Graffiti in the Lawscape: Seizing the Circuits of Valorization of an Elusive and Resistant Practice

In this piece, we approach graffiti from the perspective of the ‘circuits of valorization’ that qualify as well as quantify it. We understand a valorization circuit as an assemblage of cultural, legal, economic and geographic dynamics surrounding a given artefact, which eventually confer a certain ‘value’ to it. Here, we look at examples of global graffiti, with attention to how cities and administrations juggle with its controversial valorization, implementing various policies to rein it in, but also to exploit it. Typically, graffiti appears and lives in ill-defined, metamorphic urban spaces: as an urban artefact, graffiti occupies loose, interstitial places and rhymes with an aesthetic of defacement and infestation. The ‘in place/out of place’ dialectic is thus central for claims to legitimacy, legality, and, ultimately, also the ‘quality’ of graffiti. Through the lens of radical legal pluralism, we argue that graffiti can insert a distinctive dynamism into the lawscape, rather than be a sheer inert object of urban policies. Graffiti itself actively participates, not simply in populating the lawscape, but in its actual crafting.