World Literature MidSemester Evaluation Comments

Following is my report after having evaluated the III  year BA World literature mid-semester answer scripts. 

All answer scripts display a good understanding of the texts. On that front no issues. However, generally all have stopped at answering the questions. A few specfic recommendations to improve the quality of answers (read: to score better)

• The names of plays and novels need to be underlined and those of essays and poems put within quotation marks
• For better marks you  need to use textual evidence by means of quoting it and for further more, bring your extra reading beyond classroom discussion to bear upon the answers
• Long answers cannot be in one single para. They need to have multiple paras to discuss multiple ideas. The answers of many do not have paragraph divisions.
• First name is not used in academic writing, like Alexander for Solzhenitsyn, but last name or the full name
  
• The content words in the titles of texts should be in caps
• Write the question numbers outside the margins
• Leave some line space between two answers ( a few have not done it)

Welcome to LSE Research Online - LSE Research Online

Welcome to LSE Research Online - LSE Research Online

Everything Politics is, Chomsky is Not

Everything Politics is, Chomsky is Not

Two-day Conference on Indian Cinema and the City

Two-day Conference on Indian Cinema and the City 

3
–
4
November
2011


Organized 
By 
Chao
 Center
 for
 Asian
 Studies,
 Rice
 University


Cinema Space
 proposes
 to
 bring
 together
 scholars
 working
 on
 Indian
 cinema
 in
 an
 attempt
 to
 refocus structuring
 of
 the
 cinematic
 city
 will
 be
 the
 organizing
 thread
 of
 the
 conference.
 The
 city
 here
 is
 understood
 as
 a
 place holder
 for
 bringing
 together
 and
 delineating
 concerns
 of
 aesthetics,
 technology,
 modernity
and
development.



In
 the
 last
 decade,
 with
 the
 emergence
 of
 a
 globalized
 cultural
 industry
 that
 has
 been
 termed
 Bollywood’, 
a 
segment
 of 
Indian 
cinema 
has 
been
 receiving 
much 
attention
 in
Western
 academia 
both
 in such
 as
 song‐dance
 sequences
 and
 complex
 plot
 lines
 that
 were
 seen
 as
 hindrances
 to
 the
 appeal
 of
 Indian focus
 on
 this
 cultural
 value
 of
 ‘Bollywood’
 and
 its
 critique
 based
 on
 the
 argument
 of
 multiplicity
 of
 cinemas
 in
 India
 (or
 regional
 cinemas
 as
 they
 are
 called)
 continues
 to
 read
 aesthetics
 as
 cultural
 difference.
This
 takes 
attention 
away 
from 
cinema’s 
specificity 
as 
a
 techno‐aesthetic,
 which 
has
 salience
 across 
regional/national
 particularities.
 This 
move 
away 
from
particularities
 cannot 
be
‘post‐’
or
‘pre‐’,
 but
 is 
grounded 
on 
the
 national
 itself,
 hence 
the 
focus 
in 
this
conference
 on 
one 
national 
cinema.



 The
 conference
 attempts
 to
 initiate
 new
 conversations
 between
 papers
 that
 address
 the
 aesthetics 
and 
narrative 
forms 
of
 Indian
 cinema
 from 
different 
standpoints.
The
 different 
axes 
around
 which
 city 
space 
is 
organized
 in 
India n
cinema 
within,
without 
and
 at 
the
edges of 
the 
diegetic 
frame
 will
 be
 of
 interest.
 It
 proposes
 to
 think
 through
 the
 production
 of
 space
 in
 Indian
 cinema
 as
 linked
 to
 cinematic
 and
 other 
art 
practices
 in
 other
 parts 
of 
the 
world 
with
 which 
it 
ha s
been 
in
constant 
contact.


These from 
its 
inception.
The 
imagining
 of 
the 
cinematic 
city 
is 
a
significant 
thematic
 that
 will 
allow 
us
 to
 think
 through
 the
 structuring
 of
 space
 in
 Indian
 cinema
 outside
 culturalist
 assumptions,
 and
 to
 help
 us
 understand
 its
 aesthetic
 practice
 as
 historical
 and
 internationalist
 at
 the
 same
 time.
 For
 analytic
 purposes,
 the
 conference
 would
 propose
 to
 bracket
 off
 the
 understanding
 of
 cinema
 as
 a
 space
 of
 representation
 to
 focus
 on
 the
 aesthetic
 concerns
 governing
 it.
 Rather
 than
 cinema
 being
 a
 space
 through
 which
 one
 finds
 traces
 of
 real
 cities,
 the
 conference
 attempts
 to
 think
 of
 space
 of
 the
 city
 in
 cinema
 as 
a
frame 
of 
intelligibility.



