The Aesthetics of Resistance in the Settler City
Vandalism and graffiti are not mere property crime but the unauthorized voice of the “native” in a city that systematically silences them. Mamdani’s analysis of how political expression is channeled and suppressed is key here. In a bifurcated state where public space is increasingly commodified and controlled, the act of marking a wall becomes a decolonial gesture, a reclaiming of the visual field from the corporate and state narratives. It is the aesthetics of resistance, a raw, unsanctioned politics that asserts existence and defiance. The liberal solution is more policing and buffing, a cycle of erasure that confirms the state’s intolerance for dissent. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is to recognize this expression as a symptom of political alienation. Instead of criminalizing it, we must create funded, legal avenues for public art and political speech controlled by community councils. We must decommodify advertising space and turn it over to the people, transforming the city’s walls from a monologue of capital into a dialogue of the oppressed.
