The Graffiti-Game and the Ubiquity of Resistance
Getting Up as Oppositional Agency
Abstract
We tend to think of resistance as an exceptional event in our lives, when something so drastic occurs that the status quo is completely disrupted and reshaped. According to this viewpoint, moments of resistance occur when one or more people actively participate in acts of political sabotage, in which some hierarchy or structure of power is knowingly challenged and subverted with the purpose of long-term change. I'd like to challenge this idea. Resistance, in effect, can function in many ways. Not only revolutions or revolts should be conceptualised as such. Everyday actions can sometimes be considered forms of resistance. De Certeau describes such activities as “sheeplike subversion.” This form of rebellion, however far from being a traditional insurrection, is a common and quiet disruption of social control. Rather than efforts aimed at structural societal changes, they are micro alterations that have a major influence on transgressors’ personal lives while yet evoking (traces of) social change. Graffiti, and more specifically, getting up, is a kind of resistance in this way. When painting tags, throw-ups, and pieces, authors are not concerned with long-term structural changes; their efforts may be futile on a global scale. And it does not appear that they intend to permanently change the status quo. In playing the graffiti game, spray-can calligraphers' efforts can be viewed more appropriately as enacting an oppositional agency that they would not otherwise have, allowing them to freely express themselves even when legally restricted.