Hello ! Readers,
You all are warmly welcome in my new blog about culture and cultural studies. Before starting discussion about cultural studies I would like to put here some points of my understanding about culture. We all know that all human beings, animals, insects and others are very important part of our culture. Without culture may human being are not able to living life happily because without cultural aspects or roots human being can't able to find happy life anywhere because we all are binding together with different cultures like celebration of any festivals. Different foods, clothes, festivals, different religion, politics all are the very important parts of our culture. We try to living happily in different cultures. In short culture is all about the ritual or roots that binding human being together in one box.
Now let us discuss what is Culture and Cultural studies.
" A Culture is a way of life of a group of people - the behaviour, beliefs, Values and symbols that they accept,generally without thinking about them and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. "
For example, American students are reading novel by Alice Walker's " The Color Purple ( 1982 ) . On this book the professor identifies some references and tries to describe novel as a multilayer narrative structure and some other topics like feminist critique of American gender and racial attitudes. Students and professors both are doing discussion on that and tries to analyse key points of the novel and various approaches. Students raises their hand and ask a questions to the professor : Did Alice Walker betray African American with her harsh depiction of black men ? The professor replies : " Well I just want to know what a serious film was doing with Oprah Winfrey in it ?" Another points are responding by other students that, examining interrelationships among race, gender, popular culture, the media, the literature. The professor concluded with one short answer that Walker portrays in constructing her characters and communities in " The Color Purple. " The practice is all about the part of Cultural studies.
Cultural studies was influenced by Structuralism and poststructuralism. " To erase the boundaries between high and low culture, classic and popular literary texts and literature and other cultural discourses that following Derrida may be seen as manifestation of the same textuality. " These are all about culture studies.
Now let us discuss four goals of Cultural studies :
☆ Four Goals of Cultural studies :-
1. Cultural studies transcends the confines of a particular disciplines such as literary Criticism or history :-
Cultural studies involves scrutinising the cultural phenomenon of a text. For example, Italian Opera, a Latino telenovela, the architectural style of prisons, body piercing and drawing conclusions about the changes in textual phenomena over time. Cultural studies is not necessary about literature in the traditional sense or even about art. In the introduction of " Cultural studies " Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler emphasize that, " The Intellectual promise of cultural studies lies in its attempt 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 a single texts, historical problems, or disciplines and the critic's own personal connection to what is being analyzed may also be described.
2. Cultural studies is politically engaged :-
Cultural critics see themselves as to many of the power structures of society at large. They questions inequality within power structures and seek to discover models for restructuring relationships among dominant and Minority or Subaltern discourses. Because meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally constructed. Such a notion taken to a philosophical extreme, denies the autonomy of the individual whether an actual person or a character in literature, a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic Great Man and Great Book ,theory and a relocation of aesthetic and culture from the ideal realm of taste and sensibility, into the arena of a whole society's everyday life as its constructed.
3. Cultural studies denies the separation of " High " and " Low " or elite and Popular culture :-
Cultural critics today work to transfer the term culture to include mass culture whether popular folk or urban. Jean Baudrillard Andreas Huyssen argue that
After World war II the distinction among high, low and mass culture collapsed and they cite other theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Dick Hebdige on how " Good taste " often only reflects prevailing social, economic and political power basis.
For example the image of India that were like Rudyard Kipling seem innocent but reveal an entrenched imperialist argument for the British white superiority and world wide domination of other races, especially Asians. But race alone was not the issue for the British raj : money was also a deciding factor. Transgressing of boundaries among disciplines high and low can make cultural studies just plain fun.
4. Cultural studies analyzes not only the cultural work, but also the means of production :-
Marxist critics have long recognized the importance of such paraliterary questions as these :
▪ Who supports a given artist ?
▪ Who publishes his or her book ?
▪ And how are these books distributed?
▪ Who buys books ?
▪ For that matter, who is literature and who is not ?
A well known analysis of literary production is Janice Radway's study of the American romance novel and its reader, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and popular literature, which demonstrates the textual effects of the publishing industry's decision about books that will minimise its financial risk. Cultural studies thus joins subjectivity that is, culture in relation to individual lives with engagement, a direct approach to attacking social ills. Though cultural studies Practitioners deny Humanism or Humanities as universal categories, they strive for what they might call " Social reason " which often resembles the goals and values of humanistic and democratic ideals.
☆ Power at the centre at Cultural studies :-
We all that in every culture there are some people in society who have different power in their hand and they try to control other marginalised people who haven't power and even haven't voice for raises their questions. High cultured people always make their high place in society and rule in society. We can include politicians and governments and other highar class people. So, we can say that power is at the centre in cultural studies. Now let us see simple definition of Power.
We can see also in Family, workplace, relationships etc. There are Six main Civic Arena Power :
1. Physical force
2. Wealth
3. State Action
4. Social norms
5. Ideas
6. Numbers
We can include Violence in physical force, laws and government includes state actions and also Democracy and Dictatorship. Crowd includes numbers.
● How Power Operates :-
There are three laws of Power :-
1. Power is never static.
2. Power is like water.
3. Power compounds.
Thus, above all information we can say they power is most important subject for cultural studies as well as at the centre of the cultural studies.
Thank you...
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