Andrea Langlois et al - Islands of Resistance - Pirate Radio in Canada

Pirate Radio and Maneuver • 147
the waters. By using a process of “parasitizing” the airwaves, which
is akin to the self-regulating processes of the natural world, deviant
broadcasters reestablish an organic balance between institutions and
marginalized groups. From its very beginnings, radio was developed
to deliver clean, tidy and clear messages, in order to open a space for
the State and industry. It was yet another territory to colonize. As
Saint-Thomas l’Imposteur remarked in an interview,
Stations multiply and provide aural landscapes dedicated to a virtual
sense of being at home, made portable via small listening devices like
Walkmans and transistors. The broadcast starts from point A and
moves towards, through geographical space, multiple point Bs. The
thinkers behind radio production intended the space between the
two points to be clean, free of intruders and parasites. War is waged
against interference. 8
Pirate Radio as Paradigm and Social Construction
It may be because of the romanticism with which pirate radio is imbued
that the term pirate is commonly accepted by those who engage in the
activity. Yet it is important to note that the term also implies criminality,
and it is worth questioning its usage. When attached to a radio
broadcast, the term pirate carries a specific dramatization of an act
involving the reappropriation of the original freedoms that existed
before radio became monopolized by government and corporate institutions.
Of course, the term is inspired by the off-shore situation of
those stations broadcasting illegally from ships in international waters.
If pirate radio sometimes finds refuge on ships, the analogy “empire of
the airwaves” 9 is certainly relevant. To associate an act of illegal radio
broadcasting with the act of piracy also underscores the illegal aspect
of these activities, reminding the violators, on the one hand, of their
social marginality and, on the other hand, affirming, at least among
mainstream media’s audiences, the illegal aspect of the act vis-à-vis
the privatization and nationalization of radio frequencies. In other
words, the term pirate, when attached to radio, can act as both a tool
of dissuasion and as power of persuasion.
Radio as social paradigm is intricately linked to the notion of space,
especially with regards to its privatization and its access by institutional
powers. Because the number of frequencies on the airwaves is
technically restricted, State radio broadcasting — then private radio