Special Issue Open Call: Urban Visualities: Power, Subjectivities, Sociabilities, and City Life

Theme: Urban Visualities: Power, Subjectivities, Sociabilities, and City Life

Guest Editors:

Andrea Torricella (Universidade Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina) 

Eder Cláudio Malta Souza (Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brasil)

Caterine Reginensi (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d Architecture de Toulouse, França)

Jesus Marmanillo Pereira (Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brasil)

 

Deadline for submission: January 30, 2026 (TOMO's submission guidelines here)

General Description:

Considering that being invisible or visible in the city is, above all, a confluence of power relations, sociabilities, subjectivities, and strategies of urban existence, we seek reflections on the role of visualities in the production of social inequalities and the importance of images in ethnographic research. We invite works that understand urban life as a reflection of situations where bodies, gestures, clothing, imaginary representations, and creative agencies reveal ways in which subjects dynamize interactions and disputes around projects concerning modes of existence in urban space.

 

Visualities permeate the various spheres of urban daily life, from youth practices to protest and identity repertoires. They can reinforce or challenge normative standards, considering how vulnerable groups negotiate their visibility in the city through visuality policies, while dealing with norms that performatively regulate what may or may not appear in the field of the visible. Therefore, we seek to reflect on visibility understanding it as gesture, resource, action, rhythm, socio-organizational context, representation, or even, reading and writing of the world.

 

In ethnographic approaches, images and visualities are fundamental resources in understanding social practices. They document a message or concept, signal actions, emotions, and identity processes, allowing for a more sensitive and complex reading of social relations — especially because the visible is also a field of struggle and expression of subjectivities.

 

Thus, we draw from the studies of Malta (2024), Marmanillo (2023), Reginensi (2023), and Torricella (2023) when they privilege the observation of social actors and their artistic and political practices, aiming to challenge dominant logics and promote ways of recognition and existence in the city. Particularly related to ethnic-racial issues, gender, youth practices, among other material and immaterial dimensions that can be expressed in terms of images and visualities as mediators of these relations.

 

References:

 

BEDIN, P.; TORRICELLA, A.; FERRARIO, C. M.; BERARDI, M. Discriminación y violencia de género en la Universidad: Resultados de una encuesta al claustro estudiantil de la Facultad de Psicología de la Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Polémicas Feministas, n. 7, p. 1-19, 2023.

 

MALTA, E. Espaços políticos do consumo: Juventudes, políticas de visualidades e ativismos canábicos. REVISTA TOMO, v. 43, p. e21016, 2024.

 

MARMANILLO PEREIRA, J. Malabaristas urbanos e a narrativa de uma cidade cultural: O que dizem os semáforos de Imperatriz (MA). Teoria e Cultura, v. 18, p. 20-32, 2023.

 

REGINENSI, C. RAPOSO, P. Caminhadas e itinerários entre Rio de Janeiro e Lisboa. Artistas e ativistas urbanos entre sociabilidades e formas de resistir». PONTO URBE, p. 1-32, 2023.

 

TORRICELLA, A., PAGNONE, M., BERTONI, G., y VAZQUEZ LABA, V.; Lo colectivo, la experiencia y la identidad: imaginación feminista de los artivismos y formas alternativas de la producción de conocimiento. Cuadernos del Instituto. Investigación y Experimentación en Arte y Crítica, n. 13, p. 39-47, 2025.