aRCHITECTURE AS AN hEROIC dEED

The most heroic moments in the process of fragmentation and dialectical opposition described above are also provided by buildings. Architecture in Kingston is often used as a vehicle of ideological expression: each home becomes a contract of allegiance, an icon of political, utopian or religious desire ranging from the hedonistic to the anti-materialist. The bible, the writings of Marcus Garvey and other texts are instruments of political alignment: quotations are painted over entrances; wall-paintings and graffiti regulate the metabolism of people going in and out. The urban poet Mr. Wesley until recently lived in a tree between a shantytown and the ministry of Finance around Hero’s Circle. The tree is a safe place. It was hung with long cardboard strips on which Mr. Wesley had written his poetry, full of the pathos of racial division, of violence and incomprehensible justification.