Radical
Alternative Media
A syllabus
(This syllabus was produced for JOUR 808b under guidance of Prof Ray Hiebert)
Radical Alternative Media
Teacher: Saswat Pattanayak
Office of Human Relations Program
Monday to Friday 4pm-5pm
240-938-0535
mail@saswat.com
This course is designed to introduce students to radical alternative media,
in their history, the present state and future potential.
Rationale:
Media have often been depicted as part of the fourth estate in a democracy,
the other three wings being the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.
Role of the media, their representations of “social reality”,
as well as biases in their reflections have often held center stage of
public concern.
But, on counts of content and the context, the bouquet and the brickbats, and the cultural as well as political-economic approaches, it is often the mainstream media, which get the attention. Either some television programs are portrayed as too violent, or few mainstream newspapers are cited as truly neutral. In either cases of extremes, the debate surrounds the media that are akin to big corporate organizations. They are the media that represent the focus and are widely circulated. Plausibly, the assumptions being that those media organizations are worth studying which have the reach. No wonder, most critical media theories actually surround the impacts of big business conglomerates in the political-economic tradition or negotiations within dominant messages in the cultural studies tradition. Most administrative researches too, focus on role of mainstream media because they are well documented and appear more convenient for the purpose, at times because of being supportive of the researches themselves.
I apprehend such trends tend to overshadow the inroads that radical alternative media are making on daily basis, functioning within small-scale cooperative (not organizational) set up, not lending voices to people so much as to letting people find a platform to speak within. This is not an offshoot of the present struggles for identities, rather I view radical media are central to our understanding of media in general. For, without struggle there could be no actual progress and the radical alternative media have struggled, within every spheres, from economic well-being to defining news content to deal with legally prescribed boundaries of ethics and press freedom.
“Radical
Alternative”:
Epistemologically, everything could be alternative to just about anything
else. Hence the term “radical” holds relevance to represent
the centrality and diversity in issues demanding change, not just pose
an option. From the present scenario where anti-WTO protests and anti-war
demonstrations find more space in specific media that we call alternative
ones, to the past where major struggles were inherent for “underground
press” protesting against slavery and demanding social justice,
radical alternative media is crucial to approach diversity and centrality
of media studies.
Required Text:
“Radical Media” (2nd Edition; Sage, 2001) by John Downing,
deals with radical alternative media in various kinds, from dance and
graffiti, to video and internet, from satirical prints and street theatre
to culture-jamming, subversive song, performance art and underground radio.
Students are required to prepare the prescribed chapters on weekly basis.
Recommended
Readings:
Armstrong, D (1981). A trumpet to arms: Alternative Media in America.
Los Angeles: Tarcher
Atton, C (2001). Alternative Media. CA: Sage
Barsamian, D. (2001). The decline and fall of public broadcasting: Creating
alternative media. MA: South End
Castells, M (1997). The Power of Identity. MA: Blackwell
McCarthy, T., & McMillian J. (Eds.). (2003). The radical reader. NY:
New Press
McChesney, R., & Scott B. (Eds.). (2004). Our unfree press: 100 years
of radical media criticism. NY: New Press
Nichols, J., et al (2002). Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle
Against Corporate Media. NY: Seven Stories
Class Conduction
Pattern:
Brainstorming: There shall be no lectures in the class. Instead
brainstorming sessions will be held for the first hour of the class where
students along with the instructor will bring to table all divergent opinions
regarding the prescribed chapters of the week. This session will usually
look into the history of radical media.
Q & A: Specific question and answer session on related topic
to the point of discussion during the brainstorming hour. Students are
most encouraged to contribute to answer generation during this second
hour of class. This session will try to problematize the issue and look
into future.
Audio-visual presentations: Last hour will use videos/music/newspaper
articles/retrieved online pages/historical documents, which are relevant
to the course.
Special Note:
The syllabus is dynamic in nature, insofar as the contents may be modified
with suggestions from students as the course progresses. There may be
use of additional materials, if they seem more appropriate keeping in
view student interests. There will be every attempt at meeting diverse
perspectives of student interest, in a post-colonial classroom such as
ours. Attempts will be taken to incorporate issues and topics more pertinent
to feminist, post-colonial and multi-ethnic views.
Schedules
Week 1
Brainstorming on the chapter “Popular Culture, Audiences and Radical
Media” of the required textbook. Students will argue how popular
cultures are intertwined in many ways with mass culture; the plurality
of popular cultures, the audience as joint architects of cultural production
and how alternative media constitute the most active form of active audience
while expressing oppositional strands, overt and covert, within popular
cultures.
There will be Q & A on why oppositional cultures also intertwine with both mass and popular cultures and why popular cultures are not automatically oppositional or constructive.
Last hour will be spent on listening and critiquing two labor union songs, “Solidarity Forever” (1915) by Ralph Chaplin, and “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill” (1925) by Alfred Hayes and one youth movement song from the 60’s, “The Times They Are A-Changin” by Bob Dylan.
Week 2
Brainstorming on the chapter “Power, Hegemony, Resistance”.
Discussion will base on socialist and feminist anarchism’s identification
of multiple sources of subordination, and Gramsci’s exploration
of capitalist cultural hegemony and popular counter-hegemony.
Q & A session will be devoted to everyday resistance tactics and their relation with radical media activism.
Last hour will be spent on two documents: readings of the Statement of Purpose (1966) of National Organization for Women and Robin Morgan’s “No More Miss America”.
