French Literature Reviews - 2026
Y. Pagès, Look, They've Repainted! 50 Years of Urban Aphorisms from 1968 to the Present Day
History, Politics and Society
Tiens, ils ont repeint ! 50 ans d'aphorismes urbains de 1968 à nos jours
Yves PAGÈS
La Découverte, Oct. 2017
ISBN : 9782707197313 — 300 p.
Walls are said to have ears, but do we know that they also whisper? Those who, since the mid-twentieth century, have illegally made their mark upon them—using chalk, charcoal, markers, paintbrushes, or spray cans—have long understood this: walls speak to us. With their gruff irony, truncated hopes, and abrupt whimsy, they echo thoughts buried deep within us. They carry words that, inscribed there without permission or official sanction, are exposed to all eyes, "contaminating" public space and thus disrupting the established order of discourse.
Yves Pagès’s wild and exhilarating collection—over 4,000 urban graffiti from around the world spanning the last fifty years, faithfully transcribed, dated, and located—forms an unprecedented archive. It is an archive of the viral joy of a clever quip, gratuitous political energy, minuscule audacity, minor and ephemeral poetry, the fringes of syntax, clumsy invention, and the pleasure of the unfinished. Readers can devour this book chronologically, lose themselves in it through meandering associations of ideas, gather their own anthology as they go, or simply open it at random and trust the pure chance of an exquisite corpse.
The practice of inscribing walls in public spaces has long served as a medium for spontaneous, unauthorized expression, often challenging the formal boundaries of language and social order. By documenting graffiti created with various tools, Tiens, ils ont repeint ! 50 ans d'aphorismes urbains de 1968 à nos jours collects over 4,000 urban inscriptions from around the world. These interventions on architecture transform the city into a site of dialogue, where anonymous voices contribute to a record of social and political sentiment spanning from 1968 to the present day.
This compilation presents transcriptions of street-level writing, ranging from political slogans to poetic fragments. By organizing these transcriptions chronologically and geographically, the book documents the evolution of urban discourse and the ways in which unauthorized inscriptions appear in public spaces. The text notes the transient nature of these messages, which often exist on the fringes of standard syntax and official communication. Readers interested in the intersection of urban sociology and contemporary linguistic expression may find this documentation of ephemeral graffiti particularly relevant.