many cities worldwide. Walls have become a manifesto for the expression of dissent.

This section aims to contribute to the debate on the post-political theory in cities by focusing on graffiti slogans. To do so, it seems helpful to return to Rancière’s (1999) arguments on the post-political dimension of modern democracies. In particular, I refer to his concepts of ‘police order’ and ‘politics’. According to Rancière (1999):

‘The police is […] an order of bodies that defines the allocation of ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of saying, [and] sees that those bodies are assigned by name to a particular place and task […] It makes visible what had no business being seen, and makes heard a discourse where once there was only place for noise.’ (pp. 29–30)

According to Rancière, the ‘police order’ represents ‘consensus over how people and functions are distributed in space and who is to be included in the life of the city and in partaking in public affairs’ (Enright and Rossi, 2018: 12; see also Margalit and Kemp, 2019). This concept fits well with forms of governance that promote shared decision-making and social innovation (Bragaglia, 2020) but exclude different discourses and alternative paradigms (Wilson and Swyngedouw 2014). Instead, for Rancière (2010), ‘Politics’ is when groups of people or individuals challenge – by introducing dissensus – ‘the distribution of the sensible’, namely what determines ‘the boundaries of what is visible and invisible, the sayable and unsayable, audible and inaudible, defining the parameters of what can be thought, made or done. (Tolia-Kelly, 2019: 127). In the words of Rancière (1999):

‘politics is […] whatever breaks with the tangible configuration whereby parties and parts or lack of them are defined by a presupposition that, by definition, has no place in that configuration – that of the part of those who have no part.’ (pp. 29–30)

Part of the literature on the post-political city descending from Rancière has tended to divide the ‘police order’ and ‘politics’ by an ‘unbridgeable chasm’ (Marchart, 2007: 8) between these two dimensions, which, however, are only seemingly mutually exclusive (Blakey et al., 2022).

I start once again from Rancière to highlight how ‘police order’ and ‘politics’ are not two titanic opposing forces but rather closely intertwined. As Rancière (2009) points out:

‘If the distinction between politics and the police can be useful, it is not to allow us to say: politics is on this side, police is on the opposite side. It is to allow us to understand the form of their intertwinement. We rarely, if ever, face a situation where we can say; this is politics in its purity. But we ceaselessly face situations where we have to discern how politics encroaches on matters of the police and the police on matters of politics.’ (287)

Drawing on Rancière (1999, 2009), we can argue that ‘politics’ and ‘police order’ exist in purity only in the hyperuranion of ideas. In the empirical world, these two dimensions constantly contaminate each other. In other words, the dimensions of ‘policy order’ and ‘politics’ work well on a theoretical level, but when reasoning on an empirical level – using case studies – it is much more fruitful to reason about cross-pollination between them (see Blakey et al., 2022).

This suggests going beyond a binary view and reasoning about how ‘politics’ takes on different forms and contours that transcend just rare political events (ibid, 2022). For Rancière, the very essence of politics is dissent in its many forms, and graffiti slogans may constitute an example. Expressing dissent does not necessarily imply massive, high-impact mobilisation but rather includes every event that challenges the police order (Rancière, 2009; see also Magalit and Kemp, 2019). Consequently, this allows us to reconsider the threshold of what can be considered politics and to reason about how politics occurs within a framework of everyday struggles within and beyond heroic moments of protest (Beveridge and Koch, 2019; Marchart 2011).

Along with other forms of dissent expression, graffiti slogans attempt to reconfigure the ‘distribution of the sensible’ (Rancière, 1999) and contribute to making the urban space highly political. Creation and selective erasure – a sort of damnatio memoriae – of graffiti slogans can be paradigmatic of the intertwining of ‘politics’ and ‘police order’ in the urban, the latter considered as the ‘meeting ground’ of these two dimensions (Novák, 2021; Rancière, 1999).

