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Some Criticisms of Culture Jamming |
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Written by DC Tedrow
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Saturday, 26 January 2008 |
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Today saw riveting discussion on Gramsci's theory of hegemony, Marx and Engel's views on ideology, and even culture jamming. I have problems with hegemony--I think it fails to explain a broad range of institutional behavior, in fact--but this is the sort of thing I'm reluctant to speak on, because I'm still teasing out what I don't like about it. My gut reaction to culture jamming is another matter, since in the short term it actually matters. Culture jamming--the practice of turning mass communication on itself, often in order to send strong anti-consumerist messages--has its roots in the Situationist International, whose antics in turn had roots in radio jamming. Today, culture jamming usually refers to things like Google Bombing, screwing with billboards, and so on. Basically, it entails symbolic protest that on the whole turns out to be pretty amusing to view or watch. There's more to it than this, of course, but I'll leave it to the reader to search more on his or her own. Important for the purpose of this discussion is that people take it seriously, often having complete faith it its utility and efficacy, and sometimes even treating culture jamming as if it were a revolutionary activity. Writes Asa Wettergren: Culture jamming appears to be a promising resistance strategy, particularly its specialization in the manipulation of mainstream media and its deconstruction of hegemonic discources. (from "Like Moths to a Flame: Culture Jamming and the Global Spectacle," in Representing Resistance Media, Civil Disobedience, and the Global Justice Movement. Eds: Andy Opel, Donnalyn Pompper, p.28)
I take issue with this, for at least three reasons I can discern. First, there is the problem that culture jamming is basically the same thing as what it ostensibly challenges. I have in mind both its content and form. Consider Adbusters, the headquarters and bastion of culture jamming efforts in Canada and the United States. On behalf of culture jamming, Adbusters sells anti-Converse shoes (Blackspots), takes out space for anti-consumerist commercials and advertisements, and even sells culture jamming supplies - posters and stickers and such. Selling products seems to be the locus of their strategy, in fact. We have a word for this sort of strategy: capitalism. Furthermore, by relying on capitalist methods and, presumably, assuming a top-down organizational structure, Adbusters replicates precisely the sort of features of corporations that make them detestable. In other words, it replicates corporate divisions of labor and heirarchy. You can't use capitalist values to subvert capitalism. I think this is a problem with many counter-culture and counter-institutional "alternatives," in fact. Consumer cooperatives, for instance, seem to me to suffer from the same problem: You might put some sort of abstract power into the hands of consumers, but only on paper. In reality, consumers cooperatives basically replicate the shareholder model of corporations: member-owners are like shareholders, management is like a board of directors or a CEO, and workers are still deprived of self-management. In some cases, the workers are completely screwed, too - many of the workers at Austin's Wheatsville food co-op were cut in a mass firing a year or so back, for instance. Hardly an alternative to the job insecurity that corporations offer. Second, culture jamming is too sporadic, too spread out, to do anything. A dance party in a Wal-Mart? Buy nothing day? Google bombing? This isn't activism, it's bullshit. And culture jamming certainly doesn't appear to be a "promising resistance strategy" if this is the best it can do. This is profoundly lazy. It's based on the same sort of logic which says that democracy is rolling off the couch once every four years to vote for the lesser of two evils. I'm not even sure their heart's in the right place. All of this smacks of "good guy" capitalism--which is still capitalism--rather than an alternative to capitalism. And if culture jammers aren't assuming an anti-capitalist framework, to hell with them. Third, culture jamming is too tame to be revolutionary. I've debated this point this elsewhere with friends. Some of my previous comments on symbolic protest bear on this, I think: It was put to me by a friend that throwing a brick through a Starbucks window in downtown Seattle was probably more effective than trying to set up a Parecon coffeeshop across the street. My friend's comments were meant to be "a funny reply to Albert's reply against ACME's communique on supporting and rationalizing property destruction in 99 Seattle." I haven't read it, but I imagine it sounds something like the "Open Letter to the Seattle Trashers, the Unions, the Peaceful Protesters, and the Non-Violent Resisters" which appeared in Black Rose's Anarchist Papers. (Vol. 1) The general critique of property destruction was this: It doesn't raise conciousness, it has practically no effect on free traders, and it allows the media to focus on fringe actors rather than a mass mobilization. In short, it is tactically wrong. Because it was so backward tactically, there were even concerns that some of the storefront destroyers were nothing but cops and other agent provocateurs who had joined the crowd of demonstrators in order to discredit it. The relevant portion of my response was: ... I disagree that throwing a brick through a window is more effective than creating autonomous workplaces. You break a window, a corporation is out a few hundred dollars. It might work if you broke all of their windows every time they decided to repair them, which forced them to shut down. I could totally get behind that. One, though? Or even several on one day of the year? I wouldn't be surprised if they turn it around as an example of how "edgy" they are, kind of like how Urban Outfitters sells Banksy books in their store on the Drag. But creating non-hierarchical, non-coercive, (relatively) autonomous workplaces that not only put economic vision to the test but help people put food on the table? The difference between the two isn't even debatable. There's