My English 112 course redesign is going live in a little over a month and still I am on the fence on what assignments to highlight. The most trying aspect of a dissertation is picking a few key components and sticking with them over years of grueling research. It's the Renaissance wo"man"'s nightmare. My latest inspiration comes from Amber Day's Satire and Dissent. The term jumping out at me is culture jamming, which makes commentary through parody and irony. She quotes Stephen Duncombe, who writes "the idea of a performed cultural world seems second nature to us. Add into this the mix the internet, the virtual world of signs and symbols where an increasing amount of our everyday life takes place, and it's no surprise that activism has embraced culture. Activists have become cultural guerrilas because this is the terrain of the battles they fight." This shift coincides with Gregory Ulmer's argument that electracy (digital media's equivalent of literacy) happens within the institution of entertainment.
Mark Dery defines culture jammers as individuals who "introduce noise into the signal as it passes from transmitter to receiver, encouraging idiosyncratic, unintended interpretations. Intruding on the intruders, they invest ads, newscasts, and other media artifacts with subversive meanings; simultaneously, they decrypt them, rendering their seductions impotent."It's surprising to me that after years of studying critical pedagogy, which is centered around counterhegemonic practices and resistance, that I've never encountered culture jamming in any of the anthologies or journal articles that I've read. Could culture jamming be related to Alexander Galloway's concept of hypertrophy? Are we redirecting the network of capitalism?
I'm operating under the premise that nothing falls outside of capitalism. Kalle Lasn, founder of Adbusters, seems to agree, stating "anti-consumers aren't the enemies of consumerism; they are its cutting edge." Christine Harold argues that it isn't enough to take a stand against corporations; new possibilities must be given to consumers.
