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

Remember...? Culture(s) Identity formations Knowledge Hybridity Race, Class, Gender Visual Culture(s) Feminist Theory Colonization/De-Colonization Postcolonialism Diaspora Minority Literatures Popular Culture Globalization Interculturality Interdisciplinarity Geopolitical space(s) Multi-culturalism History Religion Economics Ideologies Global culture(s) industry Internet Media Social criticism Cosmopolitanism (Post)Modernity Signifying Practices Discourse Encoding/(De)-Coding Power relations New English Literatures Citizenship Transnationality

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 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 Studies http://www.wsu.edu/~amerstu/tm/index.html

Different (Hi)stories British Cultural Studies http://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… Lewis-Genealogy2.pdf Keywords-Barker.pdf Explain the revised notion of culture within cultural studies Lewis-Genealogy2.pdf Keywords-Barker.pdf Glossary-Barker2.pdf

Keywords…. Culture Discourse Identity Representation Theory Race Class 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.