Narrating Injustice

Abstract

As a theoretical starting point, this article suggests a shift from media-as-text to media object-as-utterance (in the sense of the term as worked out by Bakhtin and Voloshinov). This is done to move away from the production/consumption dichotomy, a framework on which most media studies analyses are predicated. From here, the story is told of Injustice, a documentary that found itself in unusual circumstances at the time of its release in Britain in July/ August 2001, with the local police attempting to block the screening of the film at various venues. Attempts to place this narration in relation to an existent cultural studies tradition of writing on the media lead us to consider relations of power/knowledge between British cultural studies and the media it comments on. In conclusion, this article attempts to set out a terrain within which a dialogic anthropology of media can work as a critical knowledge practice.