This paper explores the role of visual memes as neutralizers of contested past and present narratives of occupation and dissent by focusing both on the memetic structure of Occupy as well as on the digital visual memes associated with this movement. It examines the emergence of the term "occupy" as a meme in and of itself -Occupy Wall Street spurred Occupy Chicago, Occupy Oakland and even Occupy Sesame Street and Occupy North Pole as well as the "We are the 99%" meme that has come to define Occupy. Through the trope of the meme, this paper further conceptualizes revolution as both return and rupture made possible by viral civil and political dissent. It argues that there is a notable distinction between physical participation in the Occupy Movement and virtual participation through the reworking of Occupy's memes. Whereas the first modality serves as an active disruptor of the political normative imaginary, the second works in precisely the opposite fashion, in its reconstitution of a common-sense dominant image of the political.

The transformation of iconic images of traumatic historical events into everyday humorous practice illuminates the mechanisms of remembering and forgetting that operate in digital popular culture. The image-icon has the power to evoke history, to function in Walter Benjamin's terms as a monad. This power, however, is fleeting as history is yet again rendered latent and forgotten once it is transformed into a gesture or everyday common sense. In this article, Stefka Hristova offers a comparative analysis of two Internet-driven participatory memes — “Pepper Spray Cop” and “Doing a Lynndie” — to illuminate the role digital media plays in the remembering and forgetting of what W. J. T. Mitchell calls the “histor[ies] of perception” of the November 18, 2011, pepper spaying of peaceful protesters at the University of California, Davis, and of the 2004 abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison.

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A meme, conceived as the cultural equivalent of the biological gene by Richard Dawkins, spread through culture like a virus – quickly and widely. Its viral power is in turn understood as product of nature, rather than culture – or rather as threatening to subvert culture into a condition of nature. Firing up over night, and disappearing just as quickly, memes are often allowed to run their course and fade into oblivion, only to return again.  They emerge at moments of contestation of dominant narratives and through their participatory structure of imitation and mutation allow for the dissolution of points of ideological conflict and the reestablishment of a normative narrative. If not too threatening to the health of the state body, these cultural viruses are left unchecked as they build the immunity, and further, in Derrida’s terms, the “autoimmunity” of the nation-state. In this project, I explore the role of visual Internet memes as neutralizers of contested past and present narratives of occupation and dissent by focusing the digital visual memes associated with the Occupy Movement in the United States. More specifically, I examine the emergence of the term “occupy” as an visual Internet meme in and of itself – Occupy Wall Street spurred Occupy Chicago, Oakland and even Sesame Street and the North Pole, as well as a marker of a revolution - revolving viral civil and political dissent. I argue that there is a notable distinction between physical participation the Occupy Movement and virtual participation through the reworking of Occupy’s memes, where as the first modality serves as an active disruptor of the political normative imaginary, the second works in precisely the opposite fashion  - in its reconstitution of a common-sense dominant image of the political.

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