Brainstorm #4 - Lucas Beidler

Brainstorm #4 

Sandoval's article "Dissident Globalizations", shows us a unique remedy to the issues faced by oppressed peoples as a result of neoliberalism in this modern globalized world. Martinez's definition of neoliberalism includes actions like: "Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers' rights", "reducing the safety net for the poor", eliminating the concept of the "public good" or "community" and replacing it with "individual responsibility" (Martinez 1997). These are things that can be remidied by decolonization or dissident globalization as Sandoval describes. Sandoval describes a way to create tactics in order to create real change and much of this is described through "differential consciousness", which consists of a process of having the power to read signs, perform radical semiotics, deconstruct of signs from their signifiers, meta-ideology, and democratics. Chicana/o community organizers were able to actually turn a word, "Chicana/Chicano" that used to be a word used by the powerful in the country to signify lowly, hoodlums, lower class, and cholos, into a term signified by revolution. (Sandoval video, 4:25). They used the process defined by Sandoval to redefine their own label into what they wanted, a very significant use of these methods. 

The interview of Chela Sandoval was very insightful and showed the significance of media and technology as form of activism and helping communities. It connected to the UW Libraries Women Who Rock Archive and Unconference very much in the way that both used the platform of media and the arts to empower women and support communities. I found it very inspiring that Sandoval was part of a group that was able to run their own TV organization and film dozens if not hundreds of documentaries (Interview, 91). Also that they even had members of the group who had the electrical engineering knowledge to wire their own radios and media tools. They were a self-sufficient, revolutionary group that, like the featured guests of the WWR conferences, have shown that women can be successful in areas previously thought to be men's domains, and furthered social change. Finally, Sandoval's differential consciousness seeks to integrate the past with the future, through revisiting and redefining terms and ideologies, just like the WWR seeks to learn from archives of past musicians and analyze what held women back and how to further women musicians and artists today.