Remix as Tactical

Dustin Edwards // @edwardsdusty // Miami University // Session #K08

The Rhetorical Potentialof Reappropriating Oppressive Discourse

re•mixverb. the process of taking old pieces of text, images, sounds, and video and stitching them together to form a new product

--Ridolfo & DeVoss

}tactics & strategies resignification

tac•ti•cal re•mixverb. the intentional re-use and redeployment of dominant discourse that has at least one of the following aims: • expose, invert, or challenge damaging,

injurious, or otherwise unjust conditions• (re)claim a sense of agency • circulate counter discourses to imagine

and work toward a more just world

mêtis “making do”

case oneThe Work of Elisa Kreisinger, the Pop Culture Pirate

“appropriating mainstream media texts and re-editing them into

subversive stories[…]gives us an opportunity to see ourselves and

our communities included in popular culture in a way that no longer demands we compromise our politics to be entertained.”

-- Elisa Kreisinger“Mashing Up Mad Men”

resistsubvert

challenge

case twoThe Real @OxfordAsians

“By juxtaposing incongruous ideas, Burke says, we ‘shatter pieties.’ In

other words, by juxtaposing one ideological correctness together with

another, of a different ideological stripe, the two call each other into question. And it is more likely that the less powerful one will act upon

the other in such a way as to reduce its power; the piety will thus be

shattered.”

--Julia Allen & Lester Faigley

kairotic“[A tactic] takes advantage of ‘opportunities’

and depends on them” (37)

--Michel de CerteauThe Practice of Everyday Life

case threeSlutWalk

“The word that wounds becomes an instrument of

resistance in the redeployment that destroys

the prior territory of its operation” (163)

--Judith Butler, Excitable Speech

circulation"parallel discursive arenas where members of

subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to formulate

oppositional interpretations of theiridentities, interests,

and needs”

--Nancy Fraser’s definition of “subaltern counterpublic”Rethinking the Public Sphere

taken together[

(1)Remix has transformativepotential.

(2)Tactical remix responds kairotically.

(3)Tactical remix buildscommunity.

(4)Tactical remix succeeds bycirculation.

(5)Tactical remix is connectedto the body.

how can we bring tactical

remix into compclassrooms?

& should we?

yescareful

<thank you>