I would like to introduce you to e. cora hind, epic agricultural expert slash manitoba suffrage sister. 1861-1942
randomly in a class I was assigned to read up on this fine woman and to my delight she comes where I come from, happening to be the first western female journalist to boot. 1882 - came to winnipeg to become a teacher but didn't cut it, wrote an earnest letter to the WFP but was told that journalism was no place for a woman. Became a stenographer, opened her own typing bureau, published anonymously, made famed crop estimates & participated in the manitoba mock parliament with nellie. love her. I dug up a couple quotes:
- there is much more interest in breeding hogs in western canada than there is parenting children
- the usual statement is that I am a remarkable woman because I can do it; the implication is that the average woman is too dumb to succeed at a mans task & I resent that implication, for it is false.
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I think I would like to start some 'mock' public institutions, inspired entirely by her & something I saw the other day... while spending an afternoon eating free peoples potato and gallery hopping around concordia I was a witness to a live-art situation of sorts. Walking through the new, artsy EV building the stream of students and we were blocked by bodies sticking out of garbage cans, mail slots, recycling bins; receptacles. there they stood, in the trash, recycling, letter bags, motionless. Still. Their lives were simply part of the bureaucratic system of waste, renewal and paper trail. fascinating.
--- --- this is what I have been working on in school:
Outlaw Culture: bell hooks
Through my recent studies in journalism, it has been made clear that modern representations in the western mainstream are overwhelmingly consolidated and capitalist driven. Mass media, advertisements, TV shows and newspapers have a huge amount of power to both construct a symbolic reality and to neutralize counter-hegemonic or radical discourses. It is these institutions that are the primary inventors of inequality, and due to the scale of these operations, their patterns are set up as the norm.
Just as the media is consolidated, so is the face of oppression. It is poignant that hooks has re-named equality antagonisms as a ‘white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy’ because domination is never a secular issue. Echoing the conviction of Barbara Smith in Across the Kitchen Table, “[contemporary feminists] are not one dimensional, one-issued in our political understanding… the more wide-ranged your politics, the more potentially profound and transformative they become. ”
In terms of terms, I have to say that I consider hooks use of the word ‘outlaw’ to describe transformational properties of the critical spectator particularly interesting, primarily because it has a criminal essence to it. She was possibly meaning to express a ‘guerilla’ movement of cultural critics, or one who is rebellious in nature, because of their anti-hegemonic approach to the media, but I found the word ‘outlaw’ a glaring term in discord with the rest of the video. A critical mind, as she argued, has a sense of entitlement or agency to engage in the critical process, and control the interpretation of propagandist messages. This person, for me, is not an outlaw - but an active participant in a semiotic struggle of meaning-making. Being ‘culturally vigilant,’ in my opinion, is a right, not a crime.
Access to enlightenment, specifically media literacy and education programs, clarify the messages that have been normalized in our culture. A critical understanding of an image transforms it entirely because it reveals its false truths and inherent biases. When this occurs, media loses its power by becoming much more than a top-down system of ideas from maker to consumer; the roles of ‘critic,’ ‘intellect,’ or ‘activist’ allows for media to become a participatory practice.
Critical analysis and enlightenment are important, as hooks continued in the video, because media representations are hugely motivated and manipulated propaganda. Specifically in describing how mass media “tries to get women out of feminism” we can see how this matter is manifested. Feminism has been manipulated into the f-word and it is no accident: we have been demonized because we challenge the instituted systems of power. In her book Taking Back, hooks articulates that social punishments such are these are intended to suppress the creation of alternative discourses and in the film she called this the ‘backlash.’ These motivated constructs are so influential and contrived that they derail, distract and divert opinions that attempt to call out the systems of domination. This is especially true with feminism.
For me, a young feminist stuck somewhere in the fourth (?) wave, I feel incredibly burdened by mainstream messages; they neither represent me nor include me in their attempts to silence and normalize a reality of inequality. If we are to put systems of inequality back into equal terms of power relations, it seems as if we need a sponsor, billboard space, commercials on radio, a television station and newspapers; a message en masse. But who are ‘we?’ And, more importantly, do ‘we’ have to participate using ‘their’ devices?
I feel it is particularly important that women (finally) make their dent in the world of media. I feel it is particularly important that women (finally) ascertain public space and discourses that reflect the reality of women. Since the beginning of our inclusion in journalism, which coincided with the beginnings of women negotiating the public sphere, her relationship with advertising has been binding and subversive. Women have been employed, as both the symbol and market of advertisements, to normalize consumption and inequality. I feel it is particularly important that women (finally) undo these binds.
But how? This is the question that dogs my second degree. I am beginning to believe that participation on a grassroots and lo-tech level is what the next wave will use to create new signs, interpretations, and marks on the cultural landscape. I believe also that much will be gained by alternative media practices, which always have the potential in the gaining of critical mass.
Enter culture jamming.
Tom Licacas, who synthesizes the practice of jamming perfectly in his essay 101 Tricks to Play on the Mainstream: Culture Jamming as Subversive Recreation, explains that jamming is a cultural 'backtalk' that uses the language of established power. Similarly to hooks, Liacas asserts there are indeed transformational qualities within culture jamming. Describing it as a trend of cultural self-determination that allows people to break out of their consumer roles, jamming facilitates a creative talkback at culture and moves the participants from critical engagement to constructive engagement.
culture jamming is kick ass for the rush alone, but should abide by a larger picture. In an attempt to subvert the original intended messages on various advertisements and storefronts, an autonomous signature demands that the viewers consider the source in which the images it adorns are realized : the imbalanced cultural environment of media is reinterpreted when you participate with it.
