This article was first published in 1994 in
Emigre 32.
The paradoxical nature of being both in and
around is familiar to the cultural anthropologist, who might
work in the field among the observed and at the same time
remains apart from the observed. It is this observer status
given to the anthropologist that creates this necessary
dilemma. The conventional wisdom supporting the role of
cultural anthropology has been its intention to study the
cultures of other peoples as a way of reflecting on our own
culture, or to borrow a phrase from Liberal Humanism, "To
know others so that we may better understand ourselves."
The situation between an observer and an observed can never be
neutral, however, since the power relationships are inevitably
unequal.
The graphic designer shares a similar
dilemma of being both instrumental in the making of cultural
artifacts and living in the society through which they are
distributed. Graphic designers are often asked to remove
themselves from their social positions and experiences and
offer themselves as professionals, specialists in the various
forms of visual communication. This detachment, which we might
call "professionalization" or
"specialization," creates the mythical, autonomous
observer in the design process. This is a learned method of
being professional and a consequence of the
"problem-solving process" at the core of every
graphic design procedure. We are asked to be objective and to
render rational decisions (solutions), and doing so places
graphic design on a par with other professions.
The graphic designer is, of course, a
member of society and thus lives with the artifacts of his or
her making, as well as with the artifacts of other designers.
In this way, designers are asked to be professionals outside of
(to be around) culture, and at the same time, to be a part of
(to be in), culture.
We are, with others in society, witnesses
to and participants in the consumption of cultural artifacts
and, therefore, share in the moments of seduction and repulsion
that these artifacts generate.
I am seduced by the messages of others
I appreciate the materiality of the finely
printed book
I respond to the urgency expressed by the
political poster ... and I shop at the mall.
I am repulsed by the messages of others
I am appalled by displays of injustice
I am threatened by the signs of hatred ...
and I shop at the mall.
The important lesson of this confession is
that we consume cultural artifacts and their messages in
different ways. While we consume these artifacts in the
conventional manner of conspicuous consumption, which renders
consumers as passive, blank slates upon which all forms of
messages can be written, more recent research efforts have
demonstrated another dimension to this idea of passive
consumption, showing that we also consume artifacts
symbolically and even ironically through small acts of
individual resistance.(1) I watch Melrose Place ironically, for the melodramatic plot lines
and the obvious acting - it’s so bad, it’s good -
while I resist buying cable television because that’s
just too much television.
The Discovery of Difference
The dilemma of being both in and around
culture exists at another level: at the level of individual
subjectivity. I have already asserted that the phrase "in
and around” constitutes a subject position, if only a
paradoxical one. Just as a subject position will only be
meaningful if it is defined in relationship to other positions,
so too is the subject of that positioning. We need other things
to mark the boundaries of ourselves, our identities and our
cultures. Psychoanalysis tells us that this process happens at
a very early age, when the child recognizes itself as a self;
that is to say, as an individual, and also recognizes others as
others. Similarly, cognitive psychologists have suggested that
we seem predisposed at the earliest ages to recognize
difference, the exceptional, as a way of making sense of the
world around us.
This process of differentiation continues
on a social level through identification with race, ethnicity,
gender, age, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, class,
etc. These social and cultural positions are defined as much by
what they are not as by what they are. We find that we are
culturally constructed as subjects and we are socially
constructed through the identities we claim or the categories
we are placed in. It is easier to understand that class is a
social construction but harder to consider how race is a
construction, and not simply a natural phenomenon, until we
realize that the idea of race emerged in a historically
specific way, bolstered by the truth claims of science for
various political ends. Race is not natural, it is cultural.
Gender is not natural, it is cultural. These statements are
made to counter the extent to which ideas about woman, blacks,
gays, etc. are so intertwined in the fabric of society as to
appear inevitable and unquestionable - natural.
The relationship between self and others is
a two-way street, producing effects on all parties within a
power structure that is typically unequal. This
"discovery," of others - that moment of first contact
between different groups and their subsequent relationships -
has been characterized by the French philosopher Jacques
Derrida as essentially "violent": "... the
anthropological war [is] the essential confrontation that opens
communication between peoples and cultures, even when that
communication is not practiced under the banner of colonial or
missionary oppression."(2)
This violence occurs at the level of
actual, lived experience and at the level of symbolic
existence, through words and images; i.e., representations.