Week 3
Brainstorming on the chapter “Social Movements, the Public Sphere,
Networks”, where the class will discuss social movements as dynamic
expressions contrasted with stable institutions like unions or parties.
Q & A session will address the relation between movements and radical media as dialectical and one of acute interdependence.
Last hour will be spent on the video “Zapatista Women”. Women insurgents of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) tell in this 30-min video what it means to be indigenous women struggling to have their voices heard in Mexico.
Week 4
Brainstorming on the chapter “Religion, Ethnicity and the International
Dimension”. This will include discussions on radical media expression
of explicit religiously based challenges to the political order, subterranean
religious contestation of the status quo and attacks on religious endorsement
of an unjust order.
Q & A will address antiwar documents, specifically the Boondocks (2002) and We Oppose Both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. War on Iraq: A call for a new democratic U.S. foreign policy (2003)
Last hour will be spent on video screening of “Beyond the Frame: Alternative perspectives on the war on terrorism”. It has six sections, of which three will be picked by students to be shown in the class.
Week 5
Brainstorming on the chapter “Community, Democracy, Dialogue and
Radical Media”. Class will discuss the issue of conversation as
the leitmotif of democratic process.
Q & A will seek to explore if radical media provide for democratic alternatives to media monopolies in their role as community agents.
Last hour will be spent on a document of eyewitness account from Roni Krouzman, “WTO: The Battle in Seattle”
Week 6
Brainstorming on the chapter “Art, Aesthetics, Radical Media, and
Communication”. We shall discuss in the first hour concepts of expressionism,
dada, surrealism and situationists as well as issues concerning Bertolt
Brecht, radical theatre and cofabulation.
Q & A session will discuss the relation between art and media. We shall also address the notion of “Aura” advocated by Benjamin.
Last hour will be spent listening to samples of songs by Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine.
Week 7
Brainstorming on the Chapter “Radical Organization: Two Models”.
The class will discuss the Leninist model and its influence in terms of
context, strength and perils as well as the self-management model, socialist
and feminist anarchism, and prefigurative politics.
Q & A session will address the viabilities of both the models. Media’s role in national development and external perception of communist media.
Last hour will be spent on a post-colonial discourse by Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. The essay is a pessimistic take on the western perception of oriental history.
Week 8
Brainstorming on the Chapter “Repressive Radical Media.” Class
shall discuss divergences among ultra-Right political movements, and the
relation between the ultra-Right and the state.
Q & A hour will be spent on fascist social movements and authoritarian populism and the edgy question of overlap and difference between democratic radical media and repressive radical media.
Last hour will be spent on video screening of “The Myth of the Clash of Civilization”. The video will have Edward Said in lecture.
Week 9
Brainstorming on the Chapter “Radical Media Tapestry: Public Speech,
Dance, Jokes and Song”. Students will be exposed to historiography
of Moroccan women street traders, Bakhtin, Rabelais and marketplace humor,
19th-century African American public festivals, radical pre-emancipation
communication networks among African-American mariners, the Blues, song
in German labor movement through 1933.
Q & A will focus on the “New Song” and its confrontation in Latin America, and politics of film.
Last hour will be spent on video screening of Indian film director Satyajit Ray’s work “Our Films, Their Films.”
Week 10
Brainstorming on the chapter “Popular Theater, Street Theater, Performance
Art and Culture-Jamming”. Class will discuss political theater against
the US war in Vietnam and ACT-UP street events, among others.
Q & A will discuss street political theater and culture-jamming.
Last hour will be spent on screening of video “Woodstock: Three days of music, peace and love” (1970).
Week 11
Brainstorming on the chapter “Mind Bombs: Woodcuts, Satirical Prints,
Flyers, Photomontage, Posters, and Murals”. There will be discussions
on traditional media as well as modern protest posters, cartooning as
well as political critique of t-shirts.
Q & A will discuss the relevance of satire for mass movements.
Last hour will be spent in a group skit performance by the class to demonstrate the power of at least one form of “mind bombs”.
Week 12
Brainstorming on the chapter “Radio, Film and Video”. Class
will discuss political movements and free radio in Italy in the 1970’s,
the free radio movement in France, 1977-1985, Aids videos, and political
videos in the United States since the 1960s.
Q & A will discuss the zero-budget documentary in India by Anand Patwardhan and Britain’s black film and video movements in the 1980s.
Last hour will be spent listening to Frantz Fanon’s “The Voice of Fighting Algeria” and reading of an article “The Underground Press” by John Burks published in Rolling Stone, No. 43, October 4, 1969.
Week 13
Brainstorming on the chapter “Radical Internet Use”. Class
will deliberate on Internet’s democratic potential, issues of access
and empowerment, information enclosures, privatization and infowar.
Q & A will focus on regulatory legislation and intellectual property and copyrights.
Last hour will be spent on two case studies: Institute for Global Communications, and the Zapatista movement.
Week 14
Students will present their perspectives on the relevance of radical alternative
media in the class through the final group exercise. In addition, there
will be a screening of the video “Rich Media, Poor Democracy”
featuring Robert McChesney as the lecturer.
Important Information:
Access: If anyone has request for special access to classroom
teaching/revision, they may contact me any point of time.
Examination: The last class this semester will be spent in examination where students will need to demonstrate their understanding of the course by means of crafting a paper on relevance of radical alternative media.
Grading:
Grading will not be done on basis of the written paper. Rather it will
be done on attendance and class participation.
Saswat
Pattanayak
blog@saswat.com