Response 4: The Art of Protest

Response 4: The Art of Protest


I was very excited to see The Art of Protest, an impressive account of social movements since the 1950s, incorporated into our program reading. It seems that, oftentimes, the aesthetic of cultural expression during a social movement is under appreciated as an integral part of the movement. Or, perhaps, artful expressions such as poetry and music that keep with the themes of the movement are interpreted simply as being a result of the movement. Thomas Veron Reed, (or, T.V. Reed, which I thought was amusingly paired to our studies with technology & movements) however, really honed in on the roles that cultural expression really can and does play in activism and protest.
The chapters are organized in a timeline-like fashion, which makes the content and events more streamlined and understandably related. By beginning with “Singing the Civil Rights”, we can see how music and art helped to carry the weight of the movement on college campuses, in churches, and the NAACP. The “freedom music” that reflected traditional African American music resonated with those involved in these institutions as being genderless, classless, and generationless.
Then, as the Black Power movement was discussed in chapter 2, we saw how complex the relationship between aesthetic and politics could become. I appreciated Reed’s readiness to dissect the theatrical elements of political drama, and the performativity of political activists and leaders. For instance, the way Amiri Baraka incorporated politics into the theater is a perfect example of how to two overlap. On page 42, Reed clarifies that “All politics involves a theatrical element, and a failure to understand the relation between the “poetics” and the “politics”...is a failure to understand them at all.” I think, though he’s referring to the Black Panther Party specifically, it really is a key part in general to understanding why this book is important to understand and why the content is so relevant to current social movements as well.
It’s interesting to note the modes of communication each group chooses (or spawns, maybe?), as well. Women used poetry - I thought it was a valid connection that Reed made when asserting that the feminist poetry movement exploded onto the scene, though poetry had mainly been a male-dominated discourse. Chicanos used murals to convey their messages - I thought this was a great point because murals are such a huge part of Mexican traditions and folk-art. I like to think that Reed was possibly alluding to how culturally pertinent these methods of communication are, and how intentional they were as well.