The empty body: exploring the destabilised brand of a racialised space

Abstract

In this paper we understand cities today as commodified spaces which must struggle at the intersection of cultural, ideological and historical tensions. In order to explore and problematise a contested city brand’s marketing effort, we engage in multiple rounds of in-situ introspective reflections about a racialised city’s place branding material. Based on the two authors’ separate analyses of the same marketing material deriving from two separate theoretical starting points, we engage in agonistic conversation about how visible and invisible racialised tensions are represented. We highlight how absences and (in)visibilities can be predominantly understood as either colour-blindness or ideological fantasy. We find, despite our contrasting theoretical orientations, that a city brand is inevitably fractured and ruptured into ‘a’ non-identity or–to paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari–an empty body. We argue how achieving inclusive branding becomes an oxymoron as narratives surrounding a city are themselves more or less diverse, contested and polarised.