Key Concepts of Cultural Studies

Introduction to Anglophone Cultural Studies

Annika McPherson

12/17/2008

What is Cultural Studies?

Different (Hi)stories

Cultural Studies borrows theories and methodologies from... Literary Studies Sociology Anthropology Philosophy Psychoanalysis History Geography Sciences ...

Cultural Studies within... American Studies British Studies Canadian Studies Australian Studies South Asian Cultural

Criticism ...

Links to Previous Sessions What is/are Cultural Studies?

“culture” Diasporas

“Postcolonial” Economics

“Class” Science, Technology and Knowledge Production

“paradigms” and “paradigm shifts” Media and the Public

“Encoding/Decoding” Representations of Justice

“representations” in movies

Culture(s)Identity formationsKnowledgeHybridityRace, Class, GenderVisual Culture(s)Feminist TheoryColonization/De-ColonizationPostcolonialismDiasporaMinority LiteraturesPopular CultureGlobalizationInterculturalityInterdisciplinarityGeopolitical space(s)Multi-culturalism

HistoryReligion

EconomicsIdeologies

Global culture(s) industryInternet

MediaSocial criticism

Cosmopolitanism(Post)Modernity

Signifying PracticesDiscourse

Encoding/(De)-CodingPower relations

New English LiteraturesCitizenship

Transnationality

Remember...?

Outline and Aims Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity

The Role of Theory American Studies, British Studies, Cultural Studies

Developments Methods Key Concepts

You should... become familiar with some of the main concepts employed

in the analysis of social and cultural change begin to consider different approaches to “textual” analysis

and (historical) contextualization in cultural criticism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMo2uiRAf30

Remember...The Production of Knowledge

knowledge production in historical perspective the development of the modern university

the division of academic knowledge how is knowledge organized into disciplines?

But...

“Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all of this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you’re not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so that it can be taught and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized, do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of the knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from the outside. In fact it’s exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...”William Gaddis. JR. London: Jonathan Cape, 1976: 20. Quoted in Joe Moran. Interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge, 2002: 1.

The Rise of Disciplines a particular branch of learning or a particular body of knowledge

but also the maintenance of order and control specialized, valued knowledge

classical division of knowledge: Aristotle: theoretical, practical, and productive subjects

institutional change: from medieval studia generalia to ‘disciplines’ such as medicine,

law, theology Enlightenment: project of ordering and classifying knowledge

(encyclopaedias) Positivism (Auguste Comte, Hippolyte Taine) early 19th century: secularized, state-controlled, research-oriented

university (Prussia)

Disciplines as Tribes?

“Men of the sociological tribe rarely visit the land of physicists and have little idea what they do over there. If the sociologists were to step into the building occupied by the English department, they would encounter the cold stares if not the slingshots of the hostile natives ... The disciplines exist as separate estates, with distinctive subcultures.”

B.R. Clark quoted in Tony Becher. Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of the Disciplines. Milton Keyes: Open University Press, 1989: 23.

Particular Types of “Discourse”

language as constructed and constrained by social patterns or conventions

modes of thought, cultural practice or institutional framework that makes sense of and structures the world, often from the partial perspective of a particular interest group disciplines as “discursive constructions” permit certain

ways of thinking and operating while excluding others

Inter- (Multi-, Trans-, Post-, Anti-) disciplinarity...

How is knowledge reorganized into new configurations and alliances when old ways of thinking have come to seem stale, irrelevant, inflexible or exclusionary?

...a critical, pedagogical and institutional concept

...implies a critical awareness of the relationship between knowledge and power

What is Theory?Jonathan Culler. Literary Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

e.g. literary theory a systematic account of the nature of literature and of the

methods for analysing it

Theory as an established set of propositions... offers an explanation that is not obvious is not easily confirmed or disproved makes people think differently about their objects of study shows that what we take for granted as ‘common sense’ is

in fact a historical construction

Two Examples

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (1976-1984)

‘sex’ as a complex idea produced by a range of social practices, investigations, talks and writing, i.e. by ‘discourses’ or ‘discursive practices’ culturally or socially

produced groups of ideas texts (signs and

codes) representations (give

signs meaning)

Edward Said, Orientalism (1978)

a theory of representation Orient vs. Occident

a Western style for dominating the Orient

Post-colonial theory

Theory is...

...intimidating?

interdisciplinary analytical and

speculative a critique of common

sense reflexive

“Area Studies”

Interdisciplinary inquiries into a specific region, e.g.