It does not mean to argue that all the ‘wars on graffiti’ (see, for instance, Dickenson, 2008; Haworth et al., 2013; Iveson, 2010; Karlander, 2019) that many cities worldwide have enacted are necessary post-political acts. Pennycook (2010) points out that cities have always been written repeatedly and then scrubbed and cleaned, mainly for urban decorum reasons and many techniques have been designed by public authorities to shorten graffiti’s life (McAuliffe and Iveson, 2011). However, in some cases, it is possible to trace a desire for specific intervention on some graffiti slogans, is aimed at eliminating the political message. The following section empirically analyses this succession of dynamics aimed at fostering dissent through graffiti and silencing it through different techniques in the Porta Palazzo area in Turin, Italy.

The case study of Porta Palazzo in Turin

The Turin urban policy agenda for a new image of the city

In the twentieth century, Turin was synonymous to FIAT, the biggest car factory in Italy and one of the main ones on the global market. For many decades, the city was considered to be the Italian Fordist one-company town (Bagnasco, 1986). However, with the industry crisis starting in the second half of the 1980s, the city had to gradually rethink its image in the following decades (Bragaglia, 2017). In a recent article, Bolzoni and Semi (2023: 6) describe Turin’s current urban policy agenda as a ‘mix of pro-market incentives, flagship projects, cultural amenities and facilities development as the main urban growth features […] for new temporary users’. Today, Turin’s main city-branding messages are linked to the university, tourism, and food and wine (Bragaglia, 2017; Vanolo, 2015).

Many authors have already pointed out how, by now, the food and wine culture of a place (see, for instance, Ferrari and Gilli, 2015; Henderson, 2009; Loda et al., 2020), and the construction of an ad-hoc image within this sector, are capable of generating high tourism flows and economic revenues. Thus, the food and wine sector – and the tourism related to it – is considered particularly important for Turin. Besides the rich culinary tradition of the city and of Piedmont region, Turin is also the setting – since 25 years – of the world’s biggest food and wine fair, the Salone del Gusto organised every 2 years by Slow Food. Moreover, Turin counts the presence of presumably ‘enlightened entrepreneurs’ of food (e.g. the owner of Eataly, who founded here the first supermarket of this now global chain of high-end Italian food).

In this sense, the Porta Palazzo multi-ethnic area, with its historic food market (present since the 1800s and among the largest in Europe), constitutes a crucial piece of the new ‘Turin food capital’. The Porta Palazzo area is located precisely on the edge between the Aurora district, one of the city’s poorest and most multi-ethnic neighbourhoods, and the historical centre. An area considered very strategic for the touristification process of the city. Thus, between the end of the 90s and the early 2000s, the area was the subject of the redevelopment project ‘The Gate’, with European programming funds (Governa et al., 2009; Semi, 2004). In the last decade, the ‘storytelling’ of Porta Palazzo as a touristic and food-retail area has massively prevailed in Turin municipality discourses.

Leitmotifs of this new current phase of the transformation of the Porta Palazzo area are food, security and urban decorum.² As Vanolo (2015) points out, this is a ‘selective storytelling’ that conveys positive expectations, especially after the massive global economic crisis of 2008. Therefore generating consensus for policies intrinsically linked to better living and security is easy. Davidson and Iveson (2015) pointed out that some keywords in current urban policies, including the idea of ‘security’ are part of a new depoliticised vocabulary of urban governance. Indeed, a dreamy vision of Porta Palazzo’s future is pursued, which does not address its inherent socio-economic problems (namely, a high unemployment rate, a high rate of housing eviction, and the diffuse presence of drug dealing).

