Prepared by- Divya Choudhary
Course- M.A.
Sem- 2
Paper no. - 8
Paper name- Cultural Studies
Enrolment no. - PG15101007
Batch- 2015-17
Email id- choudharydivya400@gmail.com
Submitted to- Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
INTRODUCTION
“CULTURAL STUDIES”
The word “culture” itself it so difficult to
pin down, “cultural studies” is hard to define. As we also the case in chapter
8 with Elaine Showalter’s “cultural” model of feminine difference.”Cultural
studies “is not so much a discrete approach at all, but rather a set of
practices. As Patrick Brantinger has pointed out, cultural studies in not ‘a
tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda”. But a loosely coherent
group of tendencies, issues, and question.” Before knowing about Cultural Studies, we
should know what culture is. Culture is a anthropology, encompassing the range
of human phenomena that cannot be directly attributed to genetic inheritance.
The term culture in American anthropology had two meanings-
1
The evolved to classify
and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively.
2 The
distinct ways that people live, differently, classified and represent their
experiences and acted creatively.
Culture is central to
the way we view, experience and engage with all aspects of our lives and the
world around us. Even our definitions are shaped by the historical, political,
social and cultural contexts in which we live. Culture is the mode of
generating meanings and ideas. This mode of negotiation under which meanings
are generated by power relations. Culture is a social phenomenon which tends to
regularate the mindset and behavior of people which is set on ancient rules and
regularities and experiences. Culture is the identity of particular society and
it is the mirror of the society. Culture in a simple way can be said as a
particular way of life. Tradition, customs, rules and regulations, norms, artifacts
(signs), religions, communities, material things, journey of 'Man' from caves
to present day civilization are also culture.
Opposite of nature is
culture. Nature is outside and the moment Man enters, it becomes culture.
Whatever which is not nature is culture. All the activities that are done
between people on the piece of land and with the other people, culture is the
entire range of activities that all the people of the society do. Culture deals
with identity. For example, Mahatma Gandhi is the icon of India.
Nature is something which is outside the control of human
beings and culture is the introduction of what humans do and think. Culture is
the great help out of our present difficulties; Culture beings the pursuit of
our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which has
been thought and said in the world: and through his knowledge, turning of
stream of fresh and free thoughts upon our stock notions and habits, which we
follow but mechanically. When the things are done by elite group, it is called
Culture and when the same things are done by minority group, it s called
sub-culture. Elite culture controls meanings because it controls the terms of
the debate. Non-elite views on life and art are rejected as 'Tasteless',
'useless' or 'even stupid' by the elite. Culture is one of the two or three
terms to define. It is an umbrella term. Literature is one of its disciplines.
It cannot be understood by one discipline. We are multi-disciplinary. Every
discipline studies culture but in a different way.
First cultural studies transcend the confines of a PARTICULAR DISCIPLINE such as literary
criticism or history.
Second cultural studies are politically engaged.
Third cultural studies denies the separation of “HIGH”AND “LOW”
OR elite and popular culture.
Forth cultural studies analyze not only the cultural work, but
also the means of production.
FIRST
GOAL
“Cultural studies
transcend the confine of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or
history. “practiced in such journal as critical inquiry , representations, and
boundary 2 , cultural studies involves scrutinizing the cultural phenomenon of
a text – for example Italian opera, a Latino telenovela, the architectural
styles of prisons, body piercing and drawing conclusion about the change in
textual phenomena over time.
Cultural studies are
not necessarily about literature in the traditional sense or even about “art”.
In their introduction to cultural studies, editors Lawrence gross berg, Cary nelson,
and Paula treichler emphasize that the intellectual promise of cultural studies
lies in the attempts to “cut across diverse social and political interests and
address many of the struggles within the current scene.”
Intellectual works are
not limited by their own “borders” as single texts, historical problems or disciplines,
and the critic’s own personal connections to what is being analyzed may also be
described.
