UC Irvine

This study takes seriously the politics of overlooked world-building practices and liminal spaces that we engage with daily. Specifically, I will outline the political import of the action, object, and sign of graffiti in the United States during the 20th and 21st centuries. Now, graffiti is by no means new, nor is it new to academic discussion. There is a rising tide of exciting and provocative research on graffiti. However, much of the budding scholarship is descriptive without a critical distance and missing a theoretical discussion. With graffiti's increasing centrality to political discourse, there is a demand for more theoretical discussion. I am not to argue that this is the first-time graffiti is considered political; quite the contrary, one does not need to say much more than "graffiti is a form of political action" to get the response "I am persuaded." However, when asked why graffiti is political, the conversation falters, dissolving under the tension. Graffiti can be political due to its content, but it does not need to be political. Graffiti can be political due to its location, but it is also not necessary to be political. Graffiti can be political due to its material makeup; it does not need to be political. The mystery remains: why is graffiti intuitively political? I seek to fill the gap in understanding and assessing the political practice and symbolism of graffiti and how a political theory of graffiti helps to expand the current understanding of political practices in and out of moments of upheaval. As I progress through the project, I address how graffiti seems intuitively political, moving through three periods throughout U.S. history in which graffiti held public attention. In doing so, graffiti allows us to watch the development of political practice from an infrapolitical resistance to infrapolitical refusal where different individuals for themselves and their own space.