As some critical geographers have well pointed out (see, for instance, Colomb and Novy, 2016; Davidson and Iveson, 2015), many cities’ urban policies leave space on ‘how’ to realize the chosen city-image but preclude the possibility of discussing its ‘why’. Moreover, as MacLeod (2011: 2632) argues, the ‘process of polic(y)ing and governing through a stage-managed consensus is serving to depoliticise […]’ the public debate. The case of Porta Palazzo in Turin seems to be no exception in both these regards. As a food and wine retail cluster, the area’s transformation is taking place in bits and pieces. Private investors are the primary agents of change, without a clear public governance: in 2019, the Mercato Centrale was inaugurated in the Market Square of Porta Palazzo, a format with high-end food stands already settled in Florence, Rome and Milan. The Mercato Centrale was created by converting a former commercial and cultural centre designed by the star architect Massimiliano Fuksas, a project inaugurated in 2005 but almost immediately abandoned. The transformation of this emblematic building into a ‘food temple’ is considered the flagship project of the new image of Porta Palazzo (Bourlessas et al., 2021).

In early 2020, an upscale hostel with an adjoining restaurant was inaugurated along the lines of the hipster hostels that can be found in Berlin, Barcelona or New York. The urban transformation in Porta Palazzo passes through new standardized and ‘cool’ models (see also Semi, 2015; Sequera and Nofre, 2018).

In the same years, some acts of ‘urban cosmetic surgery’ were put in place by the municipal administration. In December 2018, a city council resolution decided to move the poorest segment of the historic Balon flea market, which takes place on Saturdays in the streets adjacent to the market square, was moved to another – less visible – place in the city. The ragpickers, including many Roma people (see the investigation of Canepari and Rosa, 2017), have been displaced after several months of protest (Migliaccio, 2021). Moreover, in February 2019, the Asilo occupato of Via Alessandria (close to Porta Palazzo), a garrison for 24 years of anarchist squatters and quite well integrated within the Aurora neighbourhood, was evicted. ‘Abusive’ people – be they unlicensed vendors who survive by selling knick-knacks or anarchist squatters – are pushed out of the neighbourhood because they do not fit into the idea of urban security and decorum conveyed by redevelopment.

Simultaneously, the Porta Palazzo area seems to be increasingly suitable for gathering new types of users. First and foremost, tourists. A study on the accommodation facilities in the area carried out by Gilli and Ferrari (2018) shows that in 2006 there were only two hotels in the Porta Palazzo area. Today besides them (and the new high-end hostel opened in 2020), there are 12 bed & breakfasts, two alternative hospitality structures, and many Airbnbs (ibid). Indeed, in a recent study on short-term rentals in Turin, Semi and Tonetta (2021) pointed out that the Aurora neighbourhood is gradually becoming ‘airbnbified’, as a result of city policies and relatively low real estate purchase prices, which make the area ideal for investing in this sector.

In Porta Palazzo, what Hubbard (2017: 4) describes as a ‘synergistic combination of retail and residential gentrification’ is evident. The strategic use of security, decorum and the idea of ‘better living’ within the municipal policy agenda has tried to generate consensus for the transformation. All this takes place substantially in the absence of any official comprehensive master plan by the Turin municipality. Rather, transformation occurs through a multitude of small and large private projects, embracing a laissez-faire, laissez-passer paradigm. As already discussed, the conveyance by Turin municipality of a specific narrative about the area (need for security, urban decorum), together with the absence of a master plan, makes the possibility of an official space for political confrontation on the issue more complex.

Therefore, the urban policy agenda behind the transformation of Porta Palazzo features clear elements of depoliticisation. However, as Raco and Lin (2012: 195) point out, even if ‘policy agendas appear to take on post-political forms and rationalities, this does not necessarily mean that very real divergences and conflicts have been, or can easily be, eradicated’ (see also Davidson and Iveson, 2015; Ruming, 2018). Consequently, the following section looks at the urban space of Porta Palazzo and its graffiti slogans to understand the dissent running on walls.

Porta Palazzo: A political space of graffiti slogans

This complex context of a significant urban transformation and hidden urban malaise is the setting of my 2 years of research – January 2019/December 2020 – of the area’s walls. The walls of Porta Palazzo are full of graffiti. It is possible to observe different ‘latrinalia’ (see again Lynn and Lea, 2005), but also a consistent number of graffiti slogans, which constitute a political space of dissensus.

