What We See (and What We don't): Resignifying Urban Traces of Colonialism

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is twofold: in the first part, we will provide comprehensive, state-of-the-art urban and visual studies across the domains of visibility, urban aesthetics and the legitimate use of the urban. We will show that what we see is foremost what is accessible and legitimate as a vision, while the urban provides multiple realms of invisibility that are often neglected or rendered invisible. Art, architecture, urbanism and place-making will be used as examples of these dynamics.

In the second part of the chapter, we will present a research study on the decolonial practices of re-signification of colonial urban traces. Despite the dominant representation of Italians as ‘good people’ (a local version of ‘white innocence’), in recent years, Italy has witnessed a new interest stemming from bottom-up local movements dealing with colonial legacy in the urban space. We will show a research example (‘Decolonising the City. Visual Dialogues in Padova’) based on participatory video, arts-based methods and walking methods.

Citation

Semi, G. and Frisina, A. (2023), "What We See (and What We don't): Resignifying Urban Traces of Colonialism", Pauwels, L. (Ed.) Visual and Multimodal Urban Sociology, Part B (Research in Urban Sociology, Vol. 18B), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 125-142. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1047-00422023000018B005