The 
questions 
that 
the 
conference 
will 
address
 include,
 but
 are 
not
 limited
 to:


The 
aesthetic 
of 
cinematic
 city


City, 
modernity 
and 
the 
film 
frame


Internationalisms
 and
 the
 cinematic
 city


Realism,
 melodrama 
and 
the city


Trajectories
 of
 film
 aesthetics
 beyond
 the 
nation



Film 

State 
formations, 
film
 policy



Prof.
Moinak
 Biswas ,
Department
 of
 Film 
Studies, 
Jadhavpur 
University,
 Kolkata
 (India)
 will 
give 
the


Abstracts
 of
 not
 more
 than
 500
 words
 along
 with
 a
 short
 bio‐note
 should
 be
 sent
 to
 Ratheesh
 Radhakrishnan
 at
 rr16 AT rice DOT edu
 latest
 by
 April
 10,
 2011.
 Emails
 should
 have
 “film
 conference”
 as
 its
 subject
line. 
Acceptance 
notifications 
will 
be 
sent 
by
 April 
25,
 2011.
The 
Chao 
Center 
will 
be 
happy 
to
 host
 the
 selected
 scholars
 in
 Houston
 for
 the
 duration
 of
 the
 conference,
 but
 will
 be
 unable
 to
 cover


Selected 
workshop 
proceedings 
will 
be 
submitted 
for
 publication
 consideration 
as 
a 
special 
journal
 issue

Inclusion
 in
 the
 proposed
 special
 number
is
 subject
 to
 a
 provisional
 review
 process;
 acceptance
 and
publication

For 
future
 updates 
on 
the 
conference:
http://chaocenter.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=650


Ratheesh 
Radhakrishnan


Post doctoral 
Fellow



Rice

Houston,
TX
77005
USA


rr16@rice.edu


http://asia.rice.edu

"History of the Subaltern Classes" "The Concept of Ideology" "Cultural Themes: Ideological Material"- Antonio Gramsci

the following write up on "History of the Subaltern Classes" "The Concept of Ideology" "Cultural Themes: Ideological Material" is by Josna Perumannil

-----------------

The term subaltern is used in postcolonial theory. The exact meaning of the term in current philosophical and critical usage is disputed. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak use it in a more specific sense. She argues that subaltern is not just a classy word for oppressed, for Other, for somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie....In postcolonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern-—a space of difference. Now who would say that's just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It's not subaltern....Many people want to claim subalternity. Subaltern was first used in a non-military sense by Marxist Antonio Gramsci.

History of the Subaltern Classes

In the state there are two groups one is the ruling classes and the other is the subaltern classes. Ruling classes those who handling the State power. They are the dominating class. The Subaltern classes are part the ‘civil society’. They are intertwined with the civil society, and thereby with the history of the States and the groups of State.

Gramsci emphasizes the centrality of the State and State Power during a subaltern class struggle. He states that the possession of State Power is crucial to the Subaltern class struggle. Due to the complexity of formation of the Subaltern classes and diversity of subjects that constitute the Subaltern class it becomes very difficult for the Subaltern classes to unite and rise against ruling classes.

The history of the Subaltern groups is very complex. It must include all the repercussions of party activity, throughout the area of the subaltern groups themselves taken globally, and also upon the attitudes of the dominant groups. Among the subaltern groups, one will exercise hegemony through the mediation of a party; it must be established by studying the development of the all other parties too. The hegemony or the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘domination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership’. The dominate group even uses armed force to subjugate the antagonistic group. In order to win the governmental power, they already exercise the ‘leadership’.

The Concept of ‘Ideology’ and Cultural Themes: Ideological Material

‘Ideology’ was an aspect of ‘sensationalism’. Different meanings of ‘ideology’ was ‘science of ideas’, ‘analysis of ideas’ and ‘investigation of the original ideas’. Ideas derived from sensations. In Marxist philosophy of praxis represents a distinct advance and historically is precisely in opposition to ideology. Ideology contains a negative value judgment in Marxist philosophy, the Ideology as the ‘Base’ and praxis as a superstructure.

The main elements of error in assessing the value of ideologies within Marxist philosophy are

1. The base always determines the super structure but the super structure cannot determine the base.

2. If any political solution is ideological, it is sidelined as being impractical and inferior.

3. Ideology is only superficial; it does not have any concrete effects.

Gramsci points out that there is always an opposition between ideology and praxis wherein ideology is assigned an inferior position. He explains the ideology and the ideological materials (materials through which ideology operates) are very crucial in understanding the methodological criterion to approach the subaltern class struggle.

Gramsci states that the print media is one of the ideological materials through which the dominant ideology is propagated. He even believes that the first step to stop being subalternized is by serious intellectual and moral activity and also the erasing the concept of ‘mass’. Through this essay Gramsci adds an new dimension to the domain of cultural studies.

Jawaharlal Nehru University - JNU Admission 2011

ADMISSION 2011-12

Application Forms and Prospectus for admission to the following programmes of study are being issued by the University from 7th February 2011.

Entrance Examination for admission to various programmes of study under Category 'A' will be held between 17th and 20th May 2011 in 51 cities in India and also in Kathmandu (Nepal).  

Sets of Application Form and Prospectus can be obtained either

(i) Through post

1. for JNU Entrance Examination: by sending crossed Bank Draft (valid for six months) for Rs. 300/-
2. for Combined Entrance Examination for Biotechnology Programme:by sending crossed Bank draft (valid for six months) for Rs.260/-  

drawn in favour of Jawaharlal Nehru University payable at New Delhialongwith a self-addressed (unstamped) envelope of the minimum size of 30 cms X 25 cms. clearly indicating the Category for which the Application Form is required on the self-addressed envelope to the Section Officer (Admissions), Room No. 28, Administrative Block, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi-110067. Money Orders and Cheques are not accepted. Please do not send requests for application form through private courier services;

Or

(ii)  in person from the Counter in the Administrative Block of the University on cash payment of Rs.200/- per set from 10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. and from 2.00 p.m. to 4.00 p.m. on all working days (Monday to Friday). BPL card holders will be issued a set of application form & prospectus free of cost on submissiion of a copy of the BPL card issued by the competent authority showing their name in the card.  

