Visual Propaganda as Curriculum: the Power to Protest with images and text.

• In Event: Discourses and Problematization: Considerations of Protest, Healthiness, Whiteness, Propaganda, and Urban-Rural Divides

Proposal

Abstract

This paper explores 21st-century graffiti from a pedagogical perspective to reveal how visual propaganda becomes a curriculum. Traditionally curriculum is regarded as the learning content or design for educating people. However, this paper rethinks curriculum as a way to make certain kinds of people, which is the system of thought, guiding people to think a certain way. Visual propaganda supports or criticizes predominant ideas using images and texts. It indoctrinates certain notions into people and makes certain kinds of people for their purposes. Graffiti contains messages about racial justice and protecting minorities' rights. The messages provide social culture and influence people’s thoughts to make them think critically about what they have taken for granted. In this sense, visual propaganda is the curriculum, which is a well-ordered system of thought and affects people to form specific ways of thinking in society. The paper uses discourse analysis based on Michel Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge to discover the dominant and counter-dominant discourse in visual propaganda. Ian Hacking’s concept of “Making up people” is used as a theoretical framework to adduce how visual materials affect people’s notions and creates certain types of people through visual materials. This paper contains three research questions: First, what power is embedded in visual propaganda? Second, why does visual propaganda become an effective tool to change society? Third, how can visual propaganda be the curriculum as creating a power to govern people's perceptions? Therefore, this paper contributes to rethinking visual propaganda for education purposes and regarding the curriculum as a power to cultivate people’s minds and thoughts.


Objectives:
This paper aims to rethink the definition of curriculum and reveal visual propaganda as a curriculum. Education is one way of social reform by teaching knowledge and social values to make a better society. Visual propaganda represents contemporary society with images and words with pro or counter-dominant ideas for the society. This paper uses Foucauldian discourse analysis, which raises the question about the social norms that people have taken for granted, such as racial stereotypes, and gives the inspiration to understand people in a power structure. Therefore, exploring visual propaganda with discourse reveals what kind of power is embedded in society and how materials have the power to protest society. This paper adduces how the power of visual propaganda works as a curriculum that creates people for society.


Theoretical Framework:
The paper includes two post-modernist theoretical backgrounds: Michel Foucault and Ian Hacking. First, Foucault examines objects not through a dichotomous lens but within the framework of discourse, which represents the system of thought. Discourse is shaped by evading historical determinations and reinterpreting what has been "already-said" or "not said". It does not focus on origins but rather scrutinizes the conditions and possibilities for creating objects or events. Consequently, discourse challenges prevailing and determining perceptions of people, redefining them within the context of power relationships. With the Foucaudian theoretical framework, this paper delves into the discourse of visual propaganda, encompassing social reform and its intricate entanglement with social hegemony.
Next, Hacking’s “Making up People” concerns labeling and naming in Foucault’s term “constitution of subjects.” This means that subjects are gradually constituted through multiple thoughts. Naming has the power to control people, leading to a certain way of thinking. In education, students learn social values or norms within the curriculum. As people watch woodcuts or graffiti, they acknowledge and get influenced by the message, which is the same as the curriculum. Therefore these theories explore how visual propaganda serves as a curriculum, influencing societal beliefs.


Data:
The paper is the image analysis of the “Walls of Justice” organization, which is the online gallery of racial murals. The paper mainly analyzes the graffiti drawn by Pancho Pescador in Oakland, California, which was collected by an online gallery ”Wall of justice.” He draws The graffiti from Oakland, depicting a Mapuche woman, indigenous from the South of Chile, with the message, “We don’t own the earth. We belong to it”. Also, graffiti about the people in Xochistlachuaca, Mexico, presents regional culture. Visual materials include cultural artifacts and social propaganda, criticizing prevailing ideas and producing power to protest.


Methods:
This visual propaganda is examined from a Foucauldian discourse analysis, which is based on archeological knowledge as a historical product within discontinuity and not as a single evolutionary line. Discourse analysis does not explore one particular individual or historical origin but rather analyzes the system formation and how certain notions create discourse. Discourse analysis helps rethink the socially dominant norms with power relations and discloses the absurdity of society.


Findings and Contributions:
The graffiti of the Mapuche woman illustrates an indigenous woman with the message, “The Earth is not ours. We are of the Earth.” The painting highlights the importance of interconnectedness with the environment and becoming an independent subject within racial diversity. The painting includes decolonial ideas toward Westernization. The blue-colored face with the text arouses critical thinking about White supremacy or Racism. The graffiti about Xochistlahuaca presents the traditional outfit of the region with vivid color, juxtaposing the image with indigenous with blue painting like eye drops. These two examples of visual propaganda perform as curriculum by problematizing the dominant power of White Supremacy. Therefore, visual propaganda is a curriculum, which is the system of thought to make certain kinds of people.

This paper contributes to a redefining curriculum that has the power to protest through problematizing dominant hegemony or revealing counter-hegemony. It also offers insight into rethinking visual materials as a crucial educational tool for cultivating minds and thoughts.

Author

• Younsun Choi, The University of Wisconsin-Madison