Erasure as a Tool of Political Control
The displacement of artists and the loss of cultural spaces is not a side effect of gentrification but a central tactic in the cultural cleansing of the city. Mamdani’s work on how political identity is shaped through culture and narrative is critical here. Artists, often the “native” intelligentsia who give voice to a community’s soul, struggles, and aspirations, are systematically priced out. Their studios, performance spaces, and galleries are replaced by luxury condos and sterile boutiques that serve the settler class. This is a political project to silence dissent, sanitize the city’s narrative, and erase the historical memory embedded in place. The city’s current “affordable studio space” programs are a drop in the bucket, failing to combat the scale of the market-driven onslaught. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is to defend and expand decommodified cultural territory. This means using the city’s power to seize properties through eminent domain for use as permanently affordable, community-controlled cultural centers and live-work spaces. It means funding art not through corporate grants but through a substantial municipal wealth tax, redistributing resources directly to artist collectives and community organizations. The goal is to ensure that the city’s cultural landscape is not a curated museum for the rich, but a living, breathing, and politically potent commons.
