Illegitimate Art : What Power Cannot Domesticate, It Tries to Erase

Friday, April 11, 2025

It’s not the absence of complexity that renders an art form illegitimate.
It’s the absence of obedience.

Cultural power — institutions, elite circles, academies, museums —
does not legitimize art based on its depth,
but based on its compliance with symbolic order.

An art form is “noble” if it can be polished, framed,
taught in schools,
applauded without destabilizing the foundations of the world.

An art form is “illegitimate” if it produces disturbance.
If it’s born in rupture,
in mouths too full of rage,
in bodies too marked to be aestheticized,
in mental ghettos, geographic margins,
backstreets, basements, pirate signals.

Rap, graffiti, trap, radical stand-up, raw dance —
they aren’t excluded because they lack language.
They’re excluded because they speak too truthfully.
Too fast. Too loud.
Without asking permission.

They don’t need institutional gaze to exist.
And that’s precisely what makes them dangerous.

So power tries to reduce them.
To ridicule them.
To dilute them into decor: clean, sellable, emptied.

But the core remains.
Untouchable.

And some carry that core without compromise.
Not to express themselves.
But to survive with dignity.

These are the art forms power wants to erase.
Not because they’re weak.
But because they show that strength can live outside the frame.

And sometimes,
the only way to remain alive in this world
is to speak in the rhythm of the real,
until legitimacy itself starts to tremble.