Visual Anthropology, 28: 67–87, 2015

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online
DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2015.973326

Cracks and Contestation: Toward an Ecology

of Graffiti and Abatement
Michelle Stewart and Chris Kortright

This article argues that graffiti, through their vitality, illustrate the battle over urban
enclosures and the valorization of private property. We focus on abatement—the
act of removing graffiti—and by exploring graffiti and abatement we investigate
mechanisms and ideologies that draw people into struggles over urban space. In this
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battle over space, where the state and capital attempt to assert control, a flick of
paint serves as a threat as it opens up possibilities beyond the enclosure. From this
vantage point there emerges an ecology of graffiti and abatement that is at once
lively and dangerous.

ABATEMENT

In many ways this article1 is about taking a walk—taking a walk with a camera. It
is about moving slowly through city streets and alleys. It is about flicks and
blotches of paint. That is all to say that this article focuses on graffiti and acts
of graffiti removal—abatement—to investigate spatial antagonism and ideologies
of private property.
Informed in part by research with police in the United States and Canada over
a three-year period, the material presented here can be traced back to 2005–2006,
and is partly ethnographic material and partly of photographic interest. In
preliminary research on community-oriented policing, Michelle attended work-
shops on crime prevention in which graffiti were discussed as a social blight.
Michelle also worked closely with police as they indexed graffiti in particular
neighborhoods as evidence of gang activity, or as emblematic of regional

MICHELLE STEWART is an Assistant Professor of Justice Studies at the University of Regina. She
is currently working on a book based on ethnographic work with Canadian police, and the role of
collaborations between community, police and social service agencies. Her new project continues to
investigate risk and prevention with attention to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and how
risk and diagnostic tools influence the ways in which FASD is understood in particular communi-
ties of practices. E-mail: michelle.stewart@uregina.ca
CHRIS KORTRIGHT teaches Anthropology at the University of Regina. His work is situated at the
intersection of the biological and experimental sciences. He is currently working on a book that
examines ethnographically the science, politics, economics and creative transformations of a trans-
genic rice crop in the Philippines. He approaches political economy by way of a post-humanist cri-
tique, with a focus on science, scarcity and Malthusianism. E-mail: cmkortright@gmail.com
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at
www.tandfonline.com/gvan.

67
 68 M. Stewart and C. Kortright

disorder. Behind these discussions was an explicit engagement with the so-called
‘‘broken windows theory.’’2 Police, in collaboration with community associations
and city ordinance workers, asserted that graffiti, if left unabated, facilitated
(more) criminal activity. Seen this way, graffiti were understood as evidence of
disorder and therefore a threat needing removal: painting over graffiti, which
is called abatement. These discussions about abatement informed our walks,
and reoriented us to walls and surfaces; the discussions also sparked a desire
to understand the productive potential of these ideological collisions.
In this article we argue that graffiti and abatement imply antagonisms over class,
space and the right to private property. Drawing on the work of Harry Cleaver and
Antonio Negri, we assert that graffiti illustrate self-valorization and defiance to
assertions of private property. We layer this argument through Jane Bennett’s
work on ‘‘thing-power’’ to discuss the ways in which graffiti, as a thing, can enroll
agents into particular actions—here graffiti, produced as a thing, compel indivi-
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duals to action (to abate). Complementing these arguments about spatial antagon-
isms, we turn to Isabelle Stengers and her argument about ethics and ecology, to
better understand graffiti and abatement as deeply relational activities. Exploring
this ecology of graffiti, we argue that the thing-power of graffiti, as an act of deface-
ment, draws people into a struggle over urban space. We assert that when graffiti
are understood this way the mandates and enforcement of abatement become
cogent. Through their vitality, graffiti illustrate the battle over urban enclosures
and the valorization of private property. The abater and the very existence of
the graffiti are used to illustrate the battle over space in which the state and capital
attempt to assert control—in this configuration, a flick of paint serves as a threat as
it opens up possibilities beyond the enclosure. From this vantage point there
emerges an ecology of graffiti and abatement that is at once lively and dangerous.

