Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn

Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn (1999) argues that traditional social move

ment strategies cannot bring about the kinds of change culture jammers seek. With regard to the traditional political “Left,” Lasn (1999) states that

they lack passion; he argues that “there’s something drab and predictable about them; they feel like losers” (p. 118), and states that individuals who

want to build an effective social movement must use new tactics. This new

paradigm of political activism involves the creative appropriation, creation, and enactment of culture, along with large doses of humor and creativity?

this approach works by creating a political poetics. In an interview, Reverend

Billy explains:

I’m using strategies like entertainment, comedy, music, and then of course working

with small groups of people inside transnational chain stores inside the private

property of the enemy, of the great retail juggernaut?that also is much more

fun?it’s charged and less predictable than a demonstration that has its didactic

language and a set of terms that are very old. (As interviewed in Post & Palacios,

2006)

We believe that part of culture jamming’s potential effectiveness as critical

public pedagogy, then, is its ability to help participants to engage in com

munal politics. When politics becomes poetic, and is presented or enacted

through culture?and especially through a fun, exciting, collective experi

ence of culture?it can seem more open and inviting, and less predictable,

than other forms of political protest (Duncombe, 2002).

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