What is Carnival?

David M. Boje, Ph.D. January, 2000

Main Site http://www.zianet.com/boje/1/ 

Examples of carnival resistance to spectacle are everywhere:

 
Click on Any  Picture for Text or paper

Figure 1: The G-8 and WTOC Street Carnival Protests (Click for more)

Carnivalesque is the use of theatrics to face off with power via satire and parody, and invite spectators to a new reading of the spectacle of global capitalism.  We see it all around us in the street theater, teach ins, and NikeTown blockades that poke fun and use critical satire and parody to say something important about global capitalism, and its impact upon both workers and consumers.   The carnivalesque can be grotesque, violent or quite peaceful. Sorting out the message, in the midst of media dominated by spectacle advertising, infotainment, and purchased by transnational power, is the most important thing we can be teaching.

For Mikheal Bakhtin, then Julia Kristeva, the carnival is the theatrics of rant and madness seeing to repair the separation of worker from consumer.  This is the separation that Karl Marx wrote about in Das Kapital, the alienation of consumer from producer.  We do not know where our clothing, toys, and other consumables is made. The location of sweatshop factories is a carefully guarded corporate secret.  We do not know who makes our clothing.  The stories of working women (mostly teenagers) is kept secret, and instead the Spectacle of transnational corporate advertising and public relations regales and seduces us. Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan tell us we can be heroes and celebrities if we wear corporate logos all over our body.  This spectacle of corporate power is a form of theater that is being opposed by women in sweatshops around the world, who are unable to get their personal experience stories of abuse and exploitation heard by the buying public.   Carnival is opposed by Spectacle, and there is an emergent Festivalism (See Figure 1).

Figure One: Spectacle, Carnival, and Festival

Carn'ival, n. 

1. Festivity and merrymaking; 2. An explosion of freedom involving laughter, mockery, dancing, masquerade and revelry 3. Occupation of the streets in which the symbols and ideals of authority are subverted and satirized with irony;  4. You cannot watch carnival as a by-stander, you take part as a spect-actor says Augusto Boal (Theatre of the Oppressed) - More See Leadership Theater Event (Use of Image, Invisible, and Forum Theatre)

 

Carnival is the sweatshop theater, the blockade of a NikeTown in Melbourne on a Friday evening (In Sydney it happens on Thursdays), or a protest against Wal-Mart on a Saturday. Around the world consumers (students and faculty too) are spectators (or in Augusto Boal's terms Spect-actors), actors in a form of carnival resistance that premodern peasants used to satirize the weird power of the Crown and Clergy over their community life. 

June 18th, 1999 Carnival of Resistance - day of protest

Carnival of Resistance raises consciousness about why the wealth of 447 billionaires exceeds that of 2.75 billion people, an economy that puts money, growth and the 'free market' above everything else, leading to poverty, the Third World Debt and environmental destruction (1999 Carnival of Resistance). 

Planetary Carnival is a cry of distress and repression by women working in sweatshops whose voice is drown by the media spectacle of celebrity endorsements and purchased star power. Carnival is mixed with laughter and humorous, even sexual exhibition meant to jolt power into awareness of its psychic organization.

Some protest organizers have dubbed Melbourne 2000 World Economic Forum (WEF) protest, as the “Festival of the Oppressed.”

"Alliance media spokesperson Jorge Jorquera told Green Left
Weekly, “these people have made history here today,”
he said. “They’ve cut through the tissue of lies
that this protest was going to become a riot. They’ve
been totally committed to non-violent blockading but
also just as committed to doing it properly, in an organized and effective fashion... The marchers filled Swanston Street in downtown Melbourne, marching past a Nike superstore chanting “Stop global sweatshops.” " (Global Report, Sept, 2000).

Click here for WEF photo

In the repressive police responses to popular protests such as these,
many activists are beginning to casually expect them as common
protest hazards and they are not deterred. So far, if anything, a
collective feeling of growing empowerment seems to be at hand.
“Victory” in Melbourne has clearly nourished this shared sentiment of
international solidarity and resistance.

There are more examples of peaceful, non-violent, and quite pacifist protest.  Better Naked Feet than sweaty sweatshop feet is one example.  There are also more violent, property damaging protests.  We must promote non-violent action, even if the police are violent, even if corporate thugs are violent, and even if some protesters have crossed the line.

