CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Lukac, Stanislav |
|---|---|
| Title | When writing turns savage: Contextualizing anti-Semitic graffiti on the streets of Krakow and Budapest |
| Summary | In order to interpret the meaning of graffiti as well as their place within urban dynamics and social imaginings of cityscapes, it is of crucial importance to acknowledge the site-specificity and context-sensitivity of graffiti as general social phenomena. Apart from “taking place” in the urban landscape, graffiti also “take position”, which is governed by a particular discourse. Racist graffiti, too, provide “an unrestrained social commentary". The places of my research enquiry, Krakow and Budapest propose a number of intriguing parallels worthy of attentive investigation Both cities were forced to undergo fundamental changes in urban planning as well as to renegotiate the symbolic meanings of several urban areas. The increasing rapidity of changes, combined with the emphasis on the restoration of neglected and problematic areas in the framework of new regeneration schemes often leads to hasty decisions and arbitrary interpretations of space in urban arena. Similarly, it also brings about challenges for redefinition of individual and collective memory. Such processes of reidentification generate, in turn, the new forms of contestation. The phenomenon of anti-Semitic graffiti epitomizes one of these forms and its complex nature deserves a proper and comprehensive analysis. This thesis endeavor to contextualize the inscribed anti-Semitism as a global social phenomenon that takes on various forms and accounts for different consequences in different localities. By showing graffiti in its hooligan form, as a way of voicing one's opinion in a heated political debate that spilt over to the streets of contemporary cities or using it as a term of abuse or contempt, it highlights the ambiguity of such racist statements as well as the deeply engrained preconceptions that continue to inform the anti-Semitic discourse nowadays. |
| Supervisor | Monterescu, Daniel; Fabiani, Jean-Louis |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/lukac_stanislav.pdf |
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