 Last date for issue of Application Forms   

(i) By Post   : March 10, 2011 

(ii) At Cash Counter  : March 21, 2011

 Last date for receipt of completed Application Forms : March 21, 2011

For additional details refer to the JNU website

http://www.jnu.ac.in/

http://www.jnu.ac.in/main.asp?sendval=Prospectus#sss

SUMMER SCHOOL“Philosophy for the Social Sciences and Humanities”

Manipal Centre for Philosophy & Humani es

Manipal University, Manipal

SIXTH SUMMER SCHOOL

On

Philosophy for the Social Sciences and Humanities

(Sponsored by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research)

The Sixth Summer School on “Philosophy for the Social Sciences and Humani es” organised by Prof Sundar Sarukkai will be held at Manipal University again this year. In this course students will not only enrich their conceptual understanding of social sciences and humani es through a series of lectures, workshop presenta ons and ac vi es but will also engage with their own disciplines and research areas through wri ng, discussions and reflec on.

The uniqueness of this year’s workshop is the theme Banality of Evil. Under this broad theme we will discuss poli cal and social philosophy drawing from both Indian and Western approaches.

Dates: Monday, July 4, 2011 – Friday, July 15, 2011

Who can apply?
Students who are doing their PhD, MPhil or MA can apply for this course. We encourage young faculty in social science and ac vists who are interested in philosophy to also apply.

How to apply?
Send a CV (with marks, email, phone, and contact address details) along with a statement on why you want to a end this course and par cularly how this theme is related to your work or future interests. The last date for receiving the complete applica on is April 1, 2011. There is no course
fee.

Accommodation
Selected par cipants will be provided accommoda on at Manipal University during the course period.

Contact
Send your applica on as an email a achment to Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH), mcphoffice@gmail.com or mail a hard copy to the address below. Please type “Summer School 2011” in the subject line.

Manipal Centre for Philosophy & Humanities
Old Tapmi Building, Behind Post Office
Manipal University, Manipal
Karnataka 576104
Phone: 820-2923157
Web:

http://www.manipal.edu/Ins tu ons/UniversityDepartments/MCPHManipal/Pages/Welcome.aspx

Introduction: Theorising Culture, Reading ourselves-Kenneth Womack

the following write up on Introduction: Theorising Culture, Reading ourselves is by Panom Kaewphadee

------------------

Introduction: Theorising Culture, Reading ourselves is an essay written by Kenneth Womack from an anthology of essays on cultural Studies called Literary Theory: A Reader and Guide.

In Introduction: Theorising Culture, Reading Ourselves Womack traces the development of cultural studies as a discipline through the ages by referring to works by eminent writers and thinkers of that particular time. At the beginning of the essay, Womack puts forth his ideas that cultural studies not only urges us to look at the “social, artistic, political, economic and linguistic mélange”, but also to look inside of ourselves in order to understand how the norms in the society have shaped us. Womack goes on to talk about the postwar stance of cultural studies which no longer deals with social norms and values but criticizes cultural relations and intellectual domination.

Womack emphasizes on works by J. Hillis Miller which “demonstrate the interdisciplinary possibilities of cultural studies”. In works such as Cultural Studies and Reading (1997), The Ethics of Reading: Kant de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, and Benjamin (1987), and Version of Pygmalion (1990), Miller tries to explain the reflexive process that occurs between the text and the reader. Such a process, Says Miller, allows readers to give conclusive ideas about the properties of literary texts and its “sensibilities of their theoretical premises.”

What is clearly portrayed in the essay is its emphasis on the shift that takes cultural studies from its dealing with a reading of the Great Traditions to its intersecting with literary criticism and popular cultures.

An Introduction to Cultural Studies- Simon During

the following write up on An Introduction to Cultural Studies is by Dhanya Joy

-------------------

The cultural studies deal with the study of culture from a sociological rather than an aesthetic viewpoint. The early cultural studies were an engaged form of analysis, because it studied about the social inequalities. The theory of cultural studies is different from the objective social sciences. It relied more on the literary criticism which considered more political.

The rapid development of Cultural Studies as a “new discipline” is closely related to the progress of postmodernism. It may even be considered the real product of the era. Postmodernism opens the paradigm of mini narratives instead of grand narratives, and cultural studies applies the paradigm that “culture” is not an abbreviation of “high culture”. Text, for cultural studies, is an object of discussion, and consequently it’s not merely written, because anything can be text. Cultural studies considers cultural text to be mode of representation, in which cultural studies sees its form and meaning make sense only when there is an examination of its intersections in all complexity. Text is the product of a complex interaction of production, response, and reception.

Simon During noted that cultural-studies appears as a field of study in Great Britain in the 1950s out of Leavisism. From this fact, should easily understand that this study is still closely related to the study of literature, and this consequently means that any methods one has used with literature may be applied to cultural studies as well. However, for one or more reasons, people are probably led into confusion as the object of discussion in cultural studies is not merely a piece of canonical literature. Even, in its development cultural studies tends to grasp or to pierce into any kinds of text, because for cultural studies anything can be text. This condition will surely remind us of the phenomenon of postmodernism which “completes” the era of modernism. Therefore, we may be certain that cultural studies stands as an extension of literary studies and develops in accordance with the progression of postmodernism’s philosophical thought.