Rachael's Way There is a marvelous and fantastic carnival of resistance by a pacifist named Rachael, who was protesting the Academy of Management meetings in Washington D.C. this past August (2001).  She selected the most artistic posters, and put them up each night, only to see them shredded and torn by some people paid to do such acts of violence and terror.  I wish I had a copy of the one about the oil industry, rich in factoids about Exxon and Shell, with numbers of indigenous lives lost, and featuring some quite original art (See More on Rachael's protest of the Academy of Management Meetings in D.C.). When I did my carnivalesque Better Naked Feet than Nike theatrics inside the Academy, I wondered why is that we at the Academy of Management are not being protested by the student (and faculty) demonstrators who head for WTO and G-8?  Surely, they must know that is we who are the priests teaching trade views and global capitalism to the managerialist class that sets up global commodity supply chains that subcontract to sweatshops around the world, and appropriate plant-patents, land, and lives from indigenous everywhere.  We teach the spectacle, when we could be teaching more non-violent carnivalesque theater.

Perhaps we could be holding debates on the difference between violent forms of protest and those that are like Rachel's, rich in pacifism. 

I also use a research methodology called SEAM (Socio Economic Analysis of Management). I am adapting it to look at the way the psychoanalytic affects the social (working conditions, work organization, communication, training, time use, and strategy) as well as the economic (the hidden costs of doing business).  The psychoanalytic-SEAM allows us to see the impact of the psychic prisons we call work and consumption upon social performance at work and the hidden cost of how we in global capitalism conduct enterprise.

In premodern times, the peasantariat dressed up like the kings, queens, and pope and staged the theater of the carnivalesque, so that their voice would be hear by the powerful.  It is no different now, when from the protest over WTO in Seattle, then Quebec City, Sydney, Switzerland, and recently Genoa --- we witness a hundred different social advocacy and activist groups use street theater, masks, and costume to perform irony, satire, and parody of the corporate spectacle.

The big controversy now is how carnival in its clash with the spectacle of corporate (wedded to state) power is violent. Darth-Vader costumed corporate security and state police in country after country assault the free speech and "free theatre" rights of citizens.  There are goons and infiltrators who pretend to be demonstrators, that perform acts of violence that will legitimate to the spectators, the retaliatory acts of violence by police, that we see on the evening TV news (See G-8).  While 90% of all protest action is decidedly and purposely non-violent (in the mimetic of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King), there is violent protest.  There is breaking of the Starbuck's and NikeTown window. 

From WTO protests in Seattle to the one we will see in September (2001) in Washington D.C., the police, corporatists, and protest organizers decide which zones of the city will be peaceful protest, which will engage the police line, and where the more violent property damage action will be located.  Each city is mapped out, and there are definite zones for peaceful and less peaceful theater. In the negotiation process leading up to, and then every day of the action, the boundaries change. In recent action, the peaceful protest zones of carnival street theater have been machinated and forced into the zones of more violent theater.  

Why? In the engagement of spectacle (corporate PR and advertising wedded to media and state power), the strategy is to make the opponent look more violent than they are. The strategy is to demonize the carnival protestors, so that violent state police action will be viewed by the public spectators as justified and legitimate. 

In the World Trade Organization (WTO) demonstrations in Seattle, some dressed as Sea Turtles to symbolize their cause, a few broke windows (though some that did were impersonators) and did other violence, others did not know why they were protesting, but most of the 400,000 participants engaged in quite peaceful marches and demonstrations to critique transnational corporate power and express their sense of alienation.  The media made its own spectacle interpretation of the Seattle events by focusing on the more violent enactments.

In premodern times, carnival was encouraged by the Crown and Clergy. Carnival was a safety valve, a way for the oppressed masses to blow off some steam, and not erupt into revolution.  As such, we can state that the carnival, can itself be appropriated by the spectacle of corporate power, as a way to perpetuate its global rule.

Michel Foucault makes the point that the resistance accompanies power and so carnival is the resistance side show, the mirror-stage to spectacle (See Fathers and Mother of Management). Where there is spectacle (i.e. WTO), there is carnivalesque resistance.

