The Rise of Cultural History IV: Lecture 1/Term 2 The Rise of Cultural History IV: The Power of Language and ‘Practices’ of Everyday Life

Postmodern-ity This term refers to a set of perceived (sociological, political, economical, technological, etc.) conditions of everyday life, which are perceived as distinctly different from the conditions of everyday life in ‘modernity’. These new conditions of everyday life were related to the move of Western societies from industrial societies focussed on production to post-industrial service and consumer-orientated global economies and societies in the 1960s. Postmodern-ism Postmodern-ism is the intellectual (cultural, artistic, academic, and philosophical) response to the conditions of postmoder-nity. Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998), The Postmodern Condition, 1977: Postmodern manifesto, arguing for the end of the Enlightenment project; coins the term ‘the postmodern condition’

What stands at the core of postmodernist critique? ‘….postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of scepticism … it questioned Enlightenment morals and beliefs in rationality, objective reality and the existence of absolute truth.’

So, are these modernist beliefs which became problematic for postmodern thinkers? Belief in the power of human reason in all areas of human individual and collective life. The belief in the power of reason brings about a new intellectual rationality that was supposed to guide all investigations into the natural and human world. Through rational thinking human are able to understand themselves and the world around them. How? This rational enquiry was based on the empirical method, a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation The knowledge gained through the empirical method was deemed to be neutral and objective Because empirically gained knowledge was neutral, it was believed that absolute and universal truth about the world around us could be achieved by humans. In sum: there is reality out there and it can be could discovered and controlled by mankind.

Linguistic Turn (def.): Analytical turn upon (or problematisation of words/language used in a given field of study. Term is first used by the American analytical philosopher Richard Rorty in his The Linguistic Turn (1967)

Inspirations for linguistic theorists Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Most important inspiration Cours de linguistique générale (1916) Linguistics: scientific study of language in broadly three aspects: language form, language meaning, and language in context Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857-1913

Sign, signifier, signified: The ‘sign’ is constituted by the relationship of a ‘signifier’ to a ‘signified’ (also known as the ‘referent’, the thing being signed.) Note: The signified is not the thing itself, only a mental concept of it which the ‘speaker’ and ‘listener’ share.

Saussure’s Central Claims: Languages are not restricted to uttered/written ‘words’ but include any system of communication that uses ’signs’ (deaf-and numb alphabet, nautical flags; road signs); anything which tells another person something, is a ‘sign’. A sign is composed of a ‘signifier’ (vocal sound, image, gesture etc.) and a ‘signified’ (the mental concept or structure that speaker and listener share). The signified is not the object itself but a pre-existing or learned mental concept of the object. Note: ‘Mouse’ – the word – does refer to a concept of the animal NOT the animal itself!)

Saussure’s Central Claims (continued): 3. According to Saussure, the mental concept precedes the ‘signifier’ in existence. It gives structure and understanding to the way we communicate. (structural linguistics) Note: Saussure is the founder of ‘structuralism’, a methodology that implies elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader, overarching system or structure. Structuralists aim to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, and feel. Proponents of structuralism would argue that a specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structure—modelled on language—that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas or the imagination of individual actors. In the 1950/60s scholars in the humanities and social sciences borrowed Saussure's concepts for use in their respective fields of study. French anthropologist Claude-Levi Strauss was arguably the first such scholar, sparking a widespread interest in structuralism; Roland Barthes was another (see later slides)

Saussure’s Central Claims (continued) 4. A ‘signifier’ is established quite arbitrarily and bears no resemblance to the’ signified’. (different language use different ‘signifiers’ for the same mental images) 5. Every sign acquires meaning by belonging to a network of other signs. There is in every sign a suggestion of another, oppositional sign (Woman/Man; left/right; small/tall etc.

Consequences of such claims for the relationship between language and reality? Reality is NOT representable in any form of human culture (whether written, spoken, visual or dramatic) No authoritative account can exists of anything. Nobody can know everything, and there is never one single authority on a given subject.

Consequences for the understanding of the production of knowledge? By undermining the connection between a uttered/written ‘word’ (signifier) and a ‘thing’ the relationship to human knowledge and ‘reality’ becomes uncertain (signified with no relation to the ‘real’ thing). ‘Meaning’ and ‘sign’ are separated. The notion of arbitrariness of the sign deeply challenged the correspondence theory of truth’: if words relate only to each other within an own structure, how could language be deemed to refer to the world out there, to ‘reality’? Presents an enormous epistemological challenge! Epistemology: the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge.

Why was the idea that there is no way to get a ‘reality’ so particularly frightening for historians? It disturbed their confidence that they were able to get at the ‘reality’ of the past through the empirical study of their ‘neutrally’ collected sources. Important: The inability to get at the reality about the past – affected their professional identity as ‘bearers of the truth’ about the past.