Henty Giroux and
others write in their Dalhousie review manifesto that cultural studies
practitioners are “resisting intellectuals” who see what they do as “an emancipator
project.” Because it erodes the traditional disciplinary divisions in most
institutions of higher education.
SECOND
GOAL
“Cultural studies are political engaged”
cultural critics see them as “oppositional” not only within their own
disciplines but too many of the power structures of society at large. They
question inequalities within power structures and seek to discover models for
restructuring relationship a many dominant and “minority” or “subaltern”
discourses. Because meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally
constructed, they can thus be reconstructed. Such a notion, taken to a
philosophical extreme, denies the qutonomy of the individual, whether an actual
person or a character in literature, a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic
“great man” or “great book” theory, and a relocation of aesthetics and cultural
from the ideal realms of taste and sensibility, into the arena of a whole society’s
everyday life as it is constructed.
THIRD
GOAL
“Cultural studies deny the separation of high
and low or elite and popular culture might hear
someone remark at the symphony or art museum: “I came here to get a little
culture”.
Being
a “cultured” person used to mean being acquainted with “highbrow” art and
intellectual pursuits. But isn’t culture also to be found with a pair of
tickets to a rock concert?
Cultural
critics’ today work to transfer the term culture to include mass culture,
whether popular, folk, or urban. Following theorists jean baudrillard and Andréa’s
huyssen, cultural critics argue that after world war ii the distinctions among
high , low and mass culture collapsed , and they cite other theorists such as Pierre
boundary and dick hedbige on how “good taste” only reflects prevailing social,
economic and political power bases. For example, the images of India that were
circulated during the colonial rule of the British raj by writes like by Rudyard
Kipling seem innocent , but revel and entrenched imperialist argument for white
superiority and worldwide domination of other races, especially Asians. But
race along was not the issue for the British raj: money was also a deciding
factor. Thus, drawing also upon the ideas of French historian Michel de Certeau,
cultural critics examine.
“The practice of every life”
Studying literature as an anthropologist
would, as a
Phenomenon of culture, including a
culture’s economy,
Rather than determining which the “best” works
are
Produced, culture critics describe what is
produced and
How carious productions relate to one another.
They alms Reveal the political, economic reasons why a certain
Cultural product is move valued at certain
times then
others.
FORTH
GOAL
“Cultural studies
analyze not only the cultural work, but also the means of production.
Marxist critics have
long recognized the importance of such par literary questions as these: who
supports a given artist? Who publishes his or her books, and how are these
books distributed? Who buys books? For those matters, who is literate and who
is not? A well – known analysis of literary production is Janice radway’s study
of the American romance novel and its readers. Reading the romance women, patriarchy
and popular literature, which demonstrates the textual effects of the
publishing industry’s decision about books that will minimize its financial
risks. Another contribution is the collection reading in America, edited by Cathy
n. Davidson, which includes essays on literacy and gender in colonial new England urban
magazine audiences in eighteenth century New York city; the impact upon reading
such technical innovations as cheaper eyeglasses, electric lights, and trains;
the book of the month club; and how writers and texts go through fluctuations
of popularity and canonicity. These studies help up recognize that literature
dose not occur in a space separate from other concerns of our lives.
Cultural studies thus join subjectivity that is, cultural in relation to individual
lives- with engagement, a direct approach to attacking social ills. Though
cultural studies practitioners deny “humanism or “the humanities” as universal
categories, they strive for what they might call “social reason”, which often (closely)
resembles the goals and values of humanistic and democratic ideals.
Year 2050,
the United States will be what demographers call a
"majority-minority" population; that is, the present numerical
majority of "white", "Caucasian", and "Anglo"-
Americans will be the minority, particularly with the dramatically increasing
numbers of Latina /o residents, mostly Mexican Americans. As Gerald Graff and
James Phelan observe, "It is a common prediction that the culture of the
next century will put a premium on people's ability to deal productively with
conflict and cultural difference. Learning by controversy is sound training for
citizenship in that future".
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