CONTESTATION AS CONVERSATION
This article takes as its starting-point that graffiti are about contestation, and then
turns to practices of abatement [Figure 1]. Graffiti have long been a site of academic
and aesthetic investigation, the social science literature often focusing on graffiti as
a transgressive spatial practice that can be a type of place-making activity for the
marginalized and a form of everyday resistance [Docuyanan 2000; Ferrell 1993;
Ferrell and Hamm 1998; MacDonald 2001; Phillips 1999]. Another focus for social
science literature on graffiti and wall painting is the explorations into art and writ-
ings as political articulations, confrontations and struggle during conflicts, upris-
ings and insurrections. This work includes research on the politics of wall
paintings in Northern Ireland [Davies 2001; Rolston 1987; Sluka 1992, 1996] and
Palestine [Peteet 1996], as well as Poland during Nazi occupation [Chmielewska
2007]. Although the material presented here acknowledges that research on polit-
ical struggle and antagonism as well as place-making and political articulation, we
move in a different direction with the focus on abatement. By focusing on it we are
not ignoring the actions of graffiti artists, writers, taggers or others engaged in
street art. Rather the opposite: we do so with the intent to better understand the
conversations and antagonisms playing out on walls and pipes.
 Cracks and Contestation 69
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Figure 1 An alley walk reveals what appears to be a stark character—an all-black garage with a
black door. On closer inspection, the all-black appearance is betrayed. Although the black surface
attempts to cover up and abate previous acts of graffiti, layers of text hang in the shadows. Traces
of ink serve as a reminder about the tensions that surround claims to private property and the right
to write. (Photo # Michelle Stewart; color figure available online)

In his work on street art, the urban ethnographer Justin Armstrong explains that
these forms of unsanctioned urban art serve as ‘‘a quiet layer of visual culture’’
[2006: 10]. He discusses his desire to ‘‘evoke a sense of place within the space
between people’s footsteps.’’ In a similar mode here, we attempt to slow the look,
and train the eye to identify the quiet layer and nuanced conversations taking place
in the space between footsteps. Seen this way, street art can emerge as an over-
looked political discussion which we will read through anthropological and vis-
ual lenses. In much the same way that the anthropologist Stephanie Kane walks
the neighborhoods in Argentina [Kane 2009] and Julie Peteet moves through
the West Bank to detail the military-imposed abatement and walls painted black
[Peteet 1996], this article, in conversation, reveals the ways by which walls and
everyday objects can be transformed into contentious spaces marked with diver-
gent imaginations and expectations.
We will consider these contestations as a form of spatialized conversation and as
such seek out the divergent voices engaged in the dialogue, and the ideologies that
inform their practice, turning our attention to the paint of the abater. Who, or what,
is behind this fixation to efface graffiti? How can we better understand what can
be learned by focusing on abatement? Following the philosopher Félix Guattari,
 70 M. Stewart and C. Kortright

sections below look at the ‘‘[c]racks in the texts of the State, cracks in the state of
things, in the state of places, in the state of norms... Cracks leading us despite our-
selves, to new social practices and to new aesthetic practices which will reveal
themselves as less and less separate from each other, and more and more in com-
plicity’’ [1987: 85]. In these cracks we can find new social practices of control and
resistance. In what follows, the acts of abatement will serve to identify discontinu-
ities and tensions in the practices of control. Indeed we will be looking directly at
cracks and the role of vision and visuality in relationship to state practices of con-
trol and ordering. By way of ethnographic vignettes and alleyway sojourns in
Canada and the United States, to investigate abatement as a dialogical practice,
each act of erasure serves to concurrently instigate further engagement with antag-
onistic agents as each negotiates the rights and limits of private property.
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‘‘OH, THEY OFTEN LEAVE US MESSAGES!’’

It is the last day of the crime prevention conference and the room is filled with
volunteers to attend a workshop on ‘‘Graffiti and Property Bylaws.’’ The confer-
ence, hosted in a small Canadian city, is a two-day event dealing with various
crime prevention strategies, and it serves as a networking venue for volunteers,
community members, police, and crime prevention specialists. The late-morning
workshop, hosted by local government employees, targets volunteers involved in
different crime prevention programs throughout the province. Neither the hosts
nor the audience are police officers, yet both groups are concerned with combating
crime. The main presentation outlines the ways in which these local government
workers are combating graffiti and how volunteers can assist at the local level.
The presenter opens by discussing local challenges with regard to graffiti. As
she flips through dozens of photos, she discusses the role of her agency in graffiti
projects. She offers anecdotes about volunteers and the removal of graffiti, the
areas in which graffiti are most likely to appear, and the cheapest ways to remove
them—all the while clicking through her PowerPoint slides as the visual support
for her discussion. The focus of her talk, and part of her job with the city, is to
facilitate the abatement of graffiti. It is a big business for private organizations
and an enterprise for local government.
During a pause in her presentation, a volunteer raises his hand. Despite a pres-
entation about the omnipresent and active graffiti abatement team, he gives a nod
to the cool weather outside and asks what they do in the winter season. He jokes,
‘‘you can’t abate because the paint would freeze!’’ The presenter smiles and the
audience chuckles. In good form she follows up with a witty retort: ‘‘Well, spring
is really busy!’’ The group erupts in laughter and soon other hands raise. Return-
ing to her slide presentation after questions, she appears surprised by the photo
that was left on display.
‘‘Oh,’’ she laughs, ‘‘they often leave us messages.’’
The photo on the screen is of a retention wall, one of the most common sites for
graffiti in this area, she explains. Across the wall a scrawled script in black spray
paint reads: ‘‘You squids can buff us but we keep comin’ back!’’ The presenter
comments that sometimes the messages ‘‘call us squids, other times we are pigs.’’
 Cracks and Contestation 71

