Ethical Dilemmas in Resistance Art Workshops with Youth

In 2017 and 2018 [Name of research project] organized two transnational youth resistance art workshops. These workshops addressed online social justice issues and placed emphasis on pushing back against technology-facilitated violence and surveillance in networked spaces. Our engagement with these workshops raised three dilemmas associated with these sorts of resistive social justice art projects. This article explores these dilemmas, which include how to enable the production of digital art in a manner that is attentive to intersectional issues of digital literacy and access; artistic appropriations of sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful speech and their relation to cultural appropriation; and defamation, privacy, copyright and trademark considerations relating to artistic appropriations. In addressing these dilemmas, examples of regulatory frameworks shaping resistance opportunities and social justice initiatives are highlighted, along with suggestions for addressing these dilemmas for those who may wish to facilitate or engage in youth resistance art workshops in future.

Youth Resisting the Popular Curriculum of Gender and Sexuality

The concept of youth resistance has its roots in the field of sociology of education. Nevertheless, the concept has been taken up in fields such as economy, psychology, and anthropology and among other scholars who seek to understand education, schooling, and the ways in which young people experience everyday life. Although in its origins, resistance theory focused on oppositional behaviors of mostly white, cis, heterosexual young men, it has expanded to account for the ways in which minoritized communities (women, black, indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIA+, disabled, queer, and the multiple intersections of these identities) resist the oppression of mainstream society. In schools, the push and pull of youth resistance is constantly present. Schools have become a place for the maintenance and contestation of many societal expectations, including gendered and sexuality expectations. These societal expectations are taught and reinforced in schools through official or visible curriculum (i.e., the content that students learn in class) and through popular or invisible curriculum—everything else that is learned through interactions with peers, teachers, other adults on campus, and the cultural values they bring into the building with them. Educational spaces are very structured spaces, and youth who challenge norms and rules (even if they are unwritten) may face dire consequences. For that reason, the field scholars looking at LGBTQIA+ youth and resistance have argued that it is necessary to expand the field to look at not only youth culture but the ways in which this culture is performed in schools.

When William Came: A Prophetic Propaganda War

When William Came by Saki (H. H. Munro) is a unique novel in the genre of invasion literature. Starting after a fictional war between Britain and Germany, it depicts no scenes of invasion. Recently, there have been studies from the perspective of how Munro and other authors in the genre viewed Germany and Britain. Some studies also refer to Munro’s deliberate lack of depiction of the war. However, it seems that no studies have looked into the reasons why the war is not depicted. This paper argues that the story is not about showing British military unpreparedness but about how psychological weapons work. It could even be said that depictions of war would distract from the focus on propaganda and its effect on people. Considering this work as being about a British and German propaganda war opens up a new perspective that is different from previous studies. When William Came is a work that points out Britain’s unpreparedness for psychological war by imagining and detailing possible propaganda strategies. It has been said that the novel’s ending is unsatisfactory, as it only ends up showing the potential for youth resistance. However, if it is understood that this novel, from beginning to end, is about a propaganda battle, a war that is fought under the surface, then the final chapter can also be understood as a thrilling one.

Popular Media and Youth Resistances

“Popular media” and “youth resistance” are significant areas of inquiry in studies and theorizations of gender and sexuality in education. Yet, the terms popular media, youth, and resistance are highly contentious, sometimes overlapping and consistently posing definitional challenges. Popular media is at first exactly what it sounds like: broadly accessible and commercially produced texts like the Harry Potter franchise; however, popular media is also deeply complex and contextually determined, shifting over time in accordance with audiences as well as popular discourses to produce plural meanings. Likewise, youth resistance encompasses ever-changing, and often reductively problematic conceptualizations. Young people are frequently misrepresented in popular media as rebellious which in turn informs popular understanding(s) of resistance as calcified, domesticated, fetishized, masculinized, and romanticized. Youth resistance then, is complex, discursive, and a nuanced material reality. The complexity of popular culture and youth’s resistance within and against it demonstrates and demands creativity and criticality.