Maintenance Work and the Performativity of Urban Inscriptions: The Case of Paris Subway Signs

Abstract

U rb an inscriptions are perform ative devices that play a crucial part in urban assemblages. They m ark sites, give places a name, designate directions. This paper questions such perform ativity by investigating the design and maintenance of subway signs in Paris. Studying backstage activities rather than user tactics, it shows that the semiotic production of space is mainly played out in standardization processes that are both oriented towards signs imm utability and fueled by a daily consideration for their vulnerability. Such a posture allows us to take full account of the ontological variations of signs (which can be, for example, stable or unstable, consistent or fragile, im mutable or mutable). M aintenance work, through which the agency o f urban inscriptions is partially shaped, ensures the articulation o f such a multiplicity.

Flags, society and space: Towards a research agenda for vexillgeography

“…Such repeated and typically ritualised performances can also be nuanced to convey commonly understood emotional and political messages on the space surrounding them, such as a flag hoisted fully in celebration, at half‐mast as a sign of mourning, or upside down as a sign of distress. This accords with Denis and Pontille's contention that “the repeated actions of … inscription devices have been described as articulated operations that progressively give scientific claims their substance” (2014, p. 406).…”

The Dance of Maintenance and the Dynamics of Urban Assemblages: The Daily (Re)Assemblage of Paris Subway Signs

“…Rather, they are the product of constantly changing relationships (Strebel 2011, Edensor 2012). In the case of the wayfinding system, signboards, whether 'definitive' or 'temporary,' are always fragile, subject to wear and tear, breakage, even theft (Denis and Pontille 2014). The transformations we have stressed here are symptoms of the unceasing activities which guarantee an assembled whole.…”

“…On the linguistic side, this normalized system of signs was conceived as a modular, hierarchized language, with numerous components that make possible a wide variety of combinations between arrows, icons, words, abbreviations, and colors. These elements were themselves standardized in an attempt to create graphic continuity from one place to another (Denis and Pontille 2014). For example, the color assigned to each subway line remains identical from one sign to another.…”

“…This short scene describes a mundane intervention that concerns an object we usually take for granted. Yet, this operation bears witness of a maintenance work that is distributed in sociomaterial practices through which some people in the transportation carrier take care of subway signs (Denis andPontille 2014, 2015). Though sometimes prosaic, each repair operation that punctuates this maintenance work enacts the daily presence of an apparatus dedicated to the graphic ordering of an urban setting, an apparatus that plays an essential role in the heterogeneous assemblage of public transportations.…”

“…Yet, to understand such assemblages, a description of signs and their emplacement, even though obsessively detailed, does not suffice. Indeed, simply for remaining in place and thus contribute to the graphic ordering of urban settings, signs take work, and especially maintenance work (Denis and Pontille 2014). In this chapter, we propose to explore such work, which remains largely overlooked in the studies of urban assemblages.…”