Palgrave Macmillan has just released a new edited volume of Palgrave Studies in Otherness and Communication series, which deals with examining topics related to experiences of exclusion in communication and socio-cultural interaction. The recently published book, Communicating Human and Non-Human Otherness (edited by Helen Pires, Zara Pinto-Coelho and Luísa Magalhães), approaches the generic theme of the series from the perspectives of urban culture and posthumanist studies. It brings together a broad variety of essays examining the different ways in which agency reinvents itself, whether in the urban space, through the multiple forms and devices of art and culture, or through the relationship with technology and the surrounding environment, as a result of contemporary conditions of post-humanism and the anthropocene.

One of the essays in this volume is authored by Mitja Velikonja, one of our core MEMPOP graffiti researchers. As you might have guessed, Mitja’s chapter is titled “Don’t Trans*Phobe, Trans*Form Yourself” – (Anti)-Homophobic and (Anti-)Patriarchal Graffiti of the Post-Socialist Transition (pp. 179-200). His research explores an abundance of (anti-)homophobic and (anti-)feminist graffiti, stickers, stencils, murals, posters, and similar street interventions from various corners of post-socialist Europe, with a particular focus on Slovenia. The chapter delves into critical questions: How are the discourses of homophobia and patriarchy constructed and expressed on urban walls and surfaces? What forms of reaction and resistance do they provoke? The chapter’s fundamental research perspective is represented by “visual politics”, or political graffitology, as Mitja terms it.

You can find the essayist 11th chapter in the Communicating Human and Non-Human Otherness book or access it directly by clicking here.