According to During ‘culture’ was not an abbreviation of a ‘high culture’ assumed to have constant value across time and space. It is an extension of literary studies in which it struggles not to be trapped by the canon created by the modernists, and as a result this field of study has an extensive range in terms of objects of discussion and, consequently, theories. Since ‘culture’ is not the abbreviation of ‘high-culture’, the understanding of text is also developed. Simon During said that culture was broken down into discrete messages, ‘signifying practices’ or ‘discourses’ which were distributed by particular institutions and media. Since the understanding of text (in literary studies) is an object of discussion, cultural studies extend the paradigm of text to that which is not only written and canonical, because text is a mode of representation.

Cultural studies looks at various kinds of texts within the context of cultural practice, that is, the work, production, and material stuff of daily life, marked as it is by economics and class, by politics, gender, and race, by need and desire. The term cultural studies itself, of course, suggests that it is the study of culture, or, more particularly, the study of contemporary culture. Even assuming that we know precisely what ‘contemporary culture’ is, it can be analysed in many ways – sociologically, for instance, by ‘objectively’ describing its institutions and functions as if they belong to a large, regulated system; or economically, by describing the effects of investment and marketing on cultural production. This means cultural studies should be a cultural analysis of a text from some aspects. It examines the form and structure of cultural texts as they create meaning. Raymond William also noted that this study of culture is interdisciplinary and broad..

Simon During’s An Introduction to Cultural Studies is a wide-ranging and stimulating introduction to the history and theory of Cultural Studies from Leavisism, through the era of the CCCS, to the global nature of contemporary Cultural Studies. Each thematic section examines and explains a key topic within Cultural Studies. This includes time, space, media and the public sphere, identity, sexuality and gender and value.

The most basic and most radical assumption of cultural studies is that the basic unit of investigation is always relationships, and that anything can only truly be understood relationally; thus, studying culture means studying the relationships between configurations of cultural texts and practices on the one hand, and everything that is not in the first instance cultural, including economics, social relations and differences, national issues, social institutions, and so forth on the other. It involves mapping connections, to see how those connections are being made and where they can be remade. As a result, cultural studies always involves the study of contexts sets of relations located and circumscribed in time and space, and defined by questions. And cultural studies is always interdisciplinary because understanding culture requires looking at culture's relationship to everything that is not culture. Moreover, cultural studies is committed to a radical contextualism; it is a rigorous attempt to contextualize intellectual work. This contextualism shapes the project of cultural studies profoundly, and involves a commitment to complexity, contingency, and constructionism.

Cultural studies refuses to reduce the complex to the simple, the specific to the exemplary, and the singular to the typical. It refuses to see this complexity as an inconvenience to be acknowledged only after the analysis. It employs a conjunctive logic where one thing is true, another may also be true and thereby refuses the illusion of a total, all-encompassing answer. It avoids confusing projects with accomplishments; and it refuses to put off until later the resistances, the interruptions, and the fractures and contradictions of the context.

Cultural studies believes in contingency; it denies that the shape and structure of any context is inevitable. But cultural studies does not simply reject essentialism, for anti-essentialism is, in its own way, another version of a logic of necessity: in this case, the necessity that there are never any real relations. It is committed to what we might call an anti-anti-essentialism, to the view that there are relationships in history and reality, but they are not necessary. They did not have to be that way, but given that they are that way, they have real effects. Above all, there are no guarantees in history that things will form in some particular way, or work out in some particular way. Reality and history are, so to speak, up for grabs, never guaranteed. It operates in the space between, on the one hand, absolute containment, closure, complete and final understanding, total domination, and, on the other hand, absolute freedom and possibility, and openness.

Finally, cultural studies assumes that relationships are produced or constructed, and not simply always the result of chance. The relations that make up a context are real through the various activities of different agents and agencies, including people and institutions. Insofar as we are talking about the human world—and even when we are describing the physical world, we are within the human world as well—cultural practices and forms matter because they constitute a key dimension of the ongoing transformation or construction of reality. However, the effects of cultural practices are always limited by the existence of a material or nondiscursive reality. Cultural studies, then, does not make everything into culture, nor does it deny the existence of material reality. It does not assume that culture, by itself, constructs reality. To say that culture is constitutive—that it produces the world, along with other kinds of practices does not mean that real material practices are not being enacted, or that real material conditions do not both enable and constrain the ways in which reality functions and can be interpreted. Cultural studies is, in the first instance, concerned with cultural practices. To put it simply, the culture we live in, the cultural practices we use, and the cultural forms we place upon and insert into reality, have consequences for the way reality is organized and lived.

The commitment to a radical contextualism affects every dimension of cultural studies, including its theory and politics, its questions and answers, and its analytic vocabulary—which includes concepts of culture (text, technology, media), power, and social identity. Cultural studies derives its questions, not from a theoretical tradition or a disciplinary paradigm but from a recognition that the context is always already structured, not only by relations of force and power, but also by voices of political anger, despair, and hope. Cultural studies attempts to engage the existing articulations of hope and disappointment in everyday life and to bring the messy and painful reality of power as it operates both outside and inside the academy into the practice of scholarship.

