The affective labor of commoning: Street art in illiberal Hungary

Abstract

In Hungary, street art has emerged as a unique form of political activism since 2010, when the authoritarian populist Fidesz-KDNP government rose to power. This essay examines the street art projects of a political party, the MKKP, that transformed this genre into a practice of commoning and a mode of critique to call out the government for not maintaining the commons for the benefit of all. The MKKP's street art projects harness affective labor, which strategically links projects of repairing decaying public property with the political program of fostering active citizenship. Yet the affective labor of commoning is not recognized as a valorized form of political labor and the MKKP has not been able to gain representation in parliament. Against this backdrop, the MKKP uses satire as a strategy to emasculate an authoritarian government and a sexist political culture that does not acknowledge the political value of affective labor. The MKKP's street art projects, I conclude, shed light on the paradox that the affective labor of building democracy does not always benefit the ones who perform this labor. Nevertheless, the MKKP's activists generate other benefits following different temporalities as they expand political participation and make it more inclusive.