The creation of graffiti slogans (but very often also their erasure) is usually an anonymous and undeclared act. Thus, collecting information was based on periodic observations of the walls of the neighbourhoods of Porta Palazzo, adopting a walking methodology (see Richardson, 2015; Springgay and Truman, 2017). Consistent with this methodology of knowledge production, I systematically patrolled the streets within the area, noting and photographing all the graffiti slogans related to the urban transformation process I observed. I explicitly intended to observe graffiti slogans displayed in the urban fabric to anyone passing by. Indeed, graffiti slogans make visible the socio-spatial malaise that the urban policy agenda for the Porta Palazzo transformation seems to have largely overlooked.

These explorations took place in the course of 2 years since January 2019 at approximately monthly intervals with the precise aim of observing and classifying what had been modified, added or removed from the walls of Porta Palazzo. After this first phase of pure replicated observation ended in December 2020, I tried to get in touch with what Rancière (1999) called ‘those who have no part’. Namely, those who – having had no voice in the socio-spatial reconfiguration of Porta Palazzo – have produced graffiti as a form of dissent against the transformation. Although quite complex and delicate, this second phase of direct contact with graffiti slogans writers was essential to better understand the reasons for dissent and the use of graffiti to express it.³ This second phase was not aimed at crediting a specific piece of graffiti to a particular individual but rather to attribute it to a group of subjects.

Nevertheless, in some cases, I had the opportunity to talk with material authors, who explained the specific genesis of some of the marks on the wall. As witnessed by some of the writers themselves, the excluded are the main subjects behind this type of graffiti. Through graffiti, they have claimed their right to protest against the transformation of Porta Palazzo. It is no coincidence that one of the first graffiti slogans I found during one of my first explorations in Porta Palazzo was ‘Muri puliti, popolo muto’ (Clean walls, silent people). This is a relatively common slogan, especially in anarchist circles, to emphasise a ‘war’ running on walls.

In the 2 years in which I periodically observed the walls of Porta Palazzo, I traced some recurring graffiti slogans that can be classified in three macro-categories: 1) Against the police or local or national politicians: e.g. ‘Basta polizia’ (Stop police); 2) Against gentrifiers: e.g. ‘Fuori gli hipsters’ (Hipsters out) or ‘Via i ricchi dal quartiere’ (rich people get out of the neighbourhood); ‘eat hipsters like chips’; 3) Against the gentrification process: e.g. ‘Basta sgomberi e riqualificazione’ (no more evictions and redevelopment) ‘Stop gentrification’; ‘Basta sgomberi’ (no more evictions); ‘riqualificazione = quartiere per ricchi’ (redevelopment = neighbourhood for rich people); ‘riqualificazione = aumento dei prezzi’ (redevelopment = price increase); ‘Affitti più cari? Resistiamo’ (More expensive rents? We Resist) or ‘Il Balon resiste’ (The Balon resists).

These categories are not mutually exclusive, in the sense that these three different types of messages often hybridise with each other (e.g. graffiti against both gentrifiers and the gentrification process). (Figure 1)

Figure 1.

Some examples of the macro-categories of graffiti slogans found in the neighbourhood and possible hybridisations (a) ‘Basta polizia’ (Stop police); (b) ‘Eat hipsters like chips’; (c) ‘Basta sgomberi e riqualificazione’ (No more evictions and redevelopment); (d) ‘We don’t’ want your yuppie flats. We are happy with our rats. Hipsters go home!’. Photos by author.

During the field observation period, I mapped the graffiti slogans in the area noting an evident symbolic value in the spatiality of the graffiti (see Figure 2). The writers themselves have stated that the graffiti slogans they have created have a strongly place-based nature. In particular, I highlighted two clusters of graffiti slogans. Cluster A is composed of graffiti related to dissent towards the eviction of illegal vendors of the Balon. These graffiti were realized in the area where the flea market used to take place and where a series of protest sit-ins took place between January and autumn 2019. Cluster B instead includes graffiti slogans more broadly related to the gentrification process in the neighbourhood. The graffiti, in this case, have a pop-up nature and were often created on equally symbolic sites (e.g. on specific public/private buildings, highly visible spaces, or next to shops considered to be linked to the gentrification process). It is no coincidence that my observation in the field revealed that many of the owners of buildings most at risk of graffiti have progressively equipped themselves with video surveillance systems.