Where did their confidence in the existence ‘reality’ come from Where did their confidence in the existence ‘reality’ come from? Facts, and sources.... ‘…wants to show what really happened’ ‘That is to say, we do not set out from what men imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, or imagined, conceived in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. Leopold von Ranke, 1795-1886 Karl Marx, 1818-1883

Note: Barthes is first a structuralists (following Saussure) but then turns to post-structuralism Barthes develop Saussure’s theory further and turns it political. He moved form a concern with language to the study of structures in culture and everyday life. Unlike Saussure, Barthes was a politically motivated left-winger, living in conservative France in the 1950s. He observed that ‘sign systems’ are highly motivated and deeply structured by political power. Therefore, the understanding of ‘signs’, Barthes argued had to be put into its political context. Roland Barthes, 1915-1980 Def. Structuralism: (see slide 10)

Reasons for Roland Barthes’s enthusiasm for linguistic structuralism ‘The starting point of these reflections was usually a feeling of impatience at the sights of the ‘naturalness’ with which newspaper, art and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even though it is the one we live in, is undoubedly determined by history. In short, in the account given of our contemporary circumstances, I resented seeing Nature and History confused at every turn, and I wanted to track down the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying, the ideological abuse which, in my view, is hidden there. (Barthes, Mythologies, p. 11) The aim of his structural efforts: ‘The goal of all structuralist activities to reconstruct an ‘object’ in such a way as to make evident the rules of its functioning .’  

Semiological Systems – Semiology - Myth Barthes critiques and extends Saussure in arguing that we have more going on than just the signifier – signified relationship. He develops different types of signs (symbolic, iconic, indexical which work in different ways. He argues that each of these different sign is also related to a bigger sign system that transcends the signifier-signified relation described by Saussure. Barthes calls this bigger system, ‘myth’. The ‘myth’ is not necessarily untrue, but is an accepted part of culture and it makes language work. Everybody in a culture understands not just the sign but also the myth to which it belongs. Barthes showed that signs and sign systems were embedded codes with normative meanings. (for Saussure ‘signs’ were not political but neutral as he was only talking about their meaning within language and not in culture at large) Barthes called all of this 'the semiological system', and the study of the hidden meanings he called 'semiology'.

Barthes’s famous structural work: Mythologies (1957) essay collection using of structural linguistic analysis of cultural icons such as soap-power and detergent or ‘Novels and Children (an acid attack on the women’s magazine Elle ); ‘Steak and Chip’; Striptease (the commodisation of female nakedness and sex industry); ‘Plastic’; ‘the New Citroen’; ‘The Brain of Einstein’, ‘Wrestler’.)

I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me I am at the barber's, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro* in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro* in serving his so-called oppressors. I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified through the signifier... In myth (and this is the chief peculiarity of the latter), the signifier is already formed by the signs of the language... Myth has in fact a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us... Example:

‘The Rhetoric of an Image’

With the ‘Death of the Author’ (1967) Barthes move from ‘structuralism’ to ‘poststructuralism’ Structuralism (see slide 10) knowledge is founded on the "structures" that make experience possible: concepts, and language or signs; an observer can analyse this structure and make it intelligible. Poststructuralism Post-structuralist authors all present different critiques of structuralism, but common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism and an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Post structuralists do not reject structure – we need them to communicate and understand the world – but we need to understand that they are human inventions at a particular moment in time (e.g. class) We need therefore to then we need to de-centre them and problematise them. Barthes moves away from analysing of hidden structures; uses the term

Content ‘death of the author’

Central question of poststructuralists: What is a text? In a postmodern sense a text is the material manifestation of a multiplicity of signs, discourse and structures. Central theorists here is: Grammatology (1976): Language is made by exclusion of the real; nature disappears from the text “Il n’y a pas de hors-text” (“there is nothing outside text”); texts are ‘plays’ Jacques Derrida, 1930-2004

Big question for historian inspired by poststructural ideas: History is nothing but a text? History is just a ‘reality effect’ (Barthes) produced by a text written by the historian Disturbing Questions: What about human action? What about the capacity of humans to change the world in which they live? What about ‘real’ human conditions such as social inequality, suppression etc. found in history? Is all this just a ‘text’ and a ‘reality effect’?

Pierre Bourdieu develops a theory in response to these poststruturalist debates Theory of practice (of everyday life) Tries to show how social beings, with their diverse motives and their diverse intentions, make and transform the world which they live in. It is a dialectic between social structure and human agency working back and forth in a dynamic relationship. Emphasizes human decision-making, social-economic structures but does engage with question of language, knowledge, and power/authority raised by ‘hardcore’ poststructuralist He does believe that “truth” about reality is constructed both from interpretation and from structural necessity imposed by a dominant structure, which treats its particular version of reality as natural.

In order to achieve adequate analysis, he proposed a set of concepts, defined in such a way that they can be used in any ethnographic situation for the study of everyday life Habitus: refers to durable disposition, to a sense of one’s place in the social world, and it embodies our understanding of the logic of society and the place we have in it. It is the way that individuals perceive the social world around them and react to it; important: shapes mind and body; habitus is ‘embodied’; habitus is ‘the embodiment’ of the social world This ‘habitus’ (attitudes, mannerisms, tastes, moral intuitions and habits) have influence on the individual's life chances, so the habitus not only is structured by an individual's objective past position in the social structure but also structures the individual's future life path.

Capital: Bourdieu extends the purely economic meaning of the word (Marx), and adds to it the concepts of symbolic and cultural capital as ways through which class positions and power are manifested. Broadly defined, capital for Bourdieu is a socially valued good.

Field: concept of field reflects the space of social interaction, conflict, and competition. Fields are defined by a system of objective relations of power that lie between positions in the field. Each field is dynamic and has its own logic and its own structure and forces, which are organized around specific capitals over which individuals and groups struggle as they attempt to maintain or change their position in a field.