cultural studies course 2

7/29/2019 Cultural Studies Course 2

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LECTURE 2


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INTERDISCIPLINARITY

Anthropology

Literary studies

Sociology

Philosophy

Art history Linguistics

Media studies

Psychoanalysis

Politics History

Medical sciences

Economics


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AMERICAN STUDIES

What is American?

American exceptionalism

- Marked by division and opposition- Americans are female as well as male, black

as well as white, poor as well as affluent,

Catholic or Jewish as well as Protestants, and

of diverse national and ethnic backgrounds.(Fox-Genovese)


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Features of cultural studies

Global

Eclectic

Deal with texts, events and experiences

Focuses on secular, middle-class, leftist,

youngish, Eurocentric practitioners

Engaged

Self-reflective Shifts between university and the wider culture


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ENTERPRISE CULTURE

A RAPID INCREASE IN THE SOCIAL

PRESENCE OF CULTURE

ECONOMICALLY, GOVERNMENTALLY

AND CONCEPTUALLY


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ENTERPRISE CULTURE

Culture societies

Australia 23% more workers in culturalindustries in the 90s

International trade in cultural goods hasincrease by a factor of 5 in the last 20years

Entertainment is USAs biggest export More TV channels, more broadcasting

time, more cultural commodities


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ENTERPRISE CULTURE

-social and economic activities

- the totality of leisure activities

a set of specific personal qualities: self-sufficiency, appetite for risk, individualism,

creativity, sense of adventure in the

world of work


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CULTURE WARS

The Clash of Civilisations resist the

divisive siren calls of multiculturalism

Issues of morality and censorship :

permissiveness vs. decency, traditional

heritage vs. commercial culture,

consensus vs. migration


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PROBLEMS

1. Cultural studies and politics (e.g. Bob

Marley)

2. Cultural studies and political economy

(more emphasis on cultural production.

E.g. Janice Radway)

3. Cultural studies and individualism


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Key concepts in cultural studies

1. Representation how the world is

socially constructed and represented to us

in meaningful ways

- how meaning is produced

E.g. image of the Planet Earth


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2. Materialism and non-reductionism:

- who own and controls cultural production

- the consequences of patterns ofownership and control for contours of the

cultural landscape


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3. Power

- pervades every level of social

relationships

- glue, coercive force, enabler of social

action


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4. Popular culture

- the ground on which consent is won or

lost

Ideology vs. hegemony

e.g. TV news, representation of gender in

advertising


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5. Subjectivity and identity

- how we come to be the kinds of people

we are

Subjectivity: what it is to be a person

Identity: how we describe ourselves to

each others Identities are created, do not pre-exist


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INTELLECTUAL STRANDS OF

CULTURAL STUDIES

1. Marxism

2. Culturalism

3. Structuralism 4. Poststructuralism

5. Psychoanalysis

6. Politics of difference (feminism, race,ethnicity, postcolonialism


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MARXISM

Historical specificity of human affairs

Means of production and labor

Subsistence through labor

Labor and forms of social organization modeof production

Economic relations structure consciousness,culture and politics

Capitalism commodity, fetishism, alienation,profit-driven

Class division: work, wages, housing, educationand health


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MARXISM

Culture is political because it expresses

social relations of class power

It obscures the underlying relations of

exploitation


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ALTHUSSER

Culture is a complex structures of different levelsand practices

It is the result of determinations emanating from

different levels The economic level has determination in the lastinstance but in feudalism the dominant waspolitics

Fiske describes a financial economy ofproduction and a cultural economy ofconsumption


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GRAMSCI

Hegemony Ideas, meanings and practiceswhich are not universal truths but maps ofmeaning that sustain powerful social groups(e.g. representation of people of color)

Achieved trough a combination of force andconsent

Common sense the terrain of the taken forgranted

Inherently unstable e.g. advertisements (A woman is nothing more

than the commodities she wears)


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GRAMSCI

Problems:

- fragmentation of culture through

migration, ethnicity, segmentation ofyouth culture, gender politics

Lifestyles centered on consumption


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MARXISM

Critique

- teleology

- economic determinism


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CULTURALISM

Stresses the ordinariness of culture

Traces the unfolding of meaning over time


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STRUCTURALISM

Its central category meaning systems ofrelations

Saussure

langue and parole syntagmatic and paradigmatic

Analysis of binaries (black/white)

Stability of meaning Levi Strauss - food raw and cooked


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POSTRUCTURALISM

Surpasses structuralism

Meaning in unstable

Derrida difference = difference and deferral

Undecidability of binary opposition

dismantles hierarchical conceptual oppositions

speech/writing, reality/appearance

nature/culture, reason/madness It offers no certainty but irony


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FOUCAULT

Discourse defines objects of knowledge in

an intelligible way, excluding other ways of

reasoning as unintelligible.

Discourse regulates who can speak where

and when

Persons are wholly and only the product of

history


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ANTI-ESSENTIALISM

No stable reference and essential identity

E.g. Femininity is not a universal thing bt a

description in language through which

social conventions come to be what

counts as truth

Productions culture in time and space


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POSTMODERNISM

Truth depends on history

Knowledge is not transcendental

The world is fragmentary, ambiguous,uncertain

A collapse of the distinction between real

and simulations


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PSYCHONALYSIS AND

SUBJECTIVITY

Freud: ego, superego, id (unconscious)

Through social discourse and processed

of identification we create an identity that

embodies an illusion of wholeness


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Politics of difference

FEMINISM

Sex vs. gender

Patriarchy Race a social construction

Postcolonial domination - subordination

cultural studies course 2

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