Figure 2.

Spatial distribution of graffiti slogans in the Porta Palazzo area. Map by Author.

The prolonged and replicated observation of graffiti slogans over time and the dialogue with some writers allowed me to identify two interesting phenomena. The first is related to their life cycle: the appearance and disappearance of a fair number of graffiti slogans during the observation period. The second phenomenon is the layering of graffiti with different messages, often in opposition to the original one.

Regarding the life cycle of graffiti during the 2 years of observation I noticed that some of them had a relatively short life before being erased from public view.

Turin is a city with a high amount of graffiti. Unlike other well-known cities for their ‘war on graffiti’, (among others see Halsey and Young, 2002; Iveson, 2009), it does not have a clear policy on graffiti removal. The Urban Police Regulation frames the activity as illegal and, therefore, subject to existing provisions on maintaining public order. The municipality of Turin entrusts cleaning to a municipal company that also handles waste disposal and street cleaning. The last extraordinary intervention to completely clean up graffiti throughout the city was initiated in 2016 and lasted 4 months. On that occasion, the then-mayor of Turin declared his willingness to fight the phenomenon of illegal graffiti and, at the same time, to support street art with numerous projects. On a day-to-day basis, rather than any structured action, Turin’s approach to graffiti seems to be one of punctual reaction. Intervention is indeed relatively rapid and targeted towards specific graffiti, especially when the graffiti is against local personalities or sensitive topics of local debate, as in the case of Cluster A. Together with this, a great deal of activity by many private actors should also be noted. In the Porta Palazzo area, graffiti removal is carried out in parallel by the private owners of the buildings themselves but also by some local citizens’ groups, neighbourhood committees and individuals. Thus, many actors are involved in graffiti removal in the Porta Palazzo area, and reasons for public decorum are confused with selective graffiti removal interventions.

The attempt to erase them from the collective memory – a damnatio memoriae – is the fate reserved for graffiti that are particularly troublesome because of their message. For example, as can be seen from Figure 2, many of the graffiti against prominent local and national figures were removed relatively quickly because they were offensive. In other cases, it is the visibility and location of the slogans – for example on specific buildings – that makes them more vulnerable to erasure.

In this sense, two examples are particularly interesting. The first, the graffiti slogan ‘Stop Gentrification’ (Figure 3), was placed on a multi-storey parking lot in a very visible area of Porta Palazzo. The second is that of the ‘La vostra sicurezza uccide’ (Your Security Kills) stencils (Figures 4) that appeared in different spots in the market square of Porta Palazzo in February 2019.

Figure 3.

(a): The image showed the ‘stop gentrification’ graffiti slogan in January 2019; (b) the image showed the coarsely erased slogan in June 2020. Photos by author.

Figure 4.

Examples of the ‘La vostra sicurezza uccide’ (Your security kills) stencils’ partial or total erasure. Figure (a) was taken in February 2019, Figures (b) and (c) were taken in August 2019, and Figure (d) is from December 2020. Photos by author.

When I made my first site inspection in January 2019, the slogan ‘Stop Gentrification’ was already present on the multi-storey parking lot wall. The image is still used as an illustration for the Italian Wikipedia page on gentrification and was registered online in December 2018. By June 2020, the slogan had disappeared. However, as can be seen from Figure 3, the deletion was done roughly. This suggests that rather than an act to restore urban decorum, the intent was to hide the graffiti’s message. In semiotic studies, Karlander (2019) writes on graffiti creation and erasure, pointing out that graffiti often continue to exist as a semi-absence or in shadowlike traces. Indeed, ‘professedly anti-semiotic practices of graffiti erasure do not produce voids but extends and modifies semiosis’ (ibid: 211). The erasure of the ‘stop gentrification’ slogan, the traces of which are still clearly visible, produces a new message: that of silencing this message.

