Unsanctioned ink: graffiti power and public memory

| New Age Spirituality refers to the subject’s access to a certain way of being or to the transformations a subject must undertake upon himself in order to access this way of being. —Michel Foucault The choice of language and the use to which language is put are central to a people’s definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire universe. — Ngugi Wa Thiong’o WHAT started as emancipatory self-expression was soon subjected to the dominant aesthetic regime. What started as ‘chika mara,’ a signifier of direct state repression, was soon turned into a sanctioned practice. But graffiti remains graffiti by virtue of its unsanctioned nature — the defiance and the subversive potential it carries and invokes. Its unauthorised writtenness materialises its affective emancipatory charge. ‘Step Down Hasina’ — stenciled or spray-painted — was already appearing on walls and streets long before the ‘Remembering Our Heroes’ event was declared as part of the 9-point demands. While rebellious phrases, verses, and slogans were painted, so were swearwords — the feared ‘f’ word or the sexist ‘k’ word — targeted at the ‘dictator’— a word that had de facto held a taboo status...