There are two features that characterized cultural studies, when it first appeared in Great Britain in the 1950s. It concentrated on ‘subjectivity’ which means that it studied culture in relation to individual lives, breaking with social scientific positivism or ‘objectivism’.

Cultural studies insist that one cannot just ignore or accept the division and struggle in the society. It was developed out of Leavisism through Hoggart and Williams, who came from working-class families. They wrote in the interests of the society and their own individual experiences. According to the Leavisites, culture was not simply a leisure activity. Because it is all about forming mature individuals with concrete and balanced sense of life.

Culture could also be seen as a form of ‘governmentality’, that is, a means to produce conforming or ‘docile’ citizens, most of all through the education system. The most sophisticated concept that emerged in cultural studies was that of articulation. It emphasizes how hegemony mutates in terms of its elements and contents. It is a process of making alliances and connections, releasing energies rather than of presenting a static set of values and knowledge’s.

The notion of polysemy remains limited in that it still works at the level of individual signs as discrete signifying units. Cultural studies has been interested in how groups with least power practically develop their own readings of, and uses for, cultural products – in fun, in resisitance, or to articualate their own identity. Theorists have pointed out the fact that private discourse always comes from somewhere else and its meanings cannot be wholly mastered by those who use it. The problem confronted this new model of cultural studies as, it broke society down into fractions united by sexuality, gender, or ethnicity.

Cultural studies see theory as a resource to be used to respond strategically to a particular project, to specific questions and specific contexts. The measure of a theory's truth is its ability to enable a better understanding of a particular context through experiences. Thus, cultural studies cannot be identified with any single theoretical paradigm or tradition. It continues to wrestle with various modern and postmodern philosophies, including Marxism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, pragmatism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism.

Cultural studies do not begin with a general theory of culture but rather views cultural practices as the intersection of many possible effects. It does not start by defining culture or its effects, or by assembling, in advance, a set of relevant dimensions within which to describe particular practices. Instead, cultural practices are places where different things can and do happen. The common assumption that cultural studies is a theory of ideology and representation, or of identity and subjectivity, or of the circulation of communication, or of hegemony, is mistaken. Cultural studies often address such issues, but that is the result of analytic work on the context rather than an assumption that overwhelms the context.

Cultural studies has taken the force of arguments against ‘meta-discourses’ and does not want the voice of the academic theorist to drown out other less often heard voices. Like the other studies, cultural studies are politically driven. It is committed to understanding power—or more accurately, the relationships of culture, power, and context—and to producing knowledge that might help people understand what is going on in the world and the possibilities that exist for changing it.

The study of cultural studies, then, is a way of politicizing theory and theorizing politics. Cultural studies is always interested in how power infiltrates, contaminates, limits, and empowers the possibilities that people possess to live their lives in dignified and secure ways. Cultural studies also approaches power and politics as complex, contingent, and contextual phenomena and refuses to reduce power to a single dimension or axis, or to assume in advance what the relevant sites, goals, and forms of power and struggle might be. Consequently, it advocates a flexible, somewhat pragmatic or strategic, and often modest approach to political programs and possibilities. For cultural studies, knowledge based on statistical techniques belongs to the processes which ‘normalize’ society and stand in opposition to cultural studies’ respect for the marginal subject. The study of Cultural theories carries the notion of ‘popular’ and the everyday life of the individuals. Now we need to think of cultural studies not as a traditional field or discipline, nor as a mode of interdisciplinarity, but a field within multidisciplinarity, which thinks of engaged cultural studies less as an academic specialism than as a critical moment within a larger, dispersed, not wholly politicized field, is, then, a way of shoring up differences and counter-hegemony inside the humanities in an epoch of global managerialism.

Works cited

www.wordiq.com/definition/Cultural_studies

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/routledge/09502386.html

Rupkatha Journal - Home

Rupkatha Journal - Home

Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies- Stuart Hall

the following write up on Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies is by Rinu Dina John

------------------

Stuart Hall is one of the most influential figures in cultural studies. He was part of the time when cultural studies was originated as an academic discourse or discipline. In this essay he questions the seriousness with which this discourse is engaged with a personal version of the history of the cultural studies.

According to Hall cultural studies emerged as a disciple out of the 1950s disintegration of classical Marxism and its thesis that the economic base has a determining effect on the cultural superstructure. He speaks of two interruptions that the trajectories of cultural studies faced namely feminism and racism. But what is stable in cultural studies is the conjunctional knowledge based on the idea of Gramsci. It means knowledge situated in and applicable to, specific and immediate political/historical circumstances. In addition, the awareness that the structure of representations which forms culture’s alphabet and grammar are instruments of social power requiring critical examination. What he does is to trace the history of the development of cultural studies. He does it by referring to some theoretical legacies, namely the New Left and some theoretical moments, namely Racism and Feminism

According to Hall cultural studies has a discursive formation in Foucault’s sense. It means it has no single origin. It is a multiple discourse and has many histories. It is always a set of unstable formation. It has ‘centre’ only in quotation. It has many trajectories. It does not mean it is not a organised or policed disciplinary area. It means cultural studies refuse to be a meta narrative. It is a project that is open to that which it does not know. But at the same time just because there is no fixed centre doesn’t mean that there is no possibility of taking a particular position and arguing for it. He doesn’t believe that knowledge is close but he believes in arbitrary closure. This is what allows for politics. Every practice that intends to make a difference in the world should have some points of difference or distinction. It is the question of positionalities. But we should always keep in mind that positions are never absolute or final.

