Exercises week 5

Practical exercise

For the practical exercise of this week, we ask you to bring a commercial poster to class – a poster that communicates its convincing message very clear and immediate. The poster should contain both text and images. It is necessary that you bring this poster phyisically (so either a real poster, or a print of one).

Deconstruct or undermine the message of your poster using two deconstructive strategies from the list below. Apply these strategies in such a way that your deconstructed ad parodies or ironizes the original message and reveals a hidden meaning—making present what was previously absent. Clearly describe which two strategies you used.

For inspiration, see:

• Robert Colescott: Subverting History with Satire and Color

• Classic Paintings Provide the Perfect Backdrop for Feminist Memes About Mansplaining

List of deconstructive strategies you can pay attention to for the assignment:

Decontextualize / Fragment and Combine

• Place an image, sentence, or word into another (contradicting) context.
• Add elements (such as images, words, or sentences) that contradict, ironize, undermine, criticize, mock, estrange, exaggerate, trivialize, or make things absurd, and so on.
• Cut parts of the text into pieces and glue them into new (illogical, parodying, critical, ironizing, contradicting, estranging, mocking, absurd, etc.) sentences or statements.
• Strike through certain words.
• Create the opposite, or create ambivalence.
• Create (illogical, parodying, ironizing, contradicting, estranging, mocking, undermining, absurd, etc.) word–image combinations.

Reverse or queer the Binary Opposition

• Reveal which concept in the binary opposition dominates the other by reversing the hierarchy — for instance, by swapping the face of a woman with that of a man in a conservative ad, making the male-dominant position and posture suddenly visible. Or turn the word humanity into animality
• Or queer the binary opposition. Turn the word humanity into humanimality, or turn humanity into humus-ity (Humus is dark, organic material that forms in soil when matter (animal, leaves and so on) decays, essential to the fertility of the earth)
• Make the opposite dominant, are make present what is absent (what is left out).

Textual excercise

Part 1: Reading

Read the text How to write about Africa, a satire written in 2005 by the late Binyavanga Wainaina. While reading, make notes and annotations. Describe the technique that Wainaina is using, and what is he is trying to make present or absent. Do you think this text achieves its goal and would it work just as good if it was written by a white American?

As always, the processed text will be part of your exercises book.

Part 2: Writing