Diffrangere la (mala)movida. Rappresentazioni e materialità del degrado

Few issues in Italy todays evoke the question of urban decay as much as (mala)movida, a Spanish-derived term for the evening and night-time economy; the bond between them is so strong that it is recalled with cyclical regularity by Italian newspapers, residents’ associations and multiple legislative initiatives. For these reasons, the distinction between movida and malamovida has come into use to distinguish between the different conformations assumed by evening and night-time economy in urban centres. This paper employs the diffractive methodology developed by Karen Barad to deconstruct the movida vs malamovida opposition, revealing how social discourses on decay are based on a dichotomous conception of the urban. Moreover, diffracting (mala)movida entails freeing the materialities of decay from the pitfalls of representationalism. Noise, littering and violence are no longer symbols of something else (the lack of moral values in today’s youth, the rudeness of night-goers, etc.), but become the outcome of processes of spacetimemattering generated by and intrinsic to urban experience.