Design’s relationship with cultural
identification is a very important, that is to say, financially
significant one. The "discovery" of various cultural
groups within society coincides with their definition as an
audience and as a market. It is no coincidence that Big
Business "discovered" other audiences after the
social turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s; the Civil Rights and
Women’s Rights Movements to name but two. We are, in
fact, witnessing a renewed discovery of cultural diversity
under the banner of multiculturalism, a phenomenon that is
reflected in "progressive" advertising campaigns.(3) Tellingly, many of
these campaigns are for fashion clientele, contributing to the
notion that such "diversity" is
"fashionable."(4) In our discussions of others in this culture, it
is hard to imagine a scenario that is not a product of larger
economic forces. This applies to the economic development of
colonialism that brought slavery to the New World and with it
the foundations of racial supremacy, as well as to today's
effects of global capitalism which turn those old feelings of
supremacy into longings for contact, even intimate contact,
with others - their skin, clothes, language, music, crafts,
cuisine.(5) It is this longing for contact with others, their
exotic appeal, which drives the desire for cultural
appreciation through cultural appropriation.
Imaging the Other: The Digital Fiction of
First Contact
This "discovery" of cultural
difference through the recent guise of multiculturalism can be
seen in a fall 1993 issue of Time magazine entitled "The New Face of
America." Created as a special issue and devoted
exclusively to issues surrounding what we now call
"multiculturalism," this publication effort was
sponsored, exclusively, by Chrysler Plymouth Corporation. From
the cover: "Take a good look at this woman. She was
created by a computer from a mix of several races. What you see
is a remarkable preview of The New Face of America. How
Immigrants Are Shaping the World's First Multicultural
Society." We learn inside that this new woman is a
composite creature created through the digital
"morphing" process combining specified amounts of
ethnicity: 15% Anglo-Saxon, 17.5% Middle Eastern, 17.5%
African, 7.5% Asian, 35% Southern European, and 7.5% Hispanic.
Least we consider her some sort of ethno-techno-Frankenstein,
we are told that this woman stole the hearts of several
magazine staffers, obviously unaware of her virtual existence.
Of course, it doesn’t take a cynic to realize the fallacy
of asserting that today’s America represents the world's
first multicultural society. The history of the world's
oppressed would say otherwise. Even though the issue contains a
story on interracial marriage and what it calls
"crossbreeding," complete with real husbands and
wives and their real mixed-race children, it expends a great
deal of effort in the presentation of its digital ethnic-mixing
"times table" shown in the next spread. Using the
same "morphing" technology as the cover creation,
they have assembled 49 others using a 50-50 mixing formula.
In a similar vein, the magazine Colors sponsored
by the Italian fashion corporation Benetton, in a spring/summer
1993 issue devoted to race, offers a six-page section of
digital "possibilities." In these pages, celebrities
are transformed, much like Ted Turner's colorizing technique,
creating a "black" Queen Elizabeth, a
"black" Arnold Schwarzenegger, a "white"
Spike Lee, an "Asian" Pope John Paul II and a
"white" Michael Jackson. The absurdity of these
"possibilities" as reality creates the humor that
makes us laugh. These possibilities do not represent any lived
reality but a mythic realm where we can now dissolve the
outward boundaries of "us and them"-ness through the
wonders of digital imaging.
Our fascination with others has been
rethought by anthropologist Michael Taussig, who turns the
table on the observer and the observed. Taussig asks "Who
is fascinated by what?" when he questions early
anthropological expeditions and their use of the camera and the
phonograph to make contact with and record other peoples.
According to Taussig, "the more important question lies
with the white man's fascination with the non-whites'
fascination with these mimetically capacious machines [the
camera and the phonograph]."(6) Similarly, we need to ask ourselves who is
served by the wondrous potential of digital imaging to
transform pictures of race, ethnicity or gender? Who are these
images for?
"The shock of recognition! In an
electric information environment, minority groups can no longer
be contained - ignored. Too many people know too much about
each other. Our new environment compels commitment and
participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and
responsible for, each other."
