English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

There's a nice banner hanging between Stewart and the Union: Disability Awareness Month. This sign always makes me both giggle and snarl.
First, if you are disabled you are aware of it. If you are not visually disabled, it is unlikely anyone else will be aware of it, unless you decide to tattoo it across some body part (asuming you are abl to be tattooed). So I giggle.
Second, to cause a snarl: The idea of Awareness (which flits in and out of Jenkins' chapter on Photoshop for Democracy) assumes that once someone has been Enlightened, action will ensue. Grassroots organizations depend upon this assumption: "Raise awareness!" seems to me to be just as useless as "Empowering the Helpless." The power relationships don't change in either of these.