“Mixing Pop (Culture) and Politics”: Cultural Resistance, Culture Jamming, and Anti-Consumption Activism as Critical Public Pedagogy

Abstract

Culture jamming, the act of resisting and re-creating commercial culture in order to transform society, is embraced by groups and individuals who seek to critique and (re)form how culture is created and enacted in our daily lives. In this article, we explore how two groups—Adbusters and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping—use culture jamming as a means of resisting consumerism. We theorize how culture jamming as practiced operates as critical public pedagogy, through the ways in which it (1) fosters participatory, resistant cultural production; (2) engages learners corporeally; (3) creates a (poetic) community politic; and (4) opens transitional spaces through détournement (a “turning around”). We propose that when viewed as critical public pedagogy, culture jamming holds potential to connect learners with one another and to connect individual lives to social issues—both in and beyond the classroom. However, we also posit that culture jamming as critical public pedagogy is not a panacea nor without problems. We also discuss how culture jamming may in fact at times hinder critical learning by imposing a rigid presence on the viewer-learner that limits creativity and transgression, and how it risks becoming co-opted by the very market forces of capitalism it opposes.