Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I intend to demonstrate that looking - as a geographer using ethnographic and artistic methodology - at emotions in urban public spaces of the global South (Johannesburg) and North (Paris) could be a way to both politicize and decolonize emotions.

Paper long abstract:

The project I will present aims at looking through art at the role of emotions in public spaces in large cities (Johannesburg, Paris), that are characterized by neoliberalization and its consequences in terms of privatization and securization of spaces. In this context, I will wonder if the emotions felt and expressed by city dwellers in public spaces could (re)connect individuals among themselves and with urban spaces, so as to thwart the processes that lead to an atomization of individuals (Mitchell, 2005) and a fragmentation of spaces (Guinard, 2014), or if, on the contrary, these emotions reinforce such processes by confining every individual in his/her own subjectivity, every group in its own emotion and space. What is at stake is thus the capacity of emotions to create bonds between people in and with public spaces.

This project thus intends to challenge various dichotomies that oppose representations/perceptions, public/private spaces, global South/North. Studying emotions in urban public spaces of the global South and North will allow me:

- to apprehend the sensitive and bodily manifestations of city dwellers' affective states, as well as the verbalization of such states by city dwellers themselves.

- to investigate the ways in which individual affects can turn into collective expressions, if not political demonstrations.

- to contest a tendency to overlook emotions in the global South, or to focus only on specific, often negative, ones (e.g. fear).

As such, this project aims at politicizing and decolonizing emotions. To do so, I will implement an innovative research-creation methodology.