The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, 1967
Over a quarter-century has passed since
this prophecy about our technological relationship with others
by media guru Marshall McLuhan. In the racial turbulence of the
sixties, McLuhan saw the impact that increased information
exchange would have on society, particularly on our
relationships with other people. Tinged with the optimism that
pervades all technological revolutions, McLuhan injects a
message of civic responsibility - an ethics of mutual
dependency.
Fast-forward to yesterday: "Our
critics felt that Matt Mahurin's work changed the picture
fundamentally; I felt it lifted a common police mug shot to the
level of art, with no sacrifice to truth. Reasonable people may
disagree about that. If there was anything wrong with the
cover, in my view, it was that it was not immediately apparent
that this was a photo-illustration rather than an unaltered
photograph; to know that, a reader had to turn to our contents
page or see the original mug shot on the opening page of the
story."
James R. Gaines, Managing Editor, Time, July 4, 1994
This statement was a defense for the use of
Matt Mahurin's digital photo-illustration of O.J. Simpson for Time. This recent
event underscores the relationships among electronic
technologies, representation and cultural identity and the many
issues their convergence raises. There are many instances in
recent memory of the manipulation of photographic imagery by
digital technology, such as the head-of-Oprah-Winfrey +
body-of-Ann-Margaret collage for T.V.
Guide or National
Geographic's shifting of the Great
Pyramids at Giza, which stirred numerous public controversies
over the myth of "the truthfulness of photographs."(7)
In the case of the O.J. Simpson cover, Time decides to
use as its defense the argument that the illustration
transcends the original mug shot photo and becomes art, thereby
placing it in a special cultural category reserved for
suspended judgments, a place where my taste is not yours, yours
is not mine, let's agree to disagree and other relativisms that
seemed to have been inherited from the "I'm Okay, You're
Okay" '70s. By placing this commission in the realm of
art, the editor can argue that the artist who created it (or
rather re-created it) gave it something it lacked. This lack
occurs, of course, because of the kind of image it is - a mug
shot. Justification for Mahurin's image hinges on displacing
everything we know about the social significance of mug shots
as documents of suspected criminals and re-reading the image as
an intervention of the artist's hand and eye, thereby elevating
the commonplace mug shot to the extraordinary realm of art.
The greater at-large and largely negative
reaction to this image occurs at a level of understanding about
how images are conceptually framed in society. According to Time management,
detractors didn't read the image "correctly" as a
work of art, but rather as what it is, a technological
alteration of a mug shot - a photographic document of criminal
surveillance.(8) What was read, at least by some, was the darkening of
Simpson's skin tone, which shows that some grasped the fact
that this was not the "original" because it did not
conform to what they knew (mostly from other pictures) about
O.J. Simpson. It did not correspond to the "truth."
The reinscription of a police mug shot, #BK4013970 06-17-94,
into the red frame of a Time cover, trades our abstract belief in
"innocent until proven guilty" for the tacit
knowledge of assumed guilt. The resulting re-creation mixes
several other social messages: the story of a fallen public
figure ("An American Tragedy," reads the cover)
subconsciously translated in many minds as the verification of
everything they think they know of black males and criminal
activity.
This mini-controversy is but the latest
episode in the on-going struggle for representation in our
culture that is dressed in the high-tech clothing of digital
imaging, while revealing the same old social truths. McLuhan
saw a social opportunity but lacked critical insight into the
social reality that limits individual options that seek to
operate in opposition to established social truths.
What is interesting to me is how new
digital technologies have been harnessed for representing
racial "possibilities." These ethnic fictions
populate the world of cyberspace in ways that picturing others
used to reside in the mind, moving away from imagining the
other to imaging the other. Unfortunately, little has changed
in the conceptions of race, only the spaces in which they are
articulated. The representations of other cultures have moved
from the conspicuous colonialism of stolen and bartered objects
found in the curiosity cabinet and the natural history museum
to the neocolonialism of appropriating cultural
representations, including the creation of yet another
"other:" a fictive one you can't know because it
doesn't really exist.
It is this aspect of fictitiousness that
distinguishes the use of digital imaging techniques to capture
and fix the image of the other. Photography has been
consistently used to "capture" others, particularly
in the field work of anthropologists or the surveillance of
police. These photographic depictions have their own level of
conceit but always remain true to their claim to capture
reality "as it was." These recent uses of digital
imaging techniques, however, relinquish their claims to reality
in favor of picturing reality "as it isn't," or
"as it might be."