She shrugs off the name-calling and translates for the audience: ‘‘buffing’’ means
abatement. The audience laughs and there is some chatter about the attitudes of
graffiti artists=writers=taggers. The language used between audience members
fluctuates, but their commitment to abate does not, as they exchange various tips
and tricks of the trade (what types of paint to use to abate, comments about
different surface types and best practices in abatement).
In closing, the presenter returns to her primary message: abatement is critical,
it must be timely and it must be vigilant. She tells the volunteers to return to their
communities and encourage local businesses to use non-inviting paint colors for
the outside of their buildings, as inviting colors could encourage graffiti artists.
She warns her audience that as long as graffiti writers are presented with ‘‘can-
vases’’ they will continue to paint. It was the job of each volunteer to assist their
community and businesses to mitigate. She speculates that black would be the
best color for a business. Painting the exterior walls black could combat graffiti;
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it might be the most effective way to remove an inviting canvas. She ends by
telling the audience members to go home and change the landscape.
In the crime prevention workshop the local government agent makes jokes
about the ‘‘messages’’ that are left for abaters by graffiti artists and writers—being
called a squid (generally derogatory: bitch) and pig is par for the course in this
labor. From her presentation, the insults are expected. The reference to pigs and
squids is used as an explicit example, but prior to this there is an ongoing dialogue
that itself seems to be marked by insult as each act of graffiti serves to transgress
expected conventions surrounding the right to private property—the right to not
have someone write on your property. Negating this right, artists and writers take
to the surfaces of the city and lay claim to spaces. Laying claim to spaces, appear-
ing to act as if they own all surfaces, artists engage in a dialogue with the legal
property owner and the city concurrently. And it is here that we see the struggle
over the control of space and value. Layers of paint serve as an entry through
which to investigate the terms of private property.

‘‘TO STOP CREATING CANVASES, YOU HAVE TO CHANGE THE

LANDSCAPE’’

Back in California taking pictures of graffiti and out of the corner of an eye, we
catch something that seems out of place—‘‘blackened’’ walls [e.g., Figures 1 and
2]. From a distance the walls appear burnt. Moving closer the burnt appearance is
replaced by a black wall with bubble art leaking through in shadows.
One of us begins snapping photo after photo, trying to capture the traces that
cannot be erased on the surface. With each zoom and click one sees a different
collision on the wall, different objects of control collide with small acts of trans-
gression: a security sticker on the side of the door, a motion detector light. Each
gesture meant to convey security and policing collides with its other: trans-
gression. The word transgression is particularly important here in that it marks
both the act of defiance and also the breaking of perceived boundaries. In this
alley graffiti are layered one atop the other. Black paint and black spray paint
are meant to claim the surface permanently—to clean it of graffiti and make it
 72 M. Stewart and C. Kortright

impenetrable in the future. Taking the photos, we recall the presenter and her
advice: ‘‘to stop creating canvases, you have to change the landscape.’’ But in this
alley, the canvas was alive with inscriptions and gestures. Here the canvas is a
landscape. It is lively and layered if you take the time to stop, look and read.
Around another corner, there’s a blackened wall. Again upon closer inspection,
the graffito still haunts the surface as it lingers in the shadows. The morality
and primacy of private property is laid to waste. Figure 2 captures the blackened
wall in which divergent claims to private property ownership are challenged. The
wall itself, with a white sign alongside—each is challenged. The eye is drawn in
and soaks up these confrontations. The wall serves as a space in which scripts
and claims to private property collide.
In this relationship of control, graffiti have what the political philosopher Jane
Bennett calls ‘‘thing-power.’’ Her concept is helpful in thinking about graffiti as
an actant and illustrating their ability to enroll both state agents and citizens into
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particular spatial practices as they negotiate control. Bennett writes, ‘‘things do in

fact affect other bodies, enhancing or weakening their power.’’ She continues by
arguing for a ‘‘focus on an elusive recalcitrance hovering between immanence and
transcendence (the absolute) to an active earthy, not-quite-human capaciousness

Figure 2 Another blackened wall with bubble letters leaking through to the surface. Of note, the
sign showing who is authorized to park is also defaced, but abatement does not seem a viable option
as a smear of paint would erase the claim to private property. (Photo # Michelle Stewart; color
figure available online)
 Cracks and Contestation 73

