7. “Build the Wall”: Posthuman Encounters with Political Chalkings on Higher Education Campuses

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, political chalkings on university campuses were rampant and displayed pro-Trump messages ranging from mundane to blatantly offensive. Responses to these chalkings focused on simplistic dialogues of freedom of speech, ignoring them as radical sites of visual activism, racial/political difference, and systemic oppression. Locating the chalkings in the contextual backdrop of the Anthropocene, this essay explores the 2016 political campus chalkings as complex sites where race/place/politics/education entangle through enactments of visual activism. Assembling photographs, articles, and postings related to the political campus chalkings on one particular university campus, we used a nomadic analysis and found that the chalkings complicate issues of race, gender, oppression, and equity. Thus, campus chalkings emerge as complex events that deserve complex analyses. Turning to a posthuman methodology allowed us to complicate our questions, attend to the materiality of the chalkings, and explore affirmative possibilities for higher education in the Anthropocene moving forward.