Culture Jamming?

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.

Critical Electracy

When I laid out plans for my dissertation, I imagined electracy becoming a key element in reimagining critical pedagogy. One of the cornerstones of critical pedagogy is critical literacy: Shor claims, "We can redefine ourselves and remake society, if we choose, through alternative rhetoric and dissident projects. This is where critical literacy begins, for questioning power relations, discourses, and identities in a world not yet finished, just, or humane" ("What is Critical Literacy?" Shor 282). Critical literacy is one of four parts Shor defines as needed for a critical mind; the others being power awareness, permanent desocialization, and self-education/organization. Power Awareness refers to understanding how society was and continues to be formed through various power structures and human actions; permanent desocialization challenges the status quo and examines how democratic and personal transformation can take place; and self-education/organization refers to pursuing knowledge and working towards a cause as both an individual and a group.


Ulmer sees "electracy being to digital media what literacy is to the alphabetic writing." He even develops an intriguing chart: 



Many of the shifts seem to fall in line with my research interests: the role of the affective (body/joy/sadness),  speculative labor (entertainment), new media literacies
(play), and fantasy (imagination in key figures such as Maxine Greene). My problem is that I'm not ready to delve into the deep end of electracy with MyStory or generative acts meant to mine out an understanding of our thought processes and personal schema. Perhaps I am still too wedded to good ol' literacy, but I want to see concrete texts addressing a rhetorical situation.

Reality is Broken

Throughout the course of this semester, I will be exploring and designing assignments/activities for my critical pedagogy 2.0 test class. The first text I am employing in this journey is Reality is Broken. Play is emerging as a key concept for me. Henry Jenkins lists it as a new media literacy; it is tied to John Dewey's experiential learning. Jane McGonigal makes an interesting argument to promote the use of games to engage students socially, asking "What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what's wrong with reality? What if we started to live our real lives like games, lead our real businesses and communities like game designers, and think about solving real-world problems like computer and game theorists" (7).

I have to admit that I am not much of a gamer unless you count Mahjong. I don't understand sitting in front of the computer for hours on end laboring away in online worlds... at least not fictitious worlds. If we could harness the labor of WoW and Halo players, perhaps we could solve the great problems of the world. Could video games be a training ground? Steve Johnson would say yes.

The question is how can I employ a computer game in an online composition class? It will need to be tied to research to fulfill the outcomes and objectives of an English 112 class. The first game I examined is Evoke. It sounds great, but I can't figure out how to play it now. All the information seems to be out of date and my membership has been pending for over a week. I tried a game called Play the News, but after a few minutes I found myself asking, shouldn't a game be fun? If it can't hold my attention, how can it hold the attention of a student?

My quest continues...