(vibrant matter)’’ [2010: 3]. We argue that graffiti have a ‘‘thing-power.’’ Bennett
argues for the materiality of things, seen and unseen, and brings together the
works of such theorists as Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Manuel
De Landa, Michel Serres and Baruch Spinoza in arguing for a ‘‘vibrant matter’’
and ‘‘thing-power.’’ Bennett attends to those ‘‘things’’ (living and nonliving) that
have the power to bring humans to action and intervention without denying the
‘‘vitality to nonhuman bodies, forces, and forms’’ [ibid.: 122]. Where often human
action is understood as being motivated and completed by human desire, this
way of looking at abatement helps us reread the writing on the wall as itself compel-
ling people to action through its ‘‘thing-power.’’ The paint in relation to the wall and
ideas of property brought together with laws and enforcement and the American
dream of home ownership draw humans into specific action.
At the outset of this article it was explained that police understand graffiti to
be part of the ‘‘broken windows theory.’’ Broken windows, too, have a ‘‘thing-
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power’’ which enrolls citizens, police, policy-makers and public imaginaries

across the United States and Canada. Indeed, the concept of the broken window
puts an emphasis on visuality. As discussed by the anthropologist Benjamin
Chesluk [2004], visible signs of disorder are meant to facilitate collaboration
between police and residents. Thus, like material and metaphoric broken
windows, graffiti are an actant in the struggle to control space; in our articulation,
what Bennett calls an ‘‘intervener’’ [2010: 9], which she derives as paralleled to
the Deleuzean ‘‘quasi-causal operator’’ [De Landa 2002; Deleuze 1994]. An oper-
ator, in this conception, is a thing that is situated in a particular location that
makes a difference. In this case, the paint located on the wall brings together
laws, desires, dreams, fines and property relations in such a way that in this
assemblage action occurs which wouldn’t be manifest in this particular way
had the paint not been there. That is, graffiti are the ingredient in a specific
location (in the relations of things, time and space) that makes things happen:
they are the catalysts of a set of events. They are the things, in this case, that evoke
action in the struggle over the spatial control. Seen this way graffiti produce a
response, abatement, and in so doing become entangled in larger discussions
and imaginaries about crime, order and the ideal community.
Making crime visible, or perceptions of crime visible, is a cornerstone in the
process of securing collaboration between the state and residents. As such, an
investigation of graffiti and abatement is also about much more: it is about order,
policing, collaboration and statecraft. In the crime prevention workshop the pre-
senter asked the audience to change the landscape in their communities. The very
materiality of the paint is that its colors change the urban landscape and enroll
individuals into action. This vitality of the paint on the wall draws human agents
into a constellation of actions that would not happen had the paint not appeared
on the wall. Once present there, the paint evokes city ordinances and ideals of
property, and actions are taken that reflect particular understandings and sensi-
bilities about clean and ordered space. The presenter at the workshop illustrated
the ways in which graffiti are taken up as a thing that must be mitigated, but also
a thing that pulls in the abaters by its very materiality and presence. She offered
examples of the messages exchanged between graffiti artists and abaters as a way
to detail the ongoing battle that was being waged on city surfaces.
 74 M. Stewart and C. Kortright

The following section takes these conversations further. By focusing on cracks

and crevices, we return to the notion of contestation by highlighting the ways in
which graffiti and the response of abatement can be seen as a dialogical, spatial
encounter—as part of an ongoing dialogue between users.

LIVING, BREATHING, WALKING, TALKING

Like many post-industrial cities, Sacramento, the capital of California, houses an
area of abandoned warehouses. Once vibrant spaces of productivity, these
locations have since lost their workers, machines and capital [Dudley 1994;
Hackworth 2006]. As is common, planners in Sacramento sought to replace this
so-called abandoned space with a redevelopment scheme: The Ice Blocks, named
after the historic district of ice factories.
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In Figure 3 the developer’s sign promoting the Ice Blocks is slapped up on a

wall to mark a future imaginary for the space—placed upon a series of already
engaged spatial practices, as evidenced by the different coats of paint. STK, a
graffiti artist, makes a claim to the space that is comparable to the poster for
the Ice Blocks.
Step closer. Closer. Now the bottom of the development sign highlights the
imagination of this project as ‘‘a living, breathing, walking, talking, shopping

Figure 3 Ice Blocks Dreams neoliberal gentrification is posted atop layers of graffiti and abate-
ment. The advertisement for the new development reads a ‘‘living, breathing, walking, talking,
shopping district’’ and is posted to the wall, smeared with splotches of gray, beige and brown.
‘‘STK’’ and others mark the space with a piece as large as the ‘‘Ice Blocks’’ advertising—perhaps
a friendly reminder that the future here is contestable. (Photo # Michelle Stewart; color figure
available online)
 Cracks and Contestation 75

