Spectacular Resistance: The Billionaires for Bush and the Art of Political Culture Jamming

Abstract

Political theorists and pundits often attribute the malaise that they argue hangs over U.S. politics to the omnipresence of political spectacle, where participants are reduced to spectator-voters rather than engaged as active citizens in the political process. The result, many conclude, is widespread cynicism that stymies collective action. We argue, however, that ''spectacle'' is not necessarily opposed to political participation, and indeed that the ''actor-audience'' dichotomy so often employed by political theorists is much too simplistic to describe political activism. In fact, groups such as the Billionaires for Bush use spectacle to advance their message(s) and to inspire political change. These groups have much in common with what media scholars call ''culture jammers, '' activists who deliberately subvert spectacular images in order to reclaim them. In this paper, we explore how groups we label political culture jammers combat cynicism by replacing the dominant images of politics with provocative counterimages. Through their use of ironic self-presentation and humor, political culture jammers offer an appealing alternative means of invigorating political praxis by complicating the citizen/spectator binary that so many critics invoke.

New Nordic Exceptionalism: Jeuno JE Kim and Ewa Einhorn's The United Nations of Norden and other realist utopias

“…Instead of criticizing this commercialized discourse head on, Kim and Einhorn's UNN-project probes the critical potential of overidentifying with the glossy tropes of Nordic exceptionalism. Following the tradition of political culture jamming, 53 Kim and Einhorn's critical strategy operates not by ''speak[ing] truth to power,'' but by ''speaking the truth of power,'' to borrow Brian Holmes' description of the art activist collective The Yes Men's approach. 54 By utilizing the established idioms of Nordic exceptionalism*albeit in an arguably embellished and amplified way*Kim and Einhorn created a rupture in the Nordic Culture Forum not by obstructing but by fitting too perfect into the debate.…”