Graffiti : espace du politique et hétérotopie révolutionnaire au Caire (2011-2013)‎

Abstract EN

This article proposes an analysis of the graffiti that have appeared on the walls of the city of Cairo during the “Revolution of 25 January” 2011.

It relies on a hypothesis that tackles epistemological considerations on this type of object so particular in humanities and social sciences; analysis should be drawn from spatial logic which is intrinsic to graffiti, and not through the spatial conception of Cairo urban planners.

In exploring this hypothesis, Cairo graffiti are analysed by using the Foucault’s concept of “heterotopias”.

This concept can be defined in opposition to utopias, locations without physical grounding, as “counter¬emplacements, sort of utopias actually realised”.

This concept allows us to redefine the subversive dimension of graffiti and, thus, to constitute them as an authentic object of political science, by seizing them not from the discourses which they may convey, but in the continuity of the device on which they rely.