district.’’ Layers of paint, years of discussions about who has the right to claim
this as theirs, serve as a reminder that this discussion is far from over. This
two-block area of Sacramento is home to many old warehouses with graffiti.
Nestled between rapid-transit tracks, mixed-use industrial, residential and com-
mercial spaces, these ‘‘abandoned warehouses’’ it was hoped might transform
into productive spaces that would encourage consumerism; a living, breathing,
shopping district. In their current state, these empty factories held a mix of vari-
ous forms of graffiti and wheat-pasted posters. Windows were smashed in some
buildings and a few locations doubled as housing for the city’s underprivileged.
The developer’s fantasy of white buildings and tree-lined streets collided with
the current state of buildings that were up for grabs as canvases for graffiti artists.
Taking photos in the district, we walk between the buildings and note the
imaginations at play between the buildings. Then something catches the eye.
Step closer. Looking closer at the abatement and the new tags, we see some-
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thing else. Behind a broad stroke of brown paint, there is a hinge that catches
the attention. The architectural feature harbors traces of previous transgressions.
A flick of green and red paint peeks out from behind the blanket of brown and
beige; a streak of white reminds one of the previous abatement—the conversation
continues in cracks and crevices [Figure 4]. This attention, the willingness to be
drawn into that which catches the eye, resonates with Marilyn Strathern’s dis-
cussion about the details of a canoe [2004: 69]. She argues that you cannot ignore
the color, or say the paint, if you are to understand the movement of things within
their human–nonhuman relations. Easily missed details deserve attention if we
are to pick up on these human interactions with the material world.
Drawing on these three different examples—a crime prevention workshop, the
alleys with blackened walls, and the Ice Blocks redevelopment—we now want to
focus on the claims and controls associated with private property. In the following
section we offer a discussion about the threat of defacement and the valorization
of private property. These sections are meant to support our larger argument that
graffiti and abatement can be understood as an ecology of practices in which graf-
fiti are treated as a threat because they open up possibilities beyond the enclosure.

LAW, CODIFICATION OR ETHICS?

The city council finds that the increase of graffiti on both public and private buildings,
structures, and other places creates a condition of blight within the city that can result
in the deterioration of property values, business opportunities, and enjoyment of life for
persons using adjacent and surrounding properties. The city council further finds that
the presence of graffiti is inconsistent with the city’s goals of maintaining property,
preventing crime, and preserving aesthetic standards. Unless graffiti is quickly removed,
it encourages the creation of additional graffiti on nearby buildings and structures. [Ord.
97-073 x 2; prior code x 61.17.1700]

The above excerpt is taken from Sacramento’s City Code which outlines in great
detail the city’s Graffiti Abatement Program, one in which graffiti are classified
as a ‘‘public nuisance’’ subject to abatement. The code outlines thresholds of
 76 M. Stewart and C. Kortright
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Figure 4 From a distance, walls appear covered in splotches of different colored paint, here white,
over there some brown and beige. Closer inspection reveals traces of the offense still present—red
and green paint folded into a crack (A) and green paint peeking from behind the hinge (B). (Photos
# Michelle Stewart)

responsibility in which property owners must remove graffiti within ten business
days, lest they be charged a fee by the city for the removal. Determined to
produce a prompt response, the city offers free paint and advice on how to
remove different types of paint from surfaces: advice alongside the threat of
sanction. Residents are encouraged to report graffiti to police, and the city
employs an ordinance compliance team to be sure that private property owners
are compliant with the abatement program. Seen this way, under penalty of sanc-
tion, private property owners are subject to the scrutiny of their neighbors who
might report graffiti or the agencies that investigate graffiti that are not removed.
Accordingly, the demand to take immediate action can, at times, produce an
exaggerated response.
The Marxist theorist Maya Gonzalez writes: ‘‘It became crucial to those with
homes to protect their property, and to preserve or increase its value by all means
possible’’ [2010]. The image of a ‘‘beautiful neighborhood’’ presumes to hold a
higher value for development of properties and getting home loans. In this frame-
work, private property emerges as something to be defended. Any defacement
 Cracks and Contestation 77

requires immediate action as a means to affirm the rights of the owners to that
which they own. When asserting one’s private property rights—and the denial
of access and use—antagonisms arise in this valorization of private property.
As discussed earlier, urban theorists frame graffiti as practices of place-making
and contestation. As such, practices of writing and erasing allow space to become
co-constituted through these ideological and dialogical practices of defacement.
Struggles over by-laws and the materiality of urban space are political
struggles, political conflicts and political dialogues. The anthropologist Michael
Taussig offers defacement as a political dialogue:

[N]o matter how crude, defacement and sacrilege thrive on bringing dead and apparently
insignificant matter to life... The power of the ruse and of obscenity speaks to the same
awakening of slumbering powers, and this brings us to the unsettling and indeed con-
temptible consideration that this is a large class of representations that have a strategic,
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built-in, desire to be violated, without which they are gapingly incomplete . . . [1999: 43]

