Popular Culture Review Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter 2010 | Page 45

T-Shirts: Urban Language of Remembrance_____ 41 clothing in a new way. This reconstruction of traditional ways of behavior into new forms is comparable to Dick Hebdige’s concept of bricolage in which certain aspects of clothing in British culture have been reconfigured to give them new meaning (61). In short, it was the act of wearing meaning-laden objects in ways that is seen to violate customary modes of behavior. That is, T-shirt wearers use these objects that are different from what individuals would normally expect at such events. The use of T-shirts as forms of cultural expression can reveal the way in which those involved in these cultural methods view themselves in the larger society. This perception can be placed within the topics of cultural politics and cultural identity. Cultural Politics Barker and Galasinski define the term cultural politics “as a series of collective social struggles organized around the nodal points of class, gender, race. . . to describe the social in terms of specific values and hope for consequences” (61). Within the definition of cultural politics, these analysts consider a place for language in that they place older forms of language within a new form and meaning. For these investigators, cultural politics is a way of ta