Reading the City: The Performative Function of Text and the Dramaturgy of Public Space : Embodying Necropolitics

Abstract

This study examines the performative function of written text in public urban spaces and positions the city as an entity to be navigated both visually and  textually. The city is a text: layered, unstable, and annotated by its inhabitants. Textual interventions in the urban landscape operate as performative gestures that transform the perception, experience, and memory of space, drawing on performance studies, spatial theory, and semiotics. A stencil on a wall, a handwritten note on a lamppost or a name inscribed in a corner may alter the rhythm and significance of a location, inviting the passerby into a fragmented yet intimate act of reading. The city becomes a palimpsest, marked by layers of presence, intention, and interruption. The paper draws on examples ranging from graffiti and activist slogans to anonymous tagging and poetic street interventions. Using the city of Athens as a case study, it examines how these textual presences raise questions about authorship, legality, ephemerality, and visibility, while also proposing an expanded dramaturgical field in which language performs materially within the urban environment. In dialogue with the work of Barthes, de Certeau, and Lefebvre, the study reconceptualises text as an embodied spatial practice, one that not only marks the surfaces of the city but also participates in its ongoing performance. Text in the city performs with and through space, infusing the everyday with resonance. These textual presences contribute to a dramaturgy of public space, where language becomes part of the spatial and affective atmosphere that shapes how the city is seen, felt, and understood. In this sense, text in public space functions both as an expressive presence and as a perceptual intervention into the city's evolving narrative.