These sleeping powers and their lively insignificance inspire this research as
ways to investigate transgressive spatial practices. Taussig’s notion of defacement
opens up ways in which to see how the ideals=ideology of private property and
art can be revealed during acts of transgression. Transgression of private property
helps to evoke the thing-power of graffiti. Taussig argues that a defaced space
becomes complete through the acts of defacement—by releasing energy. How-
ever, rather than agree that a space is completed through defacement, in the case
of graffiti, we argue that space continues to be made through acts of defacement.
The space is never complete, as acts of graffiti and abatement are part of an
ongoing conversation, an argument that lingers on city walls. Moreover, the acts
of both graffiti and abatement are each an act of defacement—each creating the
conditions upon which the other will occur. In this framework graffiti and abate-
ment are part of an ongoing conversation.
This conversation, a form of class antagonism, is a struggle over the control of
ways of being. The graffiti laws are deployed in such a way that the ideology of
private property is utilized for the valorization of capital through a relationship
of control by the state and private property owners (even if they are being coerced
through by-laws). Graffiti can also be seen as what the economist Harry Cleaver
calls ‘‘self-valorization’’ against the valorization of capital [Cleaver 2000]. Work-
ing alongside Antonio Negri in his re-reading of Grundrisse [1991], Cleaver and
Negri argue for a historical analysis of the struggle for working-class and com-
munity autonomy—against capitalist domination over people’s subjectivity. In
their works self-valorization is more than ‘‘self-activity of workers,’’ it is a struggle
for and against controlled ways of being. Thus graffiti may or may not be
considered political art, directions to the local soup kitchen, or tagging; no
matter what the ‘‘content’’ of the writing, each case is a divergent form of self-
valorization. The notion is that the diversity of this struggle cannot be seen as uni-
fied, as such: self-valorization is diverse in the sectors of resistance and autonomy.
Homeowners are brought into this struggle through their desire to abate, or are
coerced into doing so through particular local ordinances or by-laws. The out-
come remains the same: a slap of paint upon a surface [Figure 5].
 78 M. Stewart and C. Kortright
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Figure 5 A swipe of white paint covers over a tag on a wrought-iron fence. The white paint catches
the eye, making the prior graffiti all the more apparent from a distance. This compulsion to abate as
quickly as possible, with whatever paint available, makes the number of transgressions that much
more apparent. Indeed the assertion that graffiti are a sign of disorder seems at times eclipsed by acts
of abatement done in haste. A small scribble of ink on a wrought-iron fence is combated with a thick
slap of white paint. With no effort to match the paint to the original surface, the abatement itself
leaves a larger mark than the graffiti. (Photo # Michelle Stewart; color figure available online)

Seen this way, the state and its laws are producing space in a cycle of perpetual
making, due in part to graffiti laws meant to address spatial transgressions. To
transgress is often understood to be the act of breaking a law or rule. However,
we posit that transgressions are also actions that go beyond—the limit, the rule,
the presumption, the expectation—the law. To transgress a space, to go beyond
its limit, can be concurrently repressive and empowering. These spaces in the
making, the intolerance that surrounds graffiti and abatement, make for a visual
 Cracks and Contestation 79

spectacle, creating a provocative site for the photographer or ethnographer

fixated on reading the daily milieu, following traces.

SPACES OF ENGAGEMENT
Figures 6–7 illustrate an elaborate piece by ‘‘Drone,’’ a local artist in California.
The piece stretched the length of a wall alongside the commuter route into down-
town Sacramento and could be seen from two major thoroughfares as well as by
the passengers on the light rail train. The choice of location is interesting in that
the piece was placed on the back wall of the former paint store. Paint stores are
strange sites in which the ‘‘tools’’ of the trade are distributed to both sides. Paints
are acquired by artists and concurrently stores often offer free abatement supplies
to local residents and businesses. Many stores are pressured to lock up graffiti
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tools (such as spray-paint and pens) and still others demand identification from
individuals purchasing these items. The paint store becomes a complex location
negotiating many relations between state and citizen. In that way it was striking
to note that Drone chose the back of a paint store for this high-profile piece.
Although graffiti and street art are often ephemeral, and are so precisely because
of the requirement to abate [Figures 7–8], this piece nevertheless had a large
amount of exposure prior to removal.