The fictive domain of the digital
construction can be seen more obviously in another Colors (June 1994)
depiction, a portrait of former President Ronald Reagan with
skin lesions next to an obituary citing his recent death from
complications with AIDS. The fictitious photo and obituary
rewrite the Reagan-era policy on AIDS and extol the virtues of
a man who "is best remembered for his quick and decisive
response to the AIDS epidemic," under the headline
"Hero." While at great pains to establish a level of
reality for their story, Colors declares the fictitious nature of the story
in a footnote and uses the word "manipulation" in the
attached photo credit. These are offered to prevent misreading
the story as true, while trying to preserve the supreme irony
of the story itself. Again, the absurdity of the story plays
havoc with the reality of its presentation. Unfortunately, we
are left with the "wishful thinking" of the obituary
and the all-too-real historical record on the subject.
The fictive fantasy of digital
"possibilities" seems so appealing because they offer
us a form of pleasure through their refusal of a known reality.(9) The ease with
which such productions are made is in contrast to the
difficulties of easing racial conflict or ending political
apathy towards the AIDS pandemic.
As a counterpoint to these instrumental
uses of digital technologies by mainstream media is the use of
similar technologies by British artist Keith Piper, whose video
installation "Surveillances: Tagging the Other,"
deals with the use of that technology within the climate of
European racism. Piper appropriates the slang term of
"tagging" - the marking of territory by a unique
graffiti signature - and applies it to the use of electronic
technologies to mark and track others. In this way, Piper shows
how, for example, a proposed New European State could utilize
digital technologies and information networks to target social
"undesirables" and keep them under surveillance.
Piper's digital images foresee a distinctly 21st-century vision
of documenting and analyzing cultural differences in much the
same way as 19th-century phrenologists studied the head
structures and facial features of others, particularly the
insane, the criminal and the "Negro." Keith Piper's
use of the same technology creates a different digital fiction:
one you fear because it might just exist.
Picturing Difference / Representing
Diversity
We come to know ourselves and others less
often through actual contact and more usually through
representations in society. Cultural identification is a factor
of representation. For example, the French psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan, speaking about the concepts of woman and
sexuality, said it succinctly: "Images and symbols for the
woman cannot be isolated from images and symbols of the woman.
It is representation, the representation of feminine
sexuality... which conditions how it comes into play."(10)
The debates about multiculturalism are
debates about representation. Although many people consider the
issue in terms of sheer numbers - a quantitative approach to
representation - the issue is not necessarily a lack of
representations but the diversity of them; for as the art
critic and theorist Craig Owens reminds us: "In our
culture there is, of course, no lack of representations of
women - or, for that matter, of other marginalized groups
(blacks, homosexuals, children, criminals, the
insane...)."(11)
Representations can be depictions of others
as a kind of shorthand that we substitute for specific cultural
categories. The effect of the linkage between dominant
political interests and the use of various representations can
be seen when we confront wholesale categories that are
themselves amalgamations of sex, race and class, without
imagery. For example, what image do you form for "welfare
mother," "crack addict," or "AIDS
patient?" These code words are the cultural shorthand for
young, unmarried, poor, African-American woman; young, poor,
African-American man; and young, white, gay male respectively.
Their power derives from their ability to exploit media images
of these scenarios in the minds of the public without directing
attention to their misogynic, racist and homophobic roots.
Picture This: Voice and Agency
The debate on representation for the
graphic designer seems to reside in the space between Karl
Marx's empowering dictate, "They cannot represent
themselves, they must be represented,"(12) that is to say, act for
others, and Gilles Deleuze's categorical rejection of such
presumed authority - "the indignity of speaking for
others."(13) Marx's famous dictate is the more typical task
that artists and other cultural producers have assigned
themselves: to speak for others. Less typical is the statement
by Deleuze that suggests, perhaps, letting others speak for
themselves.
The negotiation of representational
strategies seems central for the graphic designer (and others)
who are routinely asked to speak for others. Graphic designers
and other cultural producers are just beginning to rethink the
terms of representation, away from speaking for others and
towards speaking with and to others.(14) The factors that would allow others to
speak for themselves deal with access to the means of
representation that is ultimately a function of power. The
debates around multiculturalism can be seen as a struggle for
control over the means of representation. As Craig Owens
states, it is representation itself that takes away the ability
to speak for oneself.
