Abstract

[The Hostile City. Philosophical Principles for a Material Critique]. This contribution analyses the concept of the “hostile city” by formulating a critical framework focused on the artefactual dimension. The hostile city expresses the political will to stigmatise certain categories of subjects. To this end, the hostile city is disseminated with particular artefacts that make this hostilisation possible. The article proposes to elaborate an urban semeiotics, a science of symptoms capable of analysing the material structure of the city by focusing on elements that are insignificant at first sight. The article focuses on a particular political artefact characteristic of the hostile city, namely the bench on which it is impossible to rest.