The ‘La vostra sicurezza uccide’ (Your security kills) stencils have appeared in many parts of the Porta Palazzo square since February 2019 (on walls, but also on store shutters). In August 2019, some of these slogans had been partially or entirely erased (see Figure 4(b)–(d)).

Although it is not known who deleted/edited these slogans, it is interesting to note the effect produced. Figure 4(b) shows how the selective deletion of the slogan, but not of the stencil depicting the camera, returns an opposite message – of control and security – to what the slogan was intended to communicate: namely, denunciation of such control.

Figure 4(d) instead shows one of the completely but coarsely erased stencils placed right under one of the security cameras installed to control the square.

Regarding these stencils, it is also possible to make some assumptions about their connection to other forms of dissent that occurred in the neighbourhood in the period immediately preceding the stencils’ appearance. During the last few years, the Porta Palazzo neighbourhood has been, in fact, the scene of several demonstrations of dissent against the transformation of the area, several of which were organized by the anarchists of the Asilo Occupato. On February the 9th, 2019, following the eviction of the Asilo Occupato, there was a demonstration in the streets of Turin and the Aurora neighbourhood against redevelopment.

This suggests that the stencils ‘La vostra sicurezza uccide’ are part of the long wave of ‘high intensity’ demonstrations in the neighbourhood. Indeed, as already pointed out, the forms by which dissent is expressed in urban space are often interrelated. Expressions of protest conveyed by the human body (with its physical presence, cries of protest, etc.,) are highly intense but intrinsically ephemeral: consider, for instance, a street demonstration. However, these loud forms of dissent may leave long-term traces, such as the stencils ‘La vostra sicurezza uccide’.

The second phenomenon is the layering of graffiti with different messages, a sort of ‘repartee’ on the walls that shows how urban space is a theatre of intense conflict. An emblematic example are the graffiti slogans against the relocation of the ragpickers’ part of the Balon flea market to another area. As the author of many of these graffiti slogans told me, a part of them had been created during the months of protest. Indeed, they and other vendors organised an unauthorised flea market between January and October 2019 until the police definitely⁴ cleared the area. In some cases, graffiti slogans in defence of the Balon have been covered or flanked by other graffiti against the presence of this part of the market, made of poor and emarginated people. As seen in Figure 5, graffiti attacking ragpickers use the term Suk instead of Balon, intended as a derogatory term to refer to the ragpickers’ part of the market: in other words, dissent against dissent.

Figure 5.

The phenomenon of graffiti layering (a): ‘Il Balon non si sposta. Ricchi di merda’ (The Balon does not move. Rich people shit) was replaced by the slogan ‘Suk Suk Suk merda’ (Suk Suk Suk shit), (b) while next to the slogan ‘Rimaniamo qui’ (Let’s stay here) appeared the slogan (Suk shit). Photos by author.

This phenomenon is interesting because it helps to understand how the urban space is the scenario in which different city visions become explicit. As Beveridge and Koch (2019: 203) acknowledge, ‘[t]he urban is enmeshed with individual/collective hopes and fears and it unfolds in contradictory and uneven processes. Herein lies its political productivity’. The phenomenon of graffiti layering, as well as the previously discussed partial modification of graffiti, is emblematic of how ‘politics’ is not a monolith but a disaggregated dust of even conflicting positions.

Conclusion: Re-discussing the post-political city through graffiti slogans

Post-political theory is a subject of extensive debate in urban studies. As highlighted by Meyer (2020), the notion of a ‘post-political city’ is often generalized in contemporary discourse. In this sense, the ‘post political city’ has also been criticised for its somewhat fatalistic tone and for certain fallacies that seem to burden this concept.

