Speaking Graffiti: Imaging Human Rights from Belfast to the West Bank

Abstract

The human rights conditions of Northern Ireland and Palestine have been analyzed up, down, and sideways by a robust scholarly literature, this article provides a fresh approach to the analysis of media with respect to cultural aspects of human rights conundrums through images of localized as well as globalized “graffiti.” From the near universal influence of the painting of George Washington and company crossing the Delaware River, to brave but dangerous anti-regime graffiti in North Korea, the political nature of private artists operating in the public realm for human rights is recognized as a potentially destabilizing and regime-busting act. With a lens pointed on Palestine and Northern Ireland, we examine this cultural artifact’s power to get attention, obstruct persecution, and ultimately to mitigate some human rights abuses. How does such graffiti work? What are the similarities and differences in their power for enhancing human dignity through different times and places? We also look at the relationship of human rights graffiti to current political trends internationally. Images are used here as method of analysis that may help explain the broader implications of political graffiti for the study of a particular medium of transmission for the study of cultural and societal norms.