Figure 6 ‘‘Drone’’ after piece completed. (Photo # Michelle Stewart)

 80 M. Stewart and C. Kortright
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Figure 7 ‘‘Drone’’ from a distance. (Photo # Michelle Stewart)

These abatement practices, and the spatial conversations they provoke, offer a
glimpse into the antagonistic relationship that surrounds private property as
revealed through tensions between graffiti artists and owners, graffiti artists
and police, graffiti artists of various cliques, graffiti artists and paint stores, as well
as private property owners and city planners. The first layer of tension between
graffiti artists, property owners and police is fairly obvious—graffiti are a trans-
gression that has been codified into a criminal offense. To engage in this activity
puts one in direct opposition to the state, through spatial antagonisms. However,

Figure 8 ‘‘Drone’’ removed. (Photo # Michelle Stewart)

 Cracks and Contestation 81

the other set of tensions between owners and the state may not be as tangible: this
antagonism is the result of laws that require abatement or impose sanction against
owners. These are laws meant to instill correct engagement, and respect of, private
property—of enclosure.
The philosopher Gilles Deleuze tells us that there is ‘‘a general crisis in relation
to all the environments of enclosure’’ [1992: 3]. The environment of enclosure has
a long history and one fraught with ongoing contestations. For each fence, a wire
cutter; for each wall, a can of spray paint. Abatement is a strictly enforced pro-
gram in most cities, with its enforcement being reinforced through broken win-
dow narratives and neoliberal articulations of responsible citizenry. The broken
windows and graffiti become the things of struggle over the control of space
and people. Whether one creates the graffiti or receives them, a punishment is
imminent; if you get caught doing graffiti you face criminal and civil charges;
if you are not covering graffiti up you are treated as a de facto accomplice and
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can face fines and civil charges. Here we see control being ‘‘dividualized’’ with
the intersecting logics of penal codes and markets [ibid.]. If graffiti are not
removed by the owner of the object, the city will pay its own workers and others
(i.e., those required to do so as part of community service for other illegal acts) to
cover the graffiti. The owner will then be ‘‘billed’’ for abatement ‘‘services.’’ In
this way, punishment is ‘‘dividualized’’ and administered through a blend of
state mechanism and neoliberal market logics.
In this formulation, the state appears to fixate on a perceived loss of control of
space and translates this fixation into a means to reassert control. The citizen=
subject who grabs paint and compulsively paints over the transgression in a time
of increasingly uncertain economic futures is conditioned to do so. The paint over
the wall or sidewalk could serve to conceal greater anxieties about holding one’s
class position, the protection of property values, and the ideology of being a
homeowner. And thus begins a conversation—however playful at one moment
or otherwise transgressive—mark, abate, mark. An endless attempt to control
space as a means to control subjects, the state and subject engage in pathological
behaviors, each seeking to harness and control.

ECOLOGY OF GRAFFITI AND ABATEMENT

Before concluding, we want to turn to Isabelle Stengers and her call for ‘‘new
modes of evaluation’’ as a means to move toward a different ethics of practice.
For Stengers [2007], ethics are always tied to the relationality between individuals
and collectives as they struggle over practices, noting that practices are always col-
lective endeavors. Working from Deleuze’s notion of ethics, values and modes of
evaluation, she argues ethics are focused on the struggle over the making and con-
trol of meaning which cannot be transcendent to the situation in question. Sten-
gers writes, ‘‘[Ethics] are about production of new relations that are added to a
situation already produced by a multiplicity of relations’’ [Stengers 2010: 33].
These relations can then be read in terms of their situated value, evaluation and
meaning. In other words, in the case of graffiti and abatement, we need a new
mode of evaluation—a new way to understand these acts as reflections of indivi-
duals and collectives in struggle. And we need to take seriously the struggle over
 82 M. Stewart and C. Kortright

understandings about control of private property and capital-informed spatial

practices—and about the class antagonisms that may underlie these practices
[Figures 9–10]. An ethics of practice frames graffiti and abatement as deeply rela-
tional acts. Turning to Figures 9–10, Drone emerges once again to lay claim to a
utility box, placing his name upon abatement, and KA joins this discussion. Of
note, to the left and right of Drone and KA are ‘‘notes.’’ This example raises a
few questions: did Drone and KA purposefully tag upon the abatement spot while
also not impinging on the notes about directions to the soup kitchen; how long has
the note about the soup kitchen been permitted to remain on this city property?
We will stay with this utility box for a moment. On first glance the box appears
to have some graffiti and ink scribbled on its surfaces; it has been defaced. It is
only upon looking closer, and looking differently, that we can see the layers.
The scribbles are instructions about where to find resources if you are living
on the margins; the graffiti are a claim to space. The law demands all forms of
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Figure 9 ‘‘Drone’’ makes an appearance on a utility box, atop a swipe of gray abatement paint—an
act that also serves to reassert claim to the space. Straddled on each side of ‘‘Drone’’ are directions to
the local soup kitchen in marker. (Photo # Michelle Stewart; color figure available online)
 Cracks and Contestation 83
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Figure 10 Close-up of the directions listed as ‘‘note’’ to the right of the ‘‘Drone’’ tag. Here the
utility box takes on a transformative power, serving a new utility: delivering messages about
how to find the Center that serves the homeless meals, including location and directions. (Photo
# Michelle Stewart)