I went back to Rancière’s theories (1999, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2010) going beyond the dichotomy between ‘politics’ and ‘police order’ and emphasising how Rancière prompts us to recognise the intertwining of these two concepts in the empirical world. In this perspective, the case study of Porta Palazzo in Turin can help illuminate some of the blind spots about the ‘post political city’ which are currently being debated and advancing knowledge in urban studies.

In Turin, the urban agenda exhibits characteristics of depoliticisation. However, this can be framed more as a new governance strategy – with objectives driven by both state and market actors – than as an immanent ‘condition’ (see also Davidson and Iveson, 2015; Ruming, 2018). Indeed, many contemporary cities’ policy-making strategies are constructed to avoid genuine confrontation and potential dissent: but ‘on the ground’ dissensus still finds its space. Therefore, the instruments of post-political governance never succeed in encapsulating the city as a complex socio-spatial and political system. Lefebvre (1974) argued that urban space is deeply political, and this is still the case today. Urban space and, from this point of view, the city as a whole constitute the site where political action occurs. Indeed, in this article, I clarified how the urban space of Porta Palazzo is far from being a depoliticised terrain. On the contrary, it is a vibrantly political space where graffiti slogans against the transformation of the area and gentrification processes are created, modified and erased continuously. In Porta Palazzo, uneven and intertwined processes between ‘politics’ and ‘police order’ are evident, in other words: ‘the presence of two worlds in one’ (Rancière 2001 cited in Blakey, 2020: 8). Are not the practices of modifying or layering graffiti slogans, which I considered as a ‘dissent to dissent’, also politics? Through the empirical case, the paper shows how different visions can coexist, collaborate or clash and encourage observing ‘all people as potentially political subjects’ (Da Schio and Van Heur, 2022: 595). What may be noted, is a different level of visibility of different political positions. The need to use graffiti slogans to express dissent may derive from a lack of other channels of expression for this dissent – which we could interpret as a strategy of post-politicisation. But defining the city as such as already being post-political risks being a move that reinforces this strategy, silencing those forms of political dissent and thus, politics, that still do exist.

According to my analysis, the post-political city is not a fixed given and thus a concept to be handled with care and its labeling risks masking the complexity of the empirical world. In my research, I focused specifically on graffiti slogans as a form of political agency to express dissent in the urban space that interrogates the public domain. I have not considered, except somewhat tangentially, other forms of radical political agency (demonstrations, sit-ins, squatting), nor even those forms of agency that use forms of dialogue with public institutions – instead of resistance – to express dissent. In connection with this, during the last part of my field research – in November 2020 – a ‘Community Foundation’ was set up by residents of Porta Palazzo and the nearby Aurora neighbourhood⁵ to give agency to a different political vision of the neighbourhood’s transformation. This Foundation also included some of the people who mobilised against the eviction of the Balon flea market. In its action against the gentrification process, the Community Foundation has established itself as an agent in dialogue with local institutions. I suggest that future researchengages more with how the politics in the urban space can help to re-politicise urban governance, countering strategies of post-politicisation – to create new conditions for discussion and production of alternatives also in the institutional sphere and help understand who the key agents in such processes might be.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professors Francesco Chiodelli (Università di Torino), Alberto Vanolo (Università di Torino) and Abel Polese (Dublin City University) for their valuable advice and my friend, colleague and activist Karl Kraehmer (Università di Torino) for the always thought-provoking conversations on the subject. I also would like to thank all the people interviewed in Porta Palazzo for this paper during the field research period. Last but not least, I am also extremely grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their precious comments. All interpretations and errors remain my own.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Francesca Bragaglia

Notes

Francesca Bragaglia holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Development. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Interuniversity Department of Regional & Urban Studies and Planning at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy. Her research focuses on transnational studies of contemporary co-produced urban governance tools, which have been promoted over the last decade by various European governments. Additionally, she investigates the use of graffiti as a means to challenge urban transformations.

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