However, the traffic in representations
will not end since it is fundamental to the operation of our
society. So, while increased instances of represented others
(tokenism) inject some presence into the picture, they do
little to explain the previous exclusions. Fundamental change
is unlikely to occur through the pages of multinational
corporate advertising no matter how many others are depicted.
After all, have you "Come a Long Way, Baby!"?
Fundamental change is much more likely to
come at a broader social level through a multitude of changes
from any number of sectors and inevitably it will be reflected
in the construction of various representations, made by graphic
designers and other cultural producers and ultimately
incorporated in the constitution of identities. After all,
corporate advertising campaigns and token representatives (spot
the black, the Asian, the woman in the scene) do not create
diversity but merely reflect it.
The work of socially engaged activists,
artists and designers tries to undermine the stereotype in
innumerable ways; through disruptive strategies such as
appropriation, subversion and inversion, as well as the
destabilizing tactics of deconstructive textual readings and
demystifying widely held views.(15) True inclusiveness, as a result of
empowerment or agency, includes access to both the means of
producing cultural representations and to the modes of their
distribution in society. In this way, the voices of others will
be heard only when those others have access to the larger
public sphere.
While graphic designers may claim an
independent status, like that of neutral observers, we find
that their role is a central one in the system of
representations. As producers and consumers of various cultural
artifacts, understood as both tangible goods, such as books and
magazines, as well as the more intangible products, such as
ephemeral messages and images, graphic designers find
themselves both in and around culture.
So what is the answer? The problems are
multifaceted and much larger than design, which means we need a
variety of responses on a variety of levels. It helps to
remember that we are both designers and citizens. In this way,
you can be part of the solution even if you are not designing
for it. It also helps to remember that graphic design is about
messages, and that our solutions are merely contributions to a
larger effort.
There must be greater cultural diversity in
the people who design, including an analysis of why these
people are not there now. We need greater critical awareness
that the teaching and practice of design occur in larger social
frameworks, governed by rules of racism, patriarchy,
heterosexism, etc., particularly for those individuals who may
not experience it themselves. We need a greater range of
methods and options for practicing graphic design that begins
to step outside of a reactionary response to problems with its
outmoded, pyramidal (top-down) structure and towards a more
inclusive, responsive position found in activities like, for
example, collaboration and co-authorship. Much to the
disappointment of many, these issues will not disappear with
dismissals of "political correctness" since they
reflect a fundamental social change that has been underway for
quite some time, no matter how slow it seems in coming for the
rest of us. Quite simply, design has no choice but to get used
to it.
Notes:
1. The now classic example drawn from work
of popular culture is Ien Ang's Watching
Dallas, first published in the
Netherlands in 1982. Ang gathered responses from women by
placing an ad in the Dutch woman's magazine Viva, addressed to those who
either liked to watch the American soap opera Dallas or
disliked it. Ang discovered three general positions toward the
program: one group of fans, a second set of viewers who watched
the program ironically and a third group who hated the show.
Ang's work demonstrates that the consumption of cultural
artifacts (in this case watching t.v.) is a complex negotiation
involving sometimes the wholesale acceptance of the show's
message (by fans), sometimes an outright rejection of such
debased messages and meanings (by haters) and sometimes an
inverted re-reading of the show's message and meaning (by
ironists). Ang's work is important because she examines how
pleasure is produced through consumption, in rather complex
ways with contradictory value systems, rather than seeing
consumption as simply an end in and of itself.
2. "The Battle of Proper Names,"
from "Part II: Nature, Culture, Writing" in Of Grammatology by
Jacques Derrida, 1976, p.107. Derrida's comment is in context
of a discussion of the "Writing Lesson" by the
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. The linkage between
violence and representation is fully present in this
allegorical image of "America" by Philippe Galle in
the late 16th century. The New World is rendered as a naked,
violent woman. Why a naked, violent woman?
3. The advent of "multi-culti"
advertising has produced a bewildering amount of information on
the consumptive preferences and buying patterns of various
ethnic groups. For example, we now know that Korean Americans
consume more Spam than any other ethnic group or that Chinese
Americans drink more Cognac. In the words of one executive,
"Today's marketing is part anthropology."
