City Research Online

Abstract

This article argues that contemporary street art (or graffiti) uses a unique set of resistant techniques to foreground the contours and shapes of different kinds of structural violence inscribed into, and perpetuated by, the infrastructural layouts of the twenty-first century’s increasingly global cities. Graffiti can resist structural violence as it is shaped and exacerbated by—even embedded within—the physical walls of city spaces, ricocheting off into alternative and on occasion more democratic modes of urban habitation. Through a discussion of examples from urban spaces as diverse as revolutionary Cairo, divided East Jerusalem and the West Bank in Palestine, and South African townships and gentrifying East London, the article shows that street art can transform the violent infrastructural strategies of oppressive state governance into a canvas that articulates calls for democratic and political freedom.

Publication Type:	Article
Publisher Keywords:	graffiti, street art, structural violence, the global city, urban social formations, cultural resistance, visual culture
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology N Fine Arts > NE Print media
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Media, Culture & Creative Industries > English, Publishing & Creative Writing
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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