Cultural Studies Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies WS 0708

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Cultural Studies Introduction to Literary and
Cultural Studies WS 07/08
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culture
culture
culture
What is culture?
culture
culture
culture
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Culture with a capital C

• High culture vs. low culture
• Culture human civilization
• F.R. Leavis Culture is the high point of
  culture and the concern of an educated minority

Matthew Arnold (1822 1888) Culture is the
best that has been thought and said in the
world
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mass culture
According to Adorno

• mass culture is consumer culture it requires
  little to consumed, but fails to enrich consumers
• variant of the high low boundary which decries
  commodity- based culture as inauthentic,
  manipulative and unsatisfying
• ? popular culture is culture of the masses and
  regarded as inferior and is contaminated both
  aesthetically and politically

Theodor Adorno (1903-69) The Culture
Industry Dialectic of Enlightenment. 1944.
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• negative connotations of popular culture
• a) the left overs of high culture
• b) mass produced culture of the culture
  industries
• in both cases the popular is considered inferior

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• negative connotations of popular culture
• a) the left overs of high culture
• b) mass produced culture of the culture
  industries
• in both cases the popular is considered inferior
• How do cultural studies change this perception?

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• negative connotations of popular culture
• a) the left overs of high culture
• b) mass produced culture of the culture
  industries
• in both cases the popular is considered inferior
• cultural studies works against the grains of
  these elitist definitions
• cultural studies works with a positive conception
  of popular culture by which it is both valued and
  critically analyzed
• cultural studies rejects elitist notions of
  high-low culture or the critiques of mass
  culture.

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The Circuit of Culture (Du Gay and Hall)
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To study the Walkman culturally one should at
least explore how it is represented, what
social identities are associated with it, how it
is produced and consumed, and what mechanisms
regulate its distribution and use. (Du Gay and
Hall, 3)
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To study the Walkman iPod culturally one should
at least explore how it is represented, what
social identities are associated with it, how it
is produced and consumed, and what mechanisms
regulate its distribution and use.
They are the elements which taken together are
what we mean by doing a cultural study of a
particular object.
(Du Gay and Hall, 4)
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Simpsons episode "Thank God, It's Doomsday"
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Subjects of Cultural Studies

• cultural studies does not have a clearly defined
  subject area
• it does not have its own clearly demarcated
  subject area or object of study (from watching
  Friends or sports to street art )
• broad starting point and all-inclusive notion

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Methods of Cultural Studies

• it lacks its own principles, theories and methods
• Instead, it appropriates theories and
  methodologies from anthropology, psychology,
  sociology, linguistics, literary criticism, art
  theory, philosophy, political science and so on
• ? cultural studies takes whatever it needs from
  any discipline and adopts it to suit its own
  processes

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Origins of Cultural StudiesCentre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)

• Founded in 1964 at the University of Birmingham
  as a postgraduate research institute
• founding fathersRichard Hoggart, Raymond
  Williams, E.P. Thompson, Stuart Hall
• ? celebration of authentic popular culture of the
  working class
• their focus was on how culture is practiced and
  made or how cultural practice leads different
  groups and classes to struggle for cultural
  domination
• Cultural Studies interested in cultural practices
  and cultural formations of power (hegemony)
• Cultural Studies resemble a politically engaged
  form of cultural critique

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Bruce Springsteen
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Springsteen Born in the USA
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Ronald Reagan

• 40th President of the United States (19811989)

1984 Presidential election campaign
"America's future rests in a thousand dreams
inside your hearts it rests in the message of
hope in songs so many young Americans admire New
Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you
make those dreams come true is what this job of
mine is all about."