While her primary thesis is to complicate the notion of pre-modern acceptance of graffiti, Van Eck provides a valuable critical examination in her scrutiny of the view – which originated in the nineteenth century and is exemplified in the writings of Butler e.g. – of “graffiti as … expressions of a lower cultural register which nonetheless preserve precious voices from the past.”
Van Eck notes that this near-exoticization of the underclass as unthinkingly leaving remnants whose significance must be explained to them is not compatible with the “certain degree of intentionality” implicit in applying a graffito to a surface not designed to accept writing.
Further, Plesch’s note that such application “constitutes a symbolic act of appropriation” suggests that failure to acknowledge intentional claims of spatial ownership not only hinders understanding of spatial expression (as well as the socialization of space and objects in the sense of Volioti) but also strips artists of their agency.
Van Eck reaches what is, in my mind, the correct conclusion: while all graffiti can be aptly termed as “soul-fossils,” the intentionality of these leaving-behinds varies depending on the spatial context. For example, while scratchings on a bus stop may be unthinking, the pre-modern graffiti in religious spaces reflects “emphatic” intentionality.
Broadly, this emphasizes the importance of spatial context of a graffito in understanding its significances as well as the overall diversity of spatial expression.