WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY SICILY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAS, Sicilia Libertaria #461 - Laneri - Deserting Commodified Cities (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Out of step with the world. Over the past decade, as has happened in

many other cities around the world, the degeneration of tourism is
forcing a radical transformation of Palermo's historic center.
Touristification and overtourism seem to embody the dynamics of
occupation and territorial extractivism typical of colonialism,
commodifying places and impoverishing the communities that live there.
Analyses, more or less meticulous and reliable, abound in this regard,
fueled locally by debates conducted within a permanent assembly and,
nationally and internationally, by growing media interest in these
phenomena.

It is precisely because of these phenomena that continuing to frequent
mass-tourism destinations means feeling excluded, embodying the sense of
alienation and loneliness of those unwilling or unable to adapt to the
arbitrary transformations undergone by places and communities: places
and communities that have become unrecognizable, yet of which, for a
long time and with great enthusiasm, they were once a part; defrauded
places reduced to spaces of consumption, and communities dismantled or
forced into the role of caricatured extras. This article takes note of
the reflections and data collected by those who study this topic,
attempting to share a brief outline of practices that resist the
interference of the tourism industry: practices rooted in the concrete
limits of everyday life, understood as an essential existential condition.

Fewer pubs and restaurants, more benches and playrooms. Resistance to
mass tourism, as a revolt against extractive profiteering in local
communities, can call for individual responsibility in those who, aware
of participating in an injured community, choose to inhabit and care for
these places, adopting behaviors that clearly distinguish the community
itself from those who threaten its existence. In this sense, the
militant struggle of movements and assemblies can be complemented by a
commitment that engages the attacked community in practices such as
abstention and desertion.

The anarchist reflection on abstention from the ritual mechanisms of
preserving and legitimizing power is clearly reflected in the decline in
voter turnout and referendums, reflecting a widespread distrust of
governments. So why not address, along with the crisis of the individual
voter, the crisis of the individual consumer who fuels and consolidates
the tourism market? Resisting the commodification of cities might mean
first refraining from consuming their resources, for example by
boycotting the food and beverage industry and its harmful consequences,
such as the waste of resources in an area increasingly threatened by
desertification, the occupation of common spaces by private individuals,
and the exploitation of precarious and underpaid tourism workers. In
short, an abstention from consumption (intoxicating or otherwise) is
advocated, expanding the Antifa Straight Edge proposal of a lifestyle
marked by self-determination "as a real and symbolic way of promoting a
life of responsibility, awareness, and independence through the
reconquest of self-control and the rejection of dependence on the
political, social, and economic powers of a capitalist society" (Kuhn,
"Straight Edge: Stories, Philosophy, and Tales from the Hardcore Punk
Scene," 2011, 138). Abstaining from the consumption of places and
communities means breaking the chain of exploitation and, at the same
time, being clear-headed enough to direct anger toward that "intuitive
resistance" (246) that anchors the struggle in the concrete life of
everyday life, strengthening economic ties that give breathing space to
the resisting city.

Abstaining, therefore, means abandoning the temples of consumerist
sociality to establish new spaces of sociality, freed from homogenizing
practices that inhibit the effective realization of the struggle. In
other words: it is necessary to desert the places of consumption and
reject their rules, where desertion appears to be "the only strategy
capable of bringing down capitalism, a system founded on the permanent
mobilization of social energies. Withdrawing our energies from the
social game is not at all a renunciation of struggle: it is the most
radical form of class struggle imaginable. The only one that has a
chance of success today" (Bifo, "Disertate", 2023, 14). Paradoxically,
deserting the commodified city means remaining fully present in the
physical and mental dimensions of being an inhabitant of a city with
severe economic inequalities, constantly reflecting on how our daily
traversal of neighborhoods contributes to making them increasingly less
livable, and adopting behaviors increasingly consistent with our idea of
community. Deserting means embodying our unwillingness to consume
through practice, asserting our belonging to the attacked community and
unequivocally measuring our personal hostility to tourism; and from this
distance, caring for the places and communities that inhabit them.

Taking action in cities. The urgency of confronting the distorted daily
life in which we have been trapped by the economic interests of small
and large speculators, the self-interest of local political cliques, and
the disorientation of activism is becoming increasingly evident. We must
experience the city that resists, refusing to be a tourist in our own
home and instead embracing the social reality that suffers the
consequences of exploitation: the community gradually invaded,
manipulated, subjugated, or expelled from its own territory.

Enabling the cities we would like to live in means refusing to
compromise with the lure of supposed tourist prosperity, abstaining from
consumption of the very places we inhabit and those, more or less
distant, that we find ourselves passing through. Enabling cities means
intimately adhering, in the private practice of daily life, to the
declarations of intent loudly reiterated in the public context of
movements and militant groups, exercising a concrete, widespread, and
assertive boycott that becomes an effective antidote to the spread of
tourist-driven consumerism, wherever it manifests itself. Taking action
in cities means deserting the temples of consumerist sociality-demeaning
because it's monotonous, grotesque because it's alien, hostile because
it's forced-deciding to ignore the call for standardizing practices
geared toward the consumption of places, communities, and individuals,
rejecting the traps of commodified cities and building places and
lifestyles consistent with our aspirations.

Salvatore Laneri

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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