History Political science Sociology Cultural studies Languages Geography Literature(s)

Different (Hi)stories

American Studies as the interdisciplinary study of American history and culture

economic social political cultural

developments (self-)perceptions interpretations

American exceptionalism? From the “Myth and

Symbol School” to Cold War contexts

Cultural Studies within American Studies traditions e.g. Chicago School of

Sociology American Studies

and/as Cultural Studieshttp://www.wsu.edu/~amerstu/tm/index.html

Different (Hi)stories

British Cultural Studieshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyUYG1J3tKI

From New Criticism via Structuralism and Post-Structuralism to New Historicism and Cultural Studies

from “High Culture” to the culture of “everyday life” theory in practice

Texts in History

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/anglistik/lit-wiss/intro-to-literature/2007-02-06/2007-20c-lit-hist.html

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/anglistik/lit-wiss/pre/bm1-lit-theory-timeline-2.pdf

Anglophone Cultural Studies...

American Cultural Studies mass culture and audience studies

Canadian Cultural Studies technology and society

Australian Cultural Studies cultural policy

South African Cultural Studies from resistance to cultural politics

...

Characteristics and aims of Cultural Studies...

study cultural practices and their relation to power social and political contexts within which culture

manifests itself culture as the location of political criticism and action reconcile intuitive and objective forms of knowledge moral evaluation of modern society aims to understand and change structures of

dominance

Cultural Theory in Practice: Key Methodologies

Textual Approaches Interpretive Analysis Content Analysis Discourse Analysis

Media Analysis Historical Approaches

Memory and History

Ethnography Qualitative research

Lives and Lived Experiences Experience and Stories

Reception Studies Audience Analysis

Production and Consumption

Central Problems...

Language, Practice and the Material Truth, Science and Ideology Culture as a Way of Life Subjects and Agency Identity, Equality and Difference Global Culture/Media Culture Transforming Capitalism Cultural Politics

Approaches to Studying Popular Culture...

Film Music Sports Comix Fashion Television Advertising Cyberculture

http://www.wsu.edu/~amerstu/pop/

Race Class Gender Sexuality Censorship Imperialism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=zQUuHFKP-9s

Intellectual Strands of Cultural Studies

Marxism the centrality of class

Culturalism and Structuralism culture is ordinary culture as like a language

Poststructuralism and Postmodernism the instability of language discursive practices

Psychoanalysis and Subjectivity The Politics of Difference

Feminism, Race, and Postcolonial Theory

Concepts as a Methodological Basis of Interdisciplinarity

“Cultural studies has, if nothing else, forced the academy to realize its collusion with an elitist white-male politics of exclusion and its subsequent intellectual closure.”Mieke Bal. Travelling Concepts in the Humanities. A Rough Guide. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002: 6.

Concepts “travel” from systematic theory into cultural analysis as tools with which to study cultural objects on their own terms.

Summary: Concepts of Culture and Cultural Concepts

Culture and signifying practices

Representation Articulation Power Popular culture Texts and Readers

Subjectivity and Identity Ethnicity, Race and Nation Sex, Subjectivity and

Representation Television, Texts and

Audiences Cultural Space and Urban

Place Youth, Style and

Resistance Cultural Politics and

Cultural Policy

Genealogies of Cultural Studies

Social Enquiry Marxist and Critical Theory British Studies Language Theories Cultural Feminism Postmodernism Audiences

Sex, Subjectivity and Representation

gender vs. sex cultural assumptions and practices governing the

social construction and social relations of men and women

a matter of representation and performance feminist cultural politics queer theory

“Floating Signifiers”...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMo2uiRAf30

Study Questions…

Explain the revised notion of culture within cultural studies

Lewis-Genealogy2.pdfKeywords-Barker.pdfGlossary-Barker2.pdf

Keywords….

Culture Discourse Identity Representation Theory

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/anglistik/lit-wiss/intro-to-literature/2007-02-06/2007-20c-lit-hist.html

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/anglistik/lit-wiss/pre/bm1-lit-theory-timeline-2.pdf

Race Class Gender Ethnicity Diaspora

Consult:

Chris Barker, “Keywords“ and “Glossary”

Sources

Chris Barker. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage, 2000.

Chris Barker. Making Sense of Cultural Studies: Central Problems and Critical Debates. London: Sage, 2002.

Jonathan Culler. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Joe Moran. Interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.