The Empty Body: Exploring the Destabilised Brand of a Racialised Space

In this paper we understand cities today as commodified spaces
which must struggle at the intersection of cultural, ideological and
historical tensions. In order to explore and problematise
a contested city brand’s marketing effort, we engage in multiple
rounds of in-situ introspective reflections about a racialised city’s
place branding material. Based on the two authors’ separate analyses
of the same marketing material deriving from two separate
theoretical starting points, we engage in agonistic conversation
about how visible and invisible racialised tensions are represented.
We highlight how absences and (in)visibilities can be predominantly
understood as either colour-blindness or ideological fantasy.
We find, despite our contrasting theoretical orientations, that a city
brand is inevitably fractured and ruptured into ‘a’ non-identity or –
to paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari – an empty body. We argue how
achieving inclusive branding becomes an oxymoron as narratives
surrounding a city are themselves more or less diverse, contested
and polarised.