“My Government Did This:” Exploring the erasure of the Beirut port wall

Abstract

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork to examine the affective and agentive power of graffiti in Beirut after the August 4 Beirut explosion, specifically the graffiti on the port wall: “My government did this.” The paper investigates the whitewashing of the port wall, the erasure of this phrase, and the subsequent policing that took place. I study how graffiti has an emotional or affective hold on civilians and is intrinsically tied to the practice of agency. In short, the paper discusses how graffiti opens a space for the transgression of dominant or hegemonic systems of power.