defacement be removed which, in so doing, creates a new layer. From the writer
who lays claim to the property he does not own (Drone)—to the person who
makes homelessness that much more visible (with instructions to the soup
kitchen). It is these layers of spatial antagonisms that we are concerned with as
they are part of an ecology of practice.
Stengers discusses the idea of an ‘‘ecology of practices,’’ so as to emphasize both
the divergence and the possibility of destruction that characterize what she calls
practice [2005]. Ecology works for her as a ‘‘transversal category’’ to help define
relational heterogeneity; hence she uses ecology to situate and relate hetero-
geneous protagonists; protagonists always in struggle. What Stengers calls ‘‘eco-
logical situations’’ induces protagonists to define their subjects not in general
terms; rather they define them in specific terms of how the ethos—the needs,
behaviors, habits and crucial concerns—of each protagonist diverges positively.
Ecology has no point of contact with the ‘‘ideal’’ of harmony, peace and good-
will. Stengers argues that the idea of ecology is incompatible with neutrality. Her
 84 M. Stewart and C. Kortright
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Figure 11 A flick of paint and a flash of green. (Photo # Michelle Stewart; color figure available
online)

work helps open up new questions about contestation and control of urban space
[Figure 11]. There is not a central or high position, there is no ideal or neutral pos-
ition. Rather there is a struggle to control and enclose space and value; a struggle
to resist the control of capital and the state. Moving from Stengers, we argue that
within this struggle there is only an ethics of individual and collective interaction
with urban space, and the thing-power of the paint and markings on the walls. It is
only when we slow down to see the ink, to look for the paint between the cracks,
to see the notes about the soup kitchen, that we are better able to locate these sites
of struggle and control.

CONCLUSION
This article began by stating that it was about taking a walk with a camera—a
walk informed by discussions with police about graffiti and crime prevention.
 Cracks and Contestation 85

From this walk, city walls and door hinges came alive to transform buildings and
streetlight posts into battlegrounds. Walls that were once a mess of slapped-on
colors of gray, beige, white and brown were no longer evidence of poor painting
practice—instead these walls became the site of conversations. The walls become
the testimony to the tenacity of defacers and abaters. A pipe in an alley marked
with a streak of white paint meant to conceal a scribble. The scribble implicitly
said, ‘‘not yours,’’ and the blotch of white paint barked back, ‘‘not yours either!’’
This is thus an article about scribbles and slaps of paint. In this narrative, each
unauthorized scribble is seen as defiant.
By looking at city walls and other everyday street objects as they are under
abatement, this article considered closely the layered conversations and struggles
over the control of urban space. By investigating city ordinances, ideologies and
practices that underpin abatement, we have offered a new way to consider the
graffiti that necessarily challenges the valorization of private property. By looking
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at fence posts, garage doors and abandoned buildings as sites of spatial contes-
tation, we find these locations offer a means by which to see individual and
collective struggles taking place in the post-industrial city. The article argues
for an ethics that forces us to slow down and look at these struggles. If we move
toward understanding graffiti and abatement as an ecology of practice, it would
allow these spaces to be understood as sites of heterogeneous struggle, as evi-
denced by the conversations taking place with each layer of paint. Seen this
way, these struggles can be counted and we will begin to account for the ways
in which the state is coercing conversations as it attempts to assert control.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank those who offered insight and feedback on this material at earlier stages of
development: Joseph Dumit, Marisol de la Cadena, Alan Klima, Patrick Carroll and Li Zhang. Special thanks to
our anonymous reviewer for his=her helpful insights to strengthen the text, and to Jieun Lee and Taouba Khelifa
for their comments on the revised drafts.

NOTES
1. The photos and the ethnographic material are the work of Michelle Stewart.
2. In March 1982 an article appeared in The Atlantic Monthly entitled ‘‘Broken Windows:
The Police and Neighborhood Safety.’’ It argued that if one window is broken in a
community and no one fixes the window, more windows will be broken and soon the
community will be lost to outright disorder, crime and chaos. This was a narrative of
shared responsibility in which communities secured order through vigilance. Steeped
in the logics of neoliberalism, the article’s primary claim was that police alone could
not make a community safe, that each citizen is responsible for the peace or chaos that
befalls their communities [Wilson and Kelling 1982]. Thirty years later, the conversation
about broken windows continues: evoked when discussing absentee owners who allow
properties to fall into disrepair, called forth to support claims that graffiti and vandalism
create disorder and crime. Although the ‘‘broken windows theory’’ has been taken up,
debated, debunked and reaffirmed in many locations it nevertheless resonates in
contemporary discussions about community order and is often evoked in discussions
 86 M. Stewart and C. Kortright

about graffiti and the need for abatement. During the writing of this article, James
Q. Wilson passed away at the age of 80. Remembrances and obituaries cited him as
foremost the ‘‘pioneer’’ and ‘‘architect’’ of the broken windows theory.

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