Culture jamming: perspectives by incongruity and polemical intertextuality [articol]

Abstract

This paper aims to present culture jamming as a rhetorical practice (semantic activism). Culture jamming is an anticonsumerist resistance strategy, a countercultural tactic and a critical practice consisting in manipulation of media and other public discourses by artists and activists, in order to challenge the dominant memes, to subvert the mainstream (cultural, political and commercial) messages, using their own discourses and altering them to create alternative meanings. Culture jamming exploits intertextualty and counterframing, in different ways of deconstructing and re-constructing hegemonic messages, using allusion, irony and parody as polemical devices. Also, perspective by incongruity is used: oddly juxtaposed symbols that influence audiences to adopt new perspectives and create new insights. Cultural jammers are questioning the consumerist and corporate worldviews.