Cinegraphic: About "Semiotic Disobedience"

from Cinegraphic.net:

About "Semiotic Disobedience"

URL: https://www.cinegraphic.net/article.php?story=20080921135944310

The other side of the "culture war.”

The idea of a culture war is often evoked for political ends; it is used to suggest that there is an assault on traditional views by some kind of elite--even though these "assaults" are largely an invention of small groups wishing to impose their views on others. Since this is the "political season" these activities are on abundant display; self-declared "culture warriors" present themselves as standing up to what they feel is an invasive culture. Their actions are directed at what is clearly social engineering cynically used as a political ploy to mobilize voters. This kind of "resistance" and "culture war" is instantly recognizable as simply oppression by the tactics it employs: threats, intimidation and censorship. Rather than being oppositional, a resistance, it is something else entirely: the assault it claims to fight is a projection its own behavior.

However, if we accept the idea of a "culture war"--and this itself should be considered provisional--then how would we recognize it? The concept of “semiotic disobedience” proposed by law professor Sonia K. Katyal has some suggestions for imagining what it might entail. Unlike the activities of "culture warriors" that are at base censorious, seeking to ban (and replace) the established order, "semiotic disobedience" suggests a radicalization of action--which is always the opposite of any censorious behavior. Katyal's conception is addressed towards graffiti and other kinds of “culture jamming” that are deployed directly as political speech and which violate the accepted parameters of behavior--occupation of intellectual, social, and physical property. But it is the expansion of this definition to include intellectual property and “recoding,” that can subvert the authority of the official statement, making the political position it espouses but one among others. The ambivalence emergent in this work is deeply threatening to established orders—both of political domination and political resistance—because it subverts the messaging codes of each. To say that “marginalized” groups lack a voice signifies a failure to understand what is happening in the environment of the cities themselves. Because it occupies spaces outside authorized zones and challenges established authorities right not only to speak but to exist, it is necessarily radical and disruptive of established expectations.

What is important to realize about these works is that they are explicitly artistic practices, originating within and expanding upon art historical developments over the past two hundred years. In this regard, there are direct and particular connections between a vast array of apparently unrelated activities--all of which challenge different aspects of our societies' organization--the trading of .mp3 files, street art, and protest generally are all aspects of the maladjustment between the established structure of our commercial society and the ways that people actually live within that society: thus the essential difference between a "culture warrior" and acts of "semiotic disobedience" lies with how we understand the present. Semiotic disobedience offers a way to recognize that there is a fundamental gap between the roles proposed socially and the actual life experiences of the people these roles are being imposed upon.

The idea of a "culture war" is actually quite ridiculous. By calling the process of cultural change and accommodation a "war" renders this entire process unnecessarily confrontational, transforming the natural accommodations required of a society to survive and adapt to changed conditions into a violent battle where everyone inevitably loses.