refunction means to transform (a culture or institution, etc.) in order to promote social change. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.
Why “refunction” is a great word
To transform a culture, institution, or artistic form by radically repurposing it, with the deliberate aim of promoting social change. From the English prefix re- (“again, anew”) + function, as a calque of the German term Umfunktionierung. Unlike “reform,” which seeks improvement within an established framework, or “repurpose,” which denotes a pragmatic shift in an object’s use, refunction carries a specific theoretical weight, aiming to dismantle and reconfigure an apparatus’s ideological core. It is the agitprop troupe commandeering a bourgeois opera house, the abandoned factory floor reconstituted as a commune’s assembly hall, or the state broadcast system seized to transmit a pirate symphony of dissent—a deliberate act of cultural alchemy where the vessel itself is transmuted to pour a new and volatile wine.
Etymology
From re- + function, as a calque of German Umfunktionierung.
verb
- To transform (a culture or institution, etc.) in order to promote social change.“A global corporate power, Del Rio Inc., attempts to refunction a Mexican peasant culture of small-holders for biopolitical exploitation by commodifying the water that sustains their way of life.”