Graffiti Protest Discourse in 70s and 80s in New York (Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe Theory)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Painting, Faculty of Architecture and Art, University of Guilan, Rasht. Guilan.

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Graphic Design, Faculty of Art, Architecture and Urban Planning, Semnan University, Semnan, Iran.

Abstract

Graffiti were present in the social space in the form of walling protest in social events or each kind of impersonation of identity notification and protest in public, Graffiti is similar to graphic in terms of communicating with the audience. Different media and people transmitting messages to people. Modern graffiti first appeared in New York City in the late 1960s and since then it has become more and more popular.
Graffiti and street art embody cultural significance through its individualistic nature, though its ability to beautify and enhance public spaces, and through its highly visible way of speaking out on political, social and economic issues, because it so clearly represents an artistic subculture with a message seen by some elements of the public and the art establishment as important.
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's theory has great potential in explaining social and political phenomena. In the form of critical discourse, we try in this paper to describe the government discourse with the graffiti discourse of New York in the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, we study graffiti from the perspective of a protest phenomenon. Our goal is to demonstrate the importance of graffiti protest expression by keeping in mind that graffiti has now turned into a highly popular and universal area and seems to be very different in terms of expression from New York. The data were collected by the documentary method using written sources as well as reputable sites of taggers.  The results indicated that in the 1970s and 1980s in New York, the graffiti discourse with the central symbol of declaring identity and protest had opposed to the government's discourse with the central signifier of security. Hence, by highlighting the issue of creating security and protecting public property, the government focused on marginalizing and fighting the taggers (graffiti artists).

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Journal of Applied Arts
Volume 5, Issue 2 - Serial Number 18
September 2025
Pages 83-98

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History

  • Receive Date: 08 January 2024
  • Revise Date: 09 February 2024
  • Accept Date: 16 March 2024

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