a reason that corporations can use black bloc imagery, anarcho-punk, Che, and all these other things in their marketing schemes - they're all pretty chic, and don't really offer examples of alternatives to capitalism. In other words, they're non-threatening, so they can go ahead, throw them out there into the public consciousness, and exploit these images in advertisements. Who cares what a bunch of escapists and counter-culture types do? It won't matter in the long run. But have you seen a major corporation try to identify with workplace democracy? Or balanced job complexes? Or expropriation? Or with collective endeavors or federated communities and workplaces that could replace the state in all its functions? Maybe I'm sheltered, but I haven't. And the reason you won't see these ideas exploited by corporations, and which are at the core of constructive anarchist and syndicalist thought, is that for corporations, this imagery is much more suicidal to propagate than black bloc members causing property damage. I'm not saying property damage shouldn't be ruled out. I completely agree with Gelderloos and Churchill when they argue that nonviolence is racist, protects the state, etc. But if asked which matters more for both radicals on the ground and, say, welfare mothers, I'm going to have to go with workers' self management and other, constructive efforts to build the institutions we need to live freely. If we're not interested in workers' self-management, in creating some sort of bottom-up socialism or communism, then what is the alternative to capitalism? Destroying the state-corporate nexus and then foraging? This anti-civ/primitivist strain is not compelling, and completely reactionary.
This is somewhat off topic, but I'm feeling a bit lazy at the moment. Hopefully it opens other roads of discussion. I think the point about corporations co-opting radical imagery is also a strong criticism of culture jamming.  Be first to comment this article |  Add as favourites (92) |  Quote this article on your site | Views: 259
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An Unveiling: The New Texas Radical |
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Written by DC Tedrow
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Thursday, 17 January 2008 |
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In 2006, some friends and I produced a newsprint magazine called Turning the Tide, which went through four issues before it went defunct in the face of insane work hours and my increased involvement with Portside Books Collective (also defunct). Now that I'm at UT, I've been involved with some other groups and started a successor to Turning the Tide. I invite everyone reading this to visit The New Texas Radical (TNTR): From TNTR's About page: The New Texas Radical is a radical news website based in Austin, Texas. This publication aims to discuss political, social, economic, and cultural themes relevant to Texas from radical viewpoints; to expand community understanding of these themes; to provide a voice for activists and citizens committed to spreading social justice by helping to overthrow capitalism, class, white power, patriarchy, homophobia, xenophobia, war, and other deep-rooted institutional failures; and to help build a libertarian socialist movement. As a publication, we embrace advocacy journalism, or the practice of using fact-based arguments to support certain views and causes. In particular, we side with History’s Losers: the poor, the oppressed, minorities, workers, women, and children. In this way, we are openly biased against reactionaries and committed to social justice.
Interesting in submitting work? Look no further. Even if you're not interested in submitting, please, please circulate the link for this website. Send it to your friends, relatives, fellow activists, whatever progressive and radical listservs you read, etc. Post it on your blog. Drop the name "New Texas Radical" in coversations with coworkers. Just go wild with it, basically. We hold to a certain standard of writing absent from most Indymedia websites, and the few submissions we've had so far have all been excellent. With some work and promotion, this could very well become the Texas version of ZNet. (Speaking of which, ZNet has undergone a dramatic overhaul. Check out ZCommunications - it's absolutely amazing and deserves our support.) Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (34) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 213 |
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Speaking at Sara Hickman Concert |
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Written by DC Tedrow
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Thursday, 10 January 2008 |
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On Monday, Jan. 14, TCADP will sponsor the following event, which I've been asked to speak at: Sara Hickman ConcertMonday, January 8, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Burning Bush Coffeehouse
Parkway Presbyterian Church
3707 Santa Fe
Corpus Christi, TX
For info, call: 852-7239
Tickets at door: $15 Click for Google Maps directions. I'm personally not thrilled about the high ticket price, and tend to think TCADP places too much emphasis on fundraising. I'll see what can be done about letting students and other people in for free who are more interested in the anti-death penalty stuff than the music. If not that, maybe another group will be willing to sponsor a free anti-death penalty talk. Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (45) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 278 |
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Written by DC Tedrow
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Sunday, 16 December 2007 |
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A primary function of public education is to psychologically condition students to accept workplace hierarchies and other forms of domination, including the school itself. Teaching laborers obedience is hardly a new idea. In classical liberal thought, it was formulated in Wealth of Nations, where Adam Smith observed that the labor of "the great body of the people" was "confined to a few very simple operations," resulting in widespread stupidity and ignorance: The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become (Smith, 1776, p.840).
