The Rhetorical Situation in My Final Project

As I jumped the gun last week, I am writing about the Rhetorical Situation as it applies to my final project.

My final project is examining the causes and effects of culture jamming, especially as a response to Foulcault's notion of power/knowledge. As we have all learned this semester, Foulcault suggests that power is wielded through cooperation instead of coercian, and that images and texts seek to wield power by showing an ideal situation that the masses may seek to emulate. For a place such as Clemson's undergraduate community, this particular kind of acceptance is well-grounded in the Greek system that permeates this and many other campuses. Secondly, albiet very distantly in the undergraduate community, acceptance and power is derived through academic success. I have no particular axe to grind with fraternities or soroities, I only want to understand why social acceptance is rooted within these systems, and to comment upon it.

In the spirit of the Situationists Internationale in the 50s-70s, my intention is to expose the spectacle of life, although on a much smaller scale. By exposing the institutions that degrade human life, we are exposing the spectacle, and by exposing it, are taking ownership of it, and diminishing the instituitions' power.

This example, a projected image in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, by Paul Notzold, challenges the power of advertisers, fast food coporations, and the widely popular shows where audiences "vote" (supply consumer data to the sponsors of these shows) for their favorite singer, dancer, etc.

If we accept Bitzer's assertion that "rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to a situation in the same sense that an answer comes into existence in response to a question, or a solution in response to a problem" then in order to challenge the notion of power/knowledge we must question it, or bring it into the public dialogue. Imagery and texts, especially ones that mock this power structure, could be the key to causing people to question its very existence.

By creating a series of images and texts and placing them in Clemson's most public of forums, the ubiquitous billboard, I seek to challenge the notion of the ideal of power.knowledge and to possibly create a dialogue between the images, texts, the viewer, and myself. These images and texts will not only challenge the social norms, but also challenge the top-down power heirarchy by placing these objects in the public forum without permission, i.e., the almighty stamp of approval from Student Services. The goal here is to find out just how long these critiques of the university and its students will survive outside the framework of the power.

I, as the rhetor, as Vatz states, am choosing what I wish to make salient. By placing a challenge to the univeristy's policy regarding placing hanbills, etc., I am making the bureaucracy of a large entity the salient issue. Hopefully, by exposing this seemingly ridiculous policy and using the forum to poke fun at the university and the staus quo, a more egalitarian approach to posting handbills will arise, muh like many other campuses.