Signifying dissent: The sensory semiotics of protest

Abstract

Public protests need to communicate their aims to an audience, and the audience must make sense of the message. Initially this article was planned as a visual analysis of protest signs and placards. But to avoid ‘reproduc[ing] the privileged position of sight and vision over other ways of knowing’, we attend to the contested relations between signification, power, and all the senses. The sounds, smells, sights, tastes, and textures found at protests by groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Occupy, and the gilets jaunes, and on issues including women’s rights, nuclear power, immigration detention, Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccination mandates. Through ethnographic documentation of protests and the ‘live’ coverage broadcast in social and news media, our investigation of activities, scenes, signs, and participants reveals, firstly, that public dissent communicates through multiple sensory dimensions, and, secondly, that the senses of street-based protests are inextricably intertwined with sensory control tactics used against protesters in the policing of events.