Cultural studies in the academies of the advanced capitalist countries have transformed the object of studies in the humanities. In particular, in English departments, cultural studies has challenged the predominance of the governing categories of literary studies (the "canon," the homogeneous "period," the formal properties of genre, the literary object as autonomous and self-contained) in the interest of producing "readings" of all texts of culture and inquiring into the reproduction of subjectivities. To this end, pressure has been placed on disciplinary boundaries, the methods which police these boundaries, and modes of interpretation and critique have been developed which bring, for example, "economics" and "politics" to bear on the formal properties of texts. In addition, the lines between "high culture" and "mass culture" have been relativized, making it possible to address texts in terms of their social effectivity rather than their "inherent" literary, philosophical or other values.

He speaks of one of the important theoretical legacies part of the origin of cultural studies namely the emergence of New Left in Britain with the disintegration of classical Marxism. Classical Marxist thesis was that economic base has a determining effect on the cultural superstructure. Classical Marxism was mainly engaged with power, capital, exploitation etc. and did not talk about the objective cultural studies such as culture, ideology, language, the symbolic etc.

He also speaks of certain movements that provoke theoretical movements. There were two such movements in relation to cultural studies. They are racism and feminism. These two movements were considered as interruptions that the cultural studies faced. These interruptions led to new theoretical formulations within cultural studies. These interruptions are good.

An Intelligent Critic's Guide to Indian Cinema- Ashish Nandy

the following write up on An Intelligent Critic's Guide to Indian Cinema is by Abhay Shetty

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1. The Cultural Matrix of the popular film.

The writer Ashish Nandy makes a clear distinction on how the cultural capital of Indian is much influenced by the middle class of the urban India be it cinema, cricket or anyother forms of entertainment, Nandy goes on explaining that the urban middle class politics which is only a part compared to the rest of the Indian rural population has a mojor influences in giving momentum to these areas of entertainment. " Urban India also would continue to provide a critical mass sustaining a level of intellectual activity and creative initiative difficult or impossible to achieve in smaller Third World societies ". Claiming that these urban middle class are the intellectual powers which sustain and encourage creative initiations which is assumed to be impossible by the third world countries. Thanks to its political presence compared to the other third world countries which have in compare provided to its westernized bourgeoisie." These classes have often provided the baseline for a critique of modernity as well as of traditions". Thinker and social reformers of Ninteenth and twetieth century of India have all provided for such a intellectual growth to the middle class in India irrespective of the social background of these reformers like Rabindranath Tagore , Bankmchandra Chattopadhyay, Gandhi and Bhimrao Ambedkar. " They Shared an Idiom and culture", and this is because they shared the cultural intellectual together irrespective of their social backdrop. Intellectuals or creative individuals from cinema , art and literature are forming a definite culture that mediates between the classical and the non-classical or folk, and between West and East. Nandy terms another set of the divients of the culture as Low-brow middle class for they 'vulgate' the new concepts of ethics and conciousness into the masses. Stating them to be 'underground' which has taken a legitamate popular form, threatening the high culture of the middle class.

The need for this new self assertion of the low -brow is because " The accelerating process of social change in India uprooted increasing number of people from their folk traditions".For the middle class it was their relatibility to the sanskrit tradition and for the upper class it was westernized concepts so the low-brow needed a self assertion of their culture to mingle in this melting pot of the urban. And this clash of the middle class and the low brow was in a sense resolved with the with a new fromation of expression " a middle -brow medium of self expression to serve as a new urban folk expression and a popular form of classicism". Thus a new mass culture formed. The new culture thus formed has certain traits of its own. The first one being including the elemants of the low-brow dominant and laying of the western high cultuer which was once prominant in the Indian Middle class culture. But the new mass culture doesnt reject the classical culture but inly undeplays it .Secondly there is a sense of prdictability and readability in the then popular culture of the urban middle class. Where as the urban mass culture now is purely on the creativity of the producer that cares to stimulate the sensibility of the masses. The third is that popular culture plays a mediatory rle between the classical and the folk , modern and tradition which is fragmented geograohically .where as in mass culture it has a very pan india effect reaching out to people through out the nation. The fouth being that the mass culture is not being critical of the of the current political culture and political sterotypes.where as the popular middle class culture relies on concepts such as sanity, maturity and normality .

Thus leading us to the common features and differences between art films, middle-brow cinema and commercial cinema . "All three depend on middle class for legitamacy and critical acclaim" by stating so Nandy also give middle class a certain power fram or structure to value all the three bases of cinema. Firstly according to the writer the commercial films center around the value system of the society basing itself on subtle criticizm of society but yet ahdering to the larger social mores and values. Thus criticising the middle class values to too. Where as art cinema or high-brow cinema writer terms it give a ruthless criticism of the social potholes and and gives a deep analysis of cinema as such. Where as the middle bro cinema fails to have to arty face of the high brow cinema but constantly try to achieve the artiness among their cinema. Which carries on the tradition od "good popular cinema".The writer goes on making such distinctions from one genre of cinema to the other.

2. Beyond Oriental Despotism

Politics and femininity in Satyajit Ray

In this section the writer shows how in Satyajit Ray's movie Shatranj how the west and the east is percieved and the western notions of Masculinities are projected as against that of eastern notions of femininity.The femininity is only potrayed at the expense of masculinity.

