Graffiti as a social struggle for recognition: A comparative perspective between Rio de Janeiro and Berlin

Based on the critical theory of recognition as well on empirical research realized with graffiti writers in Rio de Janeiro and in Berlin, the paper attempts a comparative analysis of the role of Graffiti movement in making of social practices of recognition and individual identities. The writers have, respectively, developed their own forms of political and cultural expression as a means of developing identity and combating the social integration system. The art practice is a way to articulate their own objective needs, aspirations and ask for more efficient institutions for deliberation and representation of their claims. Like the Berliners, the Brazilians have their aesthetic ambitions, even though they are embedded in different recognitional relations. The first group has a historical background of more egalitarian relations of recognition of social respect that pave their strategy to settle a specific moral conflict. Conversely, the result is that the two specific forms of experience of social suffering and search for self- realization, brings in the case of Brazilians, the tendency to push forward talents and artistic capabilities that empower their identities and the way they value themselves and their individual achievement. This process brings the vulnerability to accept asymmetrical relations of value attribution for the social inclusion of life styles of cultural groups, reinforcing the individualization of the experience of social living as well the main capitalist value of individualist ideology of achievement. The Berliners are focused in the ambition to earn respect for their identity claims. Their identity claim, is not justified by the aesthetic merit of their practices, it is a social struggle for the recognition for equal opportunity of the chances for self- realization, for that, they open the question that the institutional anchoring of equal rights affects and threatens their life projects and perspectives.