Cultural Studies Course 2
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Transcript of 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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Key concepts in cultural studies
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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Key concepts in cultural studies
3. Power
- pervades every level of social
relationships
- glue, coercive force, enabler of social
action
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Key concepts in cultural studies
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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Key concepts in cultural studies
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