Writing their name: tiles, stars, and graffiti as situations of materialization at the entrances to life

Abstract

Multiple social practices inscribe people’s names in public spaces. Naming of squares, streets, parks or even entire cities shows different evidences of this kind of remembering with and through the names of individual persons. In order to trace the presence of a specific aspect of the relation of those present to those absent, we look at some practices of name inscription in public spaces. We take three situations of name inscription: the tiles of memory with the names of the disappeared, the yellow stars with the names of those dead in car accidents, and a kind of graffiti that appears sometimes in the waiting areas of public maternity rooms with the names of those just born. I discuss here the main theoretical axes of an ongoing project and provide partial data as way of illustration. In an ethnographic approach, we observe and dialog with the actors that produce, install, and maintain these spatial marks, with those who inhabit and interact with them, and also with those who dispute their uses and meanings. The study deploys an approach centered on the concepts of materialization, cohabitation, and spatial embodied practices, and understands these practices as ways of producing situations that materialize the relations with those absent.