A-Infos (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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