Vol 9 No 2 - Page 5

Framing Graffiti: “War on Terror” and Iconoclasm in American Writing on War

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Sudebi Giri

The English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. ORCID ID 000-0002-4749-4613. Email: sudebigiri6@gmail.com

Volume 9, Number 2, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n2.03

Received May 31, 2017; Revised July 07, 2017; Accepted July 07, 2017; Published August 06, 2017.

Abstract

The paper proposes that the ongoing narrative of “war on terror” and its subsequent framing operates within an iconoclastic project, where alternative forms of media, such as graffiti and street art are tactically employed through transmedial narrations. The logic behind frame-break— as a process of movement from one media to another— entails that the difference between iconoclasm and vandalism is rendered ineffectual in a war situation, turning into a tool that distorts images of power, stereotypes and epistemological frames. The techno-fundamentalist nature of “infoterrorism” transmitted by dominant electronic media is critically counteracted by a mode of “poetic terrorism,” in which media images are pirated and subverted, thus, engaging with individual histories of war and loss. The paper— with the help of Masha Hamilton’s What Changes Everything (2013) and recent American writing on war elucidates upon how the notional ekphrasis of graffiti in these writings enters the conversation of “war on terror”.

Keywords: War Images, Graffiti, Iconoclasm, Frame, Ekphrasis.

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“Walls of Freedom”: Street Art and Structural Violence in the Global City

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Dominic Davies

English Faculty, University of Oxford, UK. Email: dominic.davies@ell.ox.ac.uk

Volume 9, Number 2, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n2.02

 Received May 11, 2017; Revised July 07, 2017; Accepted July 75, 2017; Published August 06, 2017.

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.

Keywords: graffiti, street art, structural violence, the global city, urban social formations, cultural resistance, visual culture

Acknowledgement: Vincent Ramos, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Call for Papers for the Vol. IX, No. 1, 2017

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We are inviting articles on the Focus Area and the General Areas for the Vol. IX, No. 1, 2017.

Focus Area: “Technocracy, War and Walls in Art and Literature”

General Areas:

Papers can be submitted on any topic on,

  • Interdisciplinary Approaches to Literature and Arts
  • Digital Humanities: Arts, Literature and the Digital Media
  • Cultural Studies
  • Emerging Critical Theories involving Interdisciplinary Studies
  • Performance Studies
  • Gender Studies: critical discussion, case study, survey
  • Aesthetic Studies: critical discussion, casestudy, computational analysis
  • Astro-aesthetics, Architecture and Astronomy, Archaeoastronomy
  • Environmental Studies and the theories of Evolution
  • Animal Studies: Ethics, Aesthetics, Sports, Civilization and Biodiversity
  • Visual Arts (including photograhy)
  • Interdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching and Education
  • Megalith & Rock Art Studies
  • Molecular Aesthetics

Word-limit:

Papers should be between ideally 3000-5000 words.
Book reviews should be between 1000-1200 words for single and/or double book reviews. Review articles should be above 2000 words with proper citations.

Style Sheet: APA [Read the Submission Guidelines]

Submission Deadline: May 15, 2017.

Article Status Update: by May 30, 2017. [Please do not send any query about acceptance or rejection before this date.]

Publication: June, 2017.

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