3. Shyam Benegal and the case of missing Krsna

Nandy potrays how the Indian epics do not have Hero in sense of the greek myths. but also touches upon where the intellectuals felt a need for a Karna to be potrayed as a hero in the curret day scenario.

4. The Double in Commercial Films

The use of double role as an alter ego is being projected to that of an fight between the eastern and the western concepts of the double, in reference to main stream Indian cinema.

5. Cultural Spaces and Aesthetic Spaces

The art films and the main stream indian movies share different spaces and with respect to their spaces they function accordingly. Nandy also adds on that these spaces should not be interchanged because the masses do not recognise the the aesthetics spaces and only rely on the cultural spaces of the movies or cinema.

Bibilography :

1. Nandy, Ashis; 1995; Intelligent Film Critic’s Guide to Indian Cinema; The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves; New Delhi; OUP; pp 196-236

Cultural Industry Reconsidered -Theodor W. Adorno

the following write up on Culture Industry Reconsidered is by Inchara Ravi

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Culture Industry Reconsidered was written by Theodor W. Adorno, a German philosopher. He was born on September 11, 1903. He belonged to the Frankfurt School of social theory. The Frankfurt School takes its name from the Institute for Social Research established in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. Adorno along with Max Horkheimer published a book named ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ in 1947. In this book they use the term ‘cultural industry’ for the first time.

In the essay Cultural Industry Reconsidered, Adorno replaces the expression ‘mass culture’ with ‘culture industry'. This is to avoid the popular understanding of mass culture as the culture that arises from the masses. He prefers calling it ‘culture industry’ because of the commodification of the culture forms or artistic objects. He opines that the cultural forms create a means of income for their creators and profit has become more important than the artistic expression. Hence, culture has turned into an industry and the cultural objects are looked at as products. One of the characteristics of cultural industry is that it intentionally integrates both the high and low art.

By referring to the term industry, Adorno does not point to the production process instead he is looking at the ‘standardization of the thing itself’ and to the rationalization of distribution techniques and not strictly to the production process. It is industrial more in a sociological sense, in terms of incorporation of the industrial forms of organization even though nothing is manufactured. He also makes clear the difference between the technique used in cultural industry and the technique used in works of art. In the works of art the technique refers to the formal organization of the object, with its inner logic, where as in cultural industry it refers to the distribution and the mechanical production. Thus technique in cultural industry is external to the object where as in the works of art it is internal. Adorno opines that a work of art is not different than a commercial product in the industrial era.

Adorno says that the masses are secondary and are ‘an appendage of the machinery’ in the cultural industry. He argues that, the culture industry claims to bring order in the chaotic world it provides human being with something like a standard and an orientation, yet the thing that it is claiming to preserve is actually being destroyed. The mass media is supposed to enlighten the mass, to bring about rational thinking and also demystification. But mass media is deceiving people in the name of enlightenment. They are actually controlling the people rather than liberating their thoughts.

The current culture industry acts as if it satisfies the consumers’ need for entertainment, but masks the manner by which these needs are standardized, manipulating the consumers to obsess about its products. A relevant example for Adorno’s view on mass media is cinema and television. Each film is the replica of what has been already done, but people believe it to be different from what has been done before. As a result of this critical thinking, individuality of an object or an idea is lost due to the commodification by the cultural industry.

The essay also makes a reference to Benjamin’s theory of the ‘aura’. It says that the Culture Industry doesn’t have an alternative to the aura. Hence, it is going against its own ideologies. Adorno's concept of culture industry indicates the necessity for rethinking his theory of mass culture.

References

http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC20folder/AdornoMassCult.html

EMPIRE, NATION, AND LITERARY TEXT- Susie Tharu and Dr. K. Lalitha

the following write up on Empire, Nation and the Literary Text is by Rekha Kamath

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The essay ''Empire, Nation and the Literary Text'' is a combined effort of Prof. Susie Tharu and Dr. K. Lalitha. By using ''Radhika Santwanam'' (Appeasing Radhika), a classic work of the eighteenth century Telugu poetess ''Muddupalani'' as an example, the authors have attempted to portray the imbalance in the cultural authority during the colonial period, and its changing trends. In the introductory section, the essay reveals the efforts made by Bangalore Nagaratnamma, philanthropist and savant of the twentieth century, in trying to bring back to the public eye the great classic of Muddupalani which had gone unnoticed.

Muddupalani was a courtesan attached to the retinue of Pratapsimha (1739-1763), a Nayaka king of Tanjavur. Traditionally the only women who had an access to scholarship and arts like dancing, music, and literature were courtesans. Many of such women commanded respect for their learning and their accomplishments. One such accomplishment was Muddupalani’s Radhika Santwanam. It consists of 584 poems divided into four sections. The poems are stories involving Radha, Krishna’s aunt, who brings up Ila Devi from childhood and then gets her married to Krishna. The poems are a detail description of Ila Devi’s puberty and her consummation of her marriage with Krishna. In these poems Radha advises Ila Devi how to respond to Krishna’s love-making, and Krishna how to tenderly handle Ila Devi. At a point of time, the poems change course and Radha, unable to bear the pain and grief of her own separation from Krishna, whom she desires herself, breaks down and rages against Krishna for having abandoned her. When Krishna gently appeases her, she is comforted by his loving embrace. This is what gives Muddupalai’s creation its title.

