Fighting Epistemic Injustice with Graffiti by Kaela

Fighting Epistemic Injustice with Graffiti by Kaela - October 2026 Scholarship Essay

Epistemology and graffiti. Two words I never knew could be put next to each other in a sentence until a recent project I did for my technical writing class. It was a simple project with two parts; the first one was to pick a topic of our choice and do research on it to find an article. The second part was to take what we learned from the article and present that information to the class for 3-5 minutes. A simple task, albeit speaking in front of my class made me want to put my head down on the table because of how much I hate giving presentations. But this project introduced me to those two words at the beginning and they haven’t left me since.

When I knew I could research any topic I knew it would be art-related. Art is my first love, but it wasn’t until I was in class one day that I decided the type of art I wanted to talk about: graffiti. Researching an article that was interesting to me and that I would be willing to talk about in front of my class was a challenge. At first, I searched for articles that talked about what graffiti was and the different types of it. After barely finding an interesting article, I tried to look up ones that talked about the history of graffiti, but they were scarce on the database I was using. It took me about a week to find an article and the premise of it was definitely not something I’d ever heard before: how graffiti can be used to combat epistemic injustice.

Finding Your Voice in the Streets: Street Art and Epistemic Injustice by Sondra Bacharach discusses how street art can be used as a tool to help with combating social injustice ingrained in the American system. With the example of two graffiti projects, Bacharach explains how graffiti art can be used to force awareness of social issues that lobbying or public demonstrations can’t always do.

I’d never heard of epistemic injustice before this project and essentially there are two types of it: hermeneutic injustice and testimonial injustice. Hermeneutic injustice is when a person does not understand that a personal attack they experience is not something they just experience, but what a whole group may face. A testimonial injustice is when a speaker’s experience and credibility are dismissed by the hearer due to their bias. These injustices are ingrained so deeply in our society that some methods may not always bring awareness to these issues. Graffiti, however, allows for the voiceless to have a voice and for their experiences to be put into public places that will give people pause and cause further discussion.

Originally to me, graffiti was messy, illegal stenciling that didn’t have much meaning when I would see it on old buildings or underpasses. I never looked twice at it, but with Bacharach’s article it has caused me to pause whenever I see graffiti. Sometimes graffiti really is just vandalism, but other times it can be personal or it can address current social issues. When researching articles about graffiti, I did learn how there are genuine messages to the stenciling and images of graffiti. Bacharach’s article made me realize how there are various avenues for combating difficult issues in the world and it has made me understand that there are different ways to have a voice in the world. Graffiti may be one of the more reckless options, but it can still be just as effective when done with a purpose.

So, maybe next time you're going past somewhere with graffiti, you’ll also pause to look at it. Maybe you’ll question why it's there and whether there is a purpose or message behind it. As I've learned from my project, combating injustices can come in different ways. Some of them may just seem more unconventional compared to others, but sometimes the most unconventional methods are the ones that get people's attention.