Effective visual communication has become an essential strategy for grassroots political activists, who use images to publicly express resistance and make their claims visible in the struggle for political power. However, this “aesthetics of resistance” is also employed by political and economic elites for their own purposes, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish from the “aesthetics of rule.” Through illuminating case studies of street art in Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Caracas, and Mexico City, The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance explores the visual strategies of persuasion and meaning-making employed by both rulers and resisters to foster self-legitimization, identification, and mobilization.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Political Power, Visual Communication, and Public Space
Chapter 1. From Conceptualizing to Analyzing Visual Power and Resistance
Chapter 2. Street Art: A Medium of Visual Political Communication
Chapter 3. Setting the Scene: Street Art in Latin American Urban Space
Chapter 4. Buenos Aires: “Latin America – Now or Never”
Chapter 5. Mexico City: “Another World is Possible” – Democracy, Freedom, Justice
Chapter 6. Caracas: “El Comandante” is Present
Chapter 7. Bogotá: “Exploitation Ruins Life”
Chapter 8. Across the Cities: Strategies of Visual Meaning-Making
Conclusions: “The Media Are Theirs, the Walls Are Ours”
References
Appendix A: Shooting Script for the Photo-Documentation
Appendix B: Image Descriptions and Image Sections/Composition from the Detailed Analyses
Appendix C: Code Frequencies
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