In carnival, to act out critical reviews of managerialist corporatist practices, and to give expression to consumer and worker alienation is part of the critical postmodern turn.

My personal project is to invoke Festivalism, as a middle, between Spectacle and Carnival.  

Festivalism is peaceful, non-violent action. It is like carnival, such as pelting tanks with rose petals.  Festival is also appropriated by power. Every city has its festival, and instead of fun and aesthetics, it is one more spectacle of selling corporate goods.  Yet, in festivalism, there is a middle way.

Return to Main Menu - then head for Festivalism.

 

See Figure 2: The Nested Frames of Spectacle, Festival, and Carnival (Boje, 2001)

 

My Writing

  1. Boje writing about spectacle and festival in the athletic apparel industry http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/academicsstudyingwriting.htm#bojewriting

  2. Boje, D. M. (2002) "Leadership Theatre Event" - Use of Augusto Boal's Image, Invisible, and Fourm Theatre to teach carnivalesque theatres of resistance in leadership course in Colleges of Business everywhere. http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/388/leadership_theatre_event.htm 

  3. Boje, D. M. (2001l) "Global Theatrics of Capitalism." Contains examples of culture jamming art, missing absent referent photos, and analysis of relation between Athletic Apparel Industry spectacle of disinformation, and carnivalesque acts of street theater resistance. Appendix of 10 College of Business theatrics training experiential exercises.

  4. Boje, D. M. (2001b). Athletic Apparel Industry is Tamara-land. Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. Vol 1 (2), pp. 6-19. http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara/

  5. Boje, D. M. (2001h) "Editorial: Athletic Apparel Industry is Tamara-land." SPECIAL ISSUE ON Corporate Predators and Nike, Tamara Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. Vol 1 Issue 2 pp 6-19.

  6. Boje, D. M. (2001e). Carnivalesque Resistance to Global Spectacle: A critical postmodern theory of public administration. Accepted for Publication for September issue of  Administrative Theory and Praxis, special issue on Radical Organization Theory.

  7. Boje, D. M. (2001g). Antenarrating, Tamara, and Nike Storytelling. Paper prepared for presentation at “Storytelling Conference” at the School of Management; Imperial College, 53 Prince’s Gate, Exhibition Road, London, July 9th, 2001 http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ethnostorytelling.htm

  8. Theatrics of Control:  Tamara of Spectacle, Festival, and Carnival by David Boje, November 28, 2000

  9. Festival, Spectacle & Carnival - presentation to 2000 Academy of Management by Boje & Rosile

  10. Figure 1: The Nested Frames of Spectacle, Festival, and Carnival (Boje, 2001)

My BOOKS:

TRY A TEACHING/CLASSROOM ASSIGNMENT on CARNIVAL OF RESISTANCE - What would a carnival of resistance look like today?  In your answer be sure to explain why Mikhail Bakhtin believed that a carnival constituted an act of resistance in Medieval times, and take into account that times and places and context have changed. 

What is its history and trajectory? i.e. where did it come from and where is it going? · Who are the participants? i.e. their demographics: class, race, gender, sexuality, age, geography, etc. · How does one participate? · How do the participants define themselves? e.g. style, language, music, activity, ideology, etc. · How do those outside the culture or group define them? Explore their "politics": · What are they resisting? · How are they doing this? · Are the conscious of this resistance? · What is their intent or goal? · How does the means they employ relate to the ends they proclaim? · Are they successful in actualizing their intent or reaching their goal? Why? Why not? Your interpretation: · What do you make of this "resistance"? · Do you think it is an effective strategy to bring about social change? · What might be a more effective strategy? Note: these are all just suggested questions to guide you in your investigation. (Source)

For more info on Qualitative Methodology field assignments see Qualitative Methods 

WEB SITES - related to Carnival of Resistance:

Cities around the world are holding Carnivals of Resistance (mostly in May, June and September). Some coincide with meetings of WTO, G8, IMF, and World Bank; Others reclaim the city as a place of carnival, in the spirit of Mikel Bakhtin's Carnivalesque forms of Resistance to Global Spectacle of late postmodern capitalism and greed (i.e. Enron). The Global Carnival of Resistance has been growing steadily since the late 1990s.