{"id":681,"date":"2018-12-21T04:48:40","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T09:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/?p=681"},"modified":"2018-12-21T04:48:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T09:48:40","slug":"ancient-graffiti-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/2018\/12\/21\/ancient-graffiti-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Graffiti"},"content":{"rendered":"

Baird and Taylor note the ubiquity and acceptance of ancient graffiti to conclude that the practice was \u201cnot (in most incidences) considered defacing,\u201d asserting the misguidedness of \u201cmodern ideas about the illicit nature of the activity\u201d (16).<\/span><\/p>\n

This raises the question of how evolving understandings of space, expression and the interaction therein have fomented the changing attitudes towards graffiti, and implications regarding how academics may derive value from the study of graffiti.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers note that their work \u201cdemonstrates the diversity\u201d of graffiti, whose \u201cnon-monumental, private and often spontaneous nature\u201d may reflect \u201cin a more direct way than other categories of inscription the thoughts and feelings of people.\u201d At the same time, the researchers reject the implicit understanding of graffiti as pertaining to the \u201clow class,\u201d noting examples of graffiti on the interior walls of wealthy households (15). This heterogeneity of graffiti is evidenced in the myriad Pompeian inscriptions \u2013 literary, political, personal names, greetings, erotic texts, pictorials of animals or ships and abstract drawings e.g. \u2013 which reveal a liberal view of space and expression (2). <\/span><\/p>\n

However, In 1970s New York e.g., urban graffiti were more often \u201cheld up as representing a socio-cultural otherness,\u201d as Zadorojnyi puts it, rather than used to understand the socialization of space and objects as in Volioti\u2019s chapter on the materiality of writing on the physical surface (14). Mayors such as Ed Koch and the MTA\u2019s \u201cWar on Graffiti\u201d revive rather Mau\u2019s \u201cblanket assumptions\u201d of wall art in Pompeii as not belonging to the \u201cpeople with whom we should most eagerly desire to come into contact, the cultivated men and women of the ancient city\u201d (2).<\/span><\/p>\n

The otherization of graffiti reflects a spatial manifestation of broad otherizations. For example, in 1970s New York, Austin\u2019s New Rome built \u201cacross the back\u201d of the Naked City enabled politicians to curry favor as protectors. The attitudes displayed in Mau\u2019s study of Pompei and the Greco-Roman literary elite\u2019s view of graffiti e.g. likely stem from such political framing stories (5). However, Baird and Taylor show that study of graffiti is most valuable when it considers graffiti as a means by which to understand the socialization of space and explores the interaction of the writing and the physical surface.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Baird and Taylor note the ubiquity and acceptance of ancient graffiti to conclude that the practice was \u201cnot (in most incidences) considered defacing,\u201d asserting the misguidedness of \u201cmodern ideas about the illicit nature of the activity\u201d (16). This raises the question of how evolving understandings of space, expression and the interaction therein have fomented the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Ancient Graffiti”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7404,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/graffiti-fall2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}