4. The most visible of these campaigns is
the on-going "United Colors of Benetton." A critical
analysis of Benetton is made by Jeff Rosen in his article
"Merchandising Multiculturalism: Benetton and the New
Cultural Relativism," New Art
Examiner, November 1993,
pp.18–26. The critical difference lies in how the concept
of multiculturalism will be allowed to exist as a force in
society. Will multiculturalism act as a force for substantive
change in how we deal with other cultures? Is it to be seen as
a form of marginalized pluralism? Or is it simply a relative
concept perfect for the marketing of our times? In the reported
words of Benetton's creative director Oliviero Toscani,
"Products change, images capitalize." Or as Rosen
notes, "Toscani has it backwards: Images change, products
capitalize."
5. "The commodification of Otherness
has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight,
more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and
feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice,
seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream
white culture." - bell hooks from "Eating the Other:
Desire and Resistance," in Black
Looks: Race and Representation,
1992, p. 21.
6. "The Talking Machine," in Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the
Senses by Michael Taussig,
1993, p. 198.
7. For an extended account of what he calls
the "pseudo-photograph," see William J. Mitchell's
book The Reconfigured Eye: Visual
Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (1992);
in particular, the chapters "Intention and Artifice"
and "How to Do Things with Pictures."
8. For a critical account of the use of
photography in the service of documenting criminal activity,
see "The Body and the Archive" by Allan Sekula,
reprinted in The Contest of Meaning:
Critical Histories of Photography,
1989.
9. This thought parallels some of the
conclusions of Ien Ang (see note 1), who argues that fantasy
and fiction do not "function in place of, but beside,
other dimensions of life (social practice, moral or political
consciousness). "It...is a source of pleasure because it
puts ‘reality' in parentheses, because it constructs
imaginary solutions for real contradictions, which in their
fictional simplicity and their simple fictionality step outside
the tedious complexity of existing social relations of
dominance and subordination." (p.135)
10. "Guiding Remarks for a Congress on
Feminine Sexuality," by Jacques Lacan in Feminine Sexuality,
edited by Juliet Mitchell, 1982, p. 90.
11. "‘The Indignity of Speaking
for Others': An Imaginary Interview," by Craig Owens in Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power and
Culture, 1992, p. 262.
12. The comment is from Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire in
a discussion of the French peasantry. This is discussed by
Owens (see note 10), who adds: "Here, Marx uncritically
assumes the traditional role of politically motivated
intellectual - or artist - in bourgeois society: he
appropriates for himself the right to speak on behalf of
others, setting himself up as their conscience - indeed, as
consciousness itself. But in order to occupy this position, he
must first deny them (self-) consciousness, the ability to
represent themselves." (p.261).
13. Michel Foucault, " Intellectuals
and Power: A Conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles
Deleuze" in Language,
Counter-Memory, Practice, 1977,
p.209. This statement by Deleuze about Foucault's work comes
from Craig Owens's essay (see note 10).
14. Undoubtedly, designers are discovering
that issues of cultural diversity and social responsibility can
be found in their own back yards. As I write this, the premiere
issue of Sphere has arrived at my door, a publication by the World
Studio Foundation. The stated intent of the Foundation is
threefold: to "examine the role of cultural identity in
the design disciplines," to "collect and disseminate
information about social projects in the global creative
community" and to "encourage projects that empower
individuals and communities to participate in the shaping of
their environment." While their intentions are laudable I
am left with an uneasy feeling. Perhaps it's cynicism, maybe
it's the Colors-like design that makes me suspicious, or maybe it's
the $50 subscription price. See the brief report on World
Studio, I.D. magazine, November 1993, p. 26.
15. It is easier to see the work produced
by artists as instances of "others speaking for
themselves" and in the process enabling another voice to
be heard. I think of Carrie Mae Weems, and African-American
woman, whose photographic series "Ain't Jokin" with
titles such as "Black Woman with Chicken" or
"What are the three things you can't give a black
person?" or of the Native-American artist Jimmie Durham's
work, both of whom undermine the prevalent stereotypes produced
by and for dominant culture. It is harder to see this activity
in the realm of graphic design proper, much of which is
produced by and for dominant cultural interests.
