The Making of Space, Race, and Place: New York City’s War on Graffiti, 1970-the Present

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What types of “Othering” occur in graffiti art discourse? How have these boundaries been created and what are the implications?

Bonus Questions:

1) Does graffiti have to come from “the ghetto”? How fundamental is “the ghetto” to graffiti discourses and how is legitimacy constructed through these discourses? How does this relate to Foucault’s repressive hypothesis?
2) How important is context and in what ways does it influence, and get influenced by, graffiti? For example, an anarchy symbol in East Van vs. an anarchy symbol in Kits.

3) How are other forms of media influenced by the power dynamics inherent in the graffiti world? For example, the New York Times (re)aligning itself with the dominant attitudes over the course of many decades

4) What shifts in power dynamics occur when capitalism adopts anti-capitalist modes of representation to reach youth through advertising? For example, Time magazine’s adoption of graffiti, and commissioning of graffiti artists, for advertising their publication

Dickinson, Maggie. 2008. The Making of Space, Race and Place: New York City’s War on Graffiti, 1970-the Present. Critique of Anthropology 28(1):27-45.

-SJ Kerr-Lapsley, Drew Hart, Madeleine Tuer, Chris Vague

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