Overlooking the few individuals who were not engaged in deskilled labor, Smith argued, "all the nobler parts of the human character" risked being "obliterated and extinguished in the great body of the people." Public education helps remedy this, according to Smith, and his reasoning is worth quoting in full. The more "the inferior ranks of people" receive instruction, ... the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and intelligent people besides, are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually more respectable, and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition, and they are, upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgment which the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it.
Smith's rationale is similar to that of the Bolsheviks and later Communist officials, who believed that psychological conditioning was necessary if Russians were to dedicate themselves to the Soviet system. Article 25 of the 1977 Constitution of the USSR, for instance, explains that the Soviet public education system "serves the communist education and intellectual and physical development of the youth," as well as "trains them for work and social activity." Subservient attitudes are created by an institutional setting which tacitly assumes that elites run the show (but that they are benevolent), and that if children do well in school then maybe, some day, they can get a job working for a company. This is usually considered becoming "successful" in the "real world," which students enter into after high school. Alternatives to corporate and capitalist work environments are not part of this picture, though; it is never assumed that after high school, students could enter into voluntary arrangements with others in order to set up workers cooperatives, for instance. Other contemporary examples abound. Many high schools, for instance, offer so-called "business skills" courses, in which students are trained to create PowerPoint presentations, use copy machines and laminators, and perform other menial, less-than-empowering tasks. One wonders how often the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies rely on such "business skills" daily. Likewise, U.S. history courses are replete with heroified accounts of our nation's history and the virtues of American democracy. Historian James Loewen, in his classic analysis of the content in twelve prominent high school history textbooks, observes that The federal government [that textbooks] picture is still the people’s servant, manageable and tractable. Paradoxically, textbooks then underplay the role of nongovernmental institutions or private citizens in bring about improvements in the environment, race relations, education, and other social issues. In short, textbook authors portray a heroic state, and, like other heroes, this one is pretty much without blemishes. Such an approach converts textbooks into anticitizenship manuals—handbooks for acquiescence (1995, p.210).
Former school teacher and homeschooling advocate John Taylor Gatto describes two other ways that public schools foster subservient attitudes: by creating emotional dependence—through the use of smiles, stickers and red checks, etc.; and intellectual dependence—making students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do (1992, pp.7-9). He considers what might happen if students weren't trained to be intellectually dependent: Good people tell them what to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what might fall apart if children weren’t trained to be dependent: the social services could hardly survive.... Counselors and therapists would look on in horror as the supply of psychic invalids vanished. Commercial entertainment of all sorts, including television, would wither as people learned again how to make their own fun. Restaurants, the prepared-food industry, and a whole host of other assorted food services would be drastically down-sized if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to plant, pick, chop, and cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too, the clothing business and schoolteaching as well, unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people continued to poor out of our schools each year (1992, p.9).
One wonders, too, whether the corporate form itself could possibly survive if institutional propaganda did not actively promote its interests. References Gatto, J. (1992). Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers. Loewen, J. (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: The New Press. Smith, A. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Reprinted in 1994. New York: Modern Library. Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (75) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 260 |
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Link: McClintlock's Instruments of Statecraft |
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Written by DC Tedrow
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Tuesday, 11 December 2007 |
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Quite by accident, I found the complete text of Michael McClintlock's Instruments of Statecraft online: It's a pretty obscure book, but an incredibly important study of how the United States developed and applied special-warfare doctrine (use of death squads, etc.) in third world nations following the Second World War. Useful for understanding how the CIA helped develop the infrastructure for state terrorism that appeared in Latin America during the 60s. Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (82) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 243 |
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