The introduction of the essay shows the serious implications of the efforts made by Bangalore Nagaratnamma in reprinting the classic ''Radhika Satwanam'' (Appeasing Radhika) in 1910, during the reign of the British in India. She did so with a very clear intention of making the classic work of Muddupalani available to the public again. But this resulted in Muddupalani’s work being criticized as obscene and was banned from being printed, published, or even read. Even though the ban was lifted with the winning of Independence, the text didn’t achieve the recognition that it deserved. Radhika Santwanam gives a chance to take a peek into the ideological conjunctures of the last 250 years of Indian critiques.In the sections following the introduction, the authors attempt to "trace the changing political economies of gender, caste and class, serviced in turn by changes in literary taste as well as by altogether new notions of the function of literature and the nature of the literary curriculum."

The third section of the essay elaborates on the accomplishments of courtesans or ganika during Maddupalai’s time. Unlike the non-Muslim women upper caste women of that time, this section of the community got a chance to get well-versed with the literature of various languages including Sanskrit. As the culture of the Thanjavur court grew into a singularly composite one, the national culture also showed signs of miscegenation. The Thanjavur rulers were displaced by a Maratha dynasty and therefore there was a cultural influence too. This also showed changehad an impact in Muddupalani’s writings. Verses and secular prose narratives started replacing the poems. But what gave Muddupalani's works their uniqueness were the subversion of the received form. Usually it is the man is the lover and the woman is the loved one. But in Radhika Santwanam the woman's sensuality is at the center. "Legitimation of female desire and its endorsement of a woman's right to pleasure" is what makes Radhika Santwanam a unique classic.

The fourth section of the essay concentrates on the reason for the shift in ideologies. The work that was uncontroversial during its time became totally unacceptable when Bangalore Nagaratnamma brought its reprinted version into the open in 1911, the time when British rule in India was at its peak. The era saw major shifts in political, economic, and social ideologies. Thanjavur lost its relevance as the British started taking over places that were once ruled by Indian rulers. Artists, singers, dancers, especially the women, lost their status in the society and were forced to take up peury and prostitution.

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception- Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

the following write up on The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception is by Jaimon Antony

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The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception is an excerpt from the final chapter of critical theorists Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) Dialectic of Enlightenment. The book is the cornerstone of critical theory and essentially claims that science is irrational and that the Enlightenment is a trick and nothing happened during that time period. Adorno claims that enlightenment was supposed to bring pluralism and demystification but instead society is said to have suffered a major fall as it is corrupted by capitalist industry with exploitative motives. Both Adorno and Hokeimer belong to the Frankfurt school which tried to theorize ‘cultural Industry’ as being controlled by the Capitalist Economy.

Elements

This essay remains a classical denunciation of ‘cultural Industry’. This is a socialist approach to the industrialization of cultural commodities. Adorno and Hokheimer are of the opinion that the transition of the cultural production from the artisanal stage to the industrial stage has made the society lose its capacity to nourish true freedom and Individuality – as well as the ability to represent the real conditions of existence. According to them the modern cultural industry produces standardized goods to satisfy the larger need of the capitalist economy.

Adorno and Horkheimer begin by defining the “culture industry” as an economic union of microcosm and macrocosm in a society of producers and consumers united by work and pleasure whose technology does not extend beyond standardization and mass production. They move through all aspects of popular culture (from their time period)-radio, movies and music- applying the Marxist idea of alienation of labor to the condition of consumers in a post-Enlightenment capitalist society. Horkheimer and Adorno argue that since the Enlightenment popular culture has become a sort of factory, producing standardized cultural goods to manipulate the masses into passivity, which they term the “culture industry”. Horkheimer and Adorno viewed the mass-produced culture as a threat to true or “high” arts. They argue that the “culture industry”, by trying to satisfy the demands of the capitalist economy, deceives the masses, homogenizes culture, and creates false needs.

The role of capitalism is key, “the dependence of the most powerful broadcasting company on the electrical industry, or of the motion picture industry on the banks, is characteristic of the whole sphere, whose individual branches are themselves economically interwoven.” Horkheimer and Adorno claim that the media--advertisements, movies, radio broadcasts--are essentially propaganda used to maintain society’s state of false consciousness; this propaganda hide the reality of domination and oppression of the masses under capitalism.

The essay stresses that culture industry has become so successful that ‘art’ and ‘life’ are no longer wholly separable. The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture Industry and flawless techniques used in the expressions of art duplicate empirical objects in such a way that the consumer can’t really make distinction between what is real and what is unreal. This Idea was later taken up by theorists of postmodernism to reinstate that real life has become indistinguishable from art. while emphasizing the fact that the ‘mass culture’ is a threat to the ‘high art’, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that there can be no more original culture – that there can be no art in modern capitalism.

Observations

Adorno and Hokheimer are too cynical about the ‘cultural Industry’ that they fail to see the opportunities and collective creativity which ‘cultural Industry’ provides for all kinds of Individuals. They become highly pessimistic that they even undermine the Marxist notion that the consumers will be able to overthrow or overcome the capitalist manipulation and deception of the society.

References

· Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press (2002)

· During, Simon. The Cultural Studies Reader. Routledge( 1999 )

· Jameson,Fredric. Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press. (1991)