The Protester as Producer: Militant Action and the U.S. Radical Media

The Protester as Producer: Militant Action and the U.S. Radical Media analyses militant protest as an apparatus of cultural production. I examine the relationship between militant protest tactics and the radical media to show how actions like vandalism, sabotage, armed self-defence, armed propaganda, and self-immolation circulated as new forms of cultural expression and public discourse in the context of the U.S. war in Vietnam and its concurrent racial crises. The histories I have unearthed through archival research transform our understanding of protest in the Vietnam era and beyond, revising conventional histories of militancy in this period and instead bringing militant tactics more closely into line with everyday cultural expressions of rebellion and revolt. My approach shifts scholarly focus from institutional histories of conflict to the everyday tactics of rebellion which are often depoliticized or ignored in favour of more formalized political action. To analyze everyday tactics and their networked circulation, I adopt Michel de Certeau’s understanding of “popular tactics” as the everyday practices by which people “make use” of institutional spaces, networks, and procedures for their own ends. Protesters deployed militant tactics not only as a means of withdrawing their efficiency from “the war machine,” but also as a form of anti-war propaganda that fostered cultural and ideological connections between disparate radical groups. By analysing tactics as cultural forms over the course of four chapters, I expand the scope of radical media to include not only traditional materials such as the Vietnam-era alternative press, the underground GI press network, and radical films, but also instructional texts, military manuals, bombed buildings, live action performances, suicide notes, vandalized surfaces, and other hastily scribbled messages of dissent.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor dc:publisher

Carleton University

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Tibbits-Lamirande, Meghan

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright © 2025 the author(s). Theses may be used for non-commercial research, educational, or related academic purposes only. Such uses include personal study, distribution to students, research and scholarship. Theses may only be shared by linking to the Carleton University Institutional Repository and no part may be copied without proper attribution to the author; no part may be used for commercial purposes directly or indirectly via a for-profit platform; no adaptation or derivative works are permitted without consent from the copyright owner.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

10.22215/etd/2025-16502

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:carleton.scholaris.ca:20.500.14718/43869