Graffiti: the opposition of politics and everyday life

The purpose of this essay is to give an in-depth analysis of the meaning and significance of graffiti in academic spaces, which represent a constellation of cultures, attitudes, beliefs and approaches on social environment; multicultural spaces impregnated with a diversity of religious/ethnic tendencies and different lifestyles. The main idea of this research is that nowadays formal academic spaces, which are supposedly controlled through formal conventions and scientific discourses, have become a territory representing informal interactions, everyday habits and private affairs. Therefore, the social life of actors here convey some delicate aspects that are reflected in unpredictable ways. Graffiti is a main sphere of representation of hidden and excluded meanings, contradictions and communicative gaps between actors. Analyzing the texts written on tangible spaces is a way to interpret meanings and codes immanent in latent interactions. On a theoretical level, this research attempts to use sensitive concepts and critical statements to interpret these texts and make their latent codes clear. Then, on the methodological level, by using thematic analysis, it attempts to infer their main categories and themes. The field of study is University of Kurdistan, mainly the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the faculty of Natural Resources. The findings show that six main categories are outstanding: desire for the opposite sex, sexual aggression, sociophobia, loneliness, ethnic tendencies and political protest. The central category is the opposition of politics and everyday life.