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Dissenting Images: Engaging the Pedagogy of Protest

On January 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration of a new president, over 5 million people gathered in cities across the globe for the Women’s March on Washington. Although the march was originally conceived of by white women and was given the name “Million Women March,” its leadership soon shifted to have women of color in the majority, with Tamika D. Mallory, Carmen Perez, Linda Sarsour, and Bob Bland as national co-chairs. It was, according to some sources, the largest protest in the history of the planet. Images of sister marches held everywhere from New York City to Sydney, Australia, flooded digital media. Do-it-yourself (DIY) signs hastily constructed with Sharpies, glitter, and cardboard exhorted viewers to “Free Melania” and “Keep Your Politics off My Pussy.” Marchers wore jeans, parkas, and elaborate costumes, and groups conducted tightly choreographed collaborative performances. The march arrived in the wake of many other uprisings, each with its own sights, sounds, and histories, from the crumpled body in the street, military tanks, and “Hands up, don’t shoot!” visuals of Ferguson, Missouri, to the stream of videos and audios of police killing black people—Michael Brown, Lacquan MacDonald, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner. These live images were reworked in real time by artists and activists, including Shirin Barghi’s painful, powerful # LastWords series, which presents the last words of black people killed by police: “I don’t have a gun. Stop shooting” were eighteen-year-old Michael Brown’s. The pedagogy of protest—emblazoned across protest signs, television screens, and Twitter—is not new. Under pressure and through collaboration, social movements have always created new language—interruptions—and analytical tools to support shifts in power or to enable openings for the consolidation of old forms of power. Dissenting Images: Engaging the Pedagogy of Protest