Go forth and rearticulate......!

In The article “Towards a Left Popular Culture” by Laura Kipnis, she discusses the idea of transforming capitalist raw materials and discourses (“disarticulation”) and reforming them into an antagonistic discourse (“rearticulation”). I think that this a very interesting idea and the emphasis on action rather then merely academic contemplation is also an important concept. I think that a really good example of this (creating antagonistic discourse through action) would be culture jamming (props to Courtney!).
Culture jamming is the act of taking existing mass media (commercials, billboards, magazine ads, and etcetera) and transforming them to alter their meaning, generally with a negative commentary about mass capitalist culture. Thus, people are forming interpellations with these antagonistic discourses disrupting their normal subject formations made through the dominant discourses. This disruption however, like Kipnis discusses, can (at times) be provisional, it only lasts until the ads are changed back or the billboards are replaced (like the stop sign). This provisionality is a very postmodern moment preventing the antagonistic discourse from being assimilated into the dominant discourses umbrella term of “difference”. However, as Kipnis states co-option by capitalist culture is inevitable and ads do now use this idea and almost “poke fun” at themselves in an attempt to sell their products. Regardless of this co-option the rearticulated ads do still work in jarring people from their normal media over load causing them to stop and think about the images and discourses which are being bombarded at them.