What is Cultural Studies ?

Name            :            Rabhadiya Vinod

Roll No.        :            34

Batch Year   :            2014/15

Semester       :            2

Paper No       :            8 (Cultural Studies)

Topic             :            What is Cultural Studies ?

 

 

Submitted To :         S.B.G. Dept. Of English

                                 M.K.K.S. Bhavnagar University

 

What is  cultural studies?

Introduction:

cultural means provisional because times again the things are go on changing. But we have to thread glance on cultural studies that is made of three c” 1. Context 2.Concept 3.Content. When we study about cultured studies these three “c” are very important figures.

As the literature is the mirror of society. But we have question in our mind that “why we studies cultural studies?” so we can interpret that English study already? A ‘canon’ that’s why English students study about “what is cultural studies?” Mathew Arnold was one of the great examples of literary critic of cultural studies.

The word” culture” its self so difficult to pin down” cultural studies” is hard to define.” cultural studies’ is not so much a discrete approach at all, but rather of set of practices. Arising from social turmoil of the 1960s cultural studies is composed of elements of masochism. Post structuralism post modernism. Feminism, gender studies, anthropology, sociology race and ethnic studies. Film theory, urban studies, public policy, popular cultural studies and post colonial studies. These fields that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation.

                               

What is cultural studies?

‘Culture’ derives from ‘cultura’ and ‘colere’ meaning to cultivate. It also mint to honor and project by the 19^th century in Europe. It tastes of the upper class. As we see that ‘culture’ its self is so difficult to pin down ‘cultural studies’ is hard to define.

                     Cultural studies looks at marker popular culture and everyday life. Popular culture is the culture of masses. A culture studies argues that culture is about the meanings a community or society generates. A cultural study believes that the culture of a community includes various aspects, economics, spatial, ideological, erotic and political. Culture is not natural thing it is produced, cultural studies is interested in production and consumption of culture.

                     Stuart hall’s work has been a trendsetter in cultural studies and inaugurated the field in Britain.

                     “culture is the learned behavior of society or a subgroup’- Margaret Mead.

                         “Culture is simply assemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves”- Clifford Greets.

                         “A cultural study is the analysis of cultures system of meaning-production and consumption”.

 

Cultural studies approaches generally share four goals:

1.    Discipline such as literacy criticism history:   A cultural study is practiced in such journals as critical inquiry, Representation and boundary. Italian opera, a Latino’ tale novella’ the architectural styles of prisons body piercing and drawing conclusion about the changes in textual phenomena over time such things are found in these kinds of newspapers. Cultural studies not simply or essentially about literature in the traditional sense or even about “art” Lawrence, Grasberg, Cary nelson and Paula. For students, this sometimes means that a professor might make this or his own political view part of the instruction, which of course can lead to problems. But this kind of criticism like feminism is an engaged rather than a detached activity.

(2)   Cultural studies are politically engaged:   The cultural critics see themselves as “oppositional” not only within their own discipliner but to many of the power structures of society as large. The cultural critics question inequalities within power structures and try to find out the models for restructuring relationship among the dominant and “minority of subaltern” discourses. The meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally constructed, they can thus be reconstructed. This type of idea taken to a philosophical extreme, demise the autonomy of the individual whether an actual person or a charter in literature, a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic “Great Man” or “Great book” theory and a relocation of esthetics and culture from the idea realms of taste and sensibility into the arena of a whole society’s everyday life as it is constructed.

(3)  Cultural studies demise the separation of “high” and “low” or elite and popular culture:  

In these days cultural critics work to transfer the term culture to include mass culture. Whether popular, folk or urban. Hussein and some other critics of cultural studies argue that after world war two the destination among high and low mass culture collapsed. For example British raj who also ruled over India.

              Changing of boundaries among disciplines high and low can make cultural studies just plain fun. Some of these examples are the given titles.

 “The birth of captain jack sparrow”

(4)  Cultural studies analysis not only the cultural cork but also the means of production:  

                                  Marxist critics have recognized the importance of such par literacy question such as:

 “Who supports a given artist?”

  “Who publishes his or her books? How are these books distributed? Who buys books?”

   A well known analysis of literacy production is Janice roadway’s study of the America romance novel and its readers. Reading the romance, women patriarchy and popular literature, which demonstrates the textual effects of the publishing industries decision about book that will reduce its financial risks?

                           Cultural studies joins subjectivity means culture in relation to individual lives with “engagement” a direct approach to attacking social malpractices.

Let’s discuss in detail five types of cultured studies.

Five types of cultured studies:

A.   British cultural materialism

B.   New historicism

C.   American multiculturalism

D.   Postmodernism and popular culture

E.   Postcolonial studies

A. British cultural materialism

                                       Cultured studies are referred to as “cultural materialism” in Britain and it has no long tradition. In the later nineteenth century Mathew Arnold sought to redefine the “givens” of British culture’. Edward Burnett Taylor’s pioneering anthropological study ‘promotional culture’ (1871) argued that culture or civilization taken its widest ethnographic sense is a complex whole which includes knowledge belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as member of society as William memorable states:” there are no masses, there are only ways of seeing (other) people as masers.

          Cultural materialism began in earnest in the 1950s with work of F.R Levis, heavily influenced by Mathew Arnold’s analyses of bourgeois culture uniformity of everything. In this sense for the purpose of uniformity art may be dying. Materialism also includes imitation of western culture. The novels are the great examples of western phenomenon.

   Karl Marx, British theorist were also influenced by gorgy Lukas. Theodora Adorn, Louis Althusser , Max Horkheimer, Mikhail Bakhtin and Antonio Gramsci. They were especially interested in problems of cultural hegemony and in the many systems of dominated related to literature Walter Benjamin attacked fascism by question the value of what he called the “aura” of culture. Benjamin helps explain the frightening culture context for a film such as Leni Riefenstahl’s ‘triumph of the will’ (1935) Lukas developed what he called a “reflection theory” in which he stressed literature’s reflection conscious or unconscious of the social reality surrounding it. cultural materialists also turned to the more humanistic and even spiritual insights of the great students of robe lais and Dostoevsky, Russian Formalist Bakhtin, especially his amplification of the dialog form of meaning within narrative and class struggle at once confliction and communal, individual and social.

B. new Historicism:

        “History became a co-text”

   Old history events, backgrounds, historical phenomenal reshape according to contemporize times. Good reading of history is necessary part of new criticism.

                              New Historicism

                                          ↓

           New Historicism   Vs   Old Historicism

 “Mangle Pandey” is one of the great examples of new historicism because nationalism is shown here too much.

                         Lepta “the whore” what did Jonathan swift mean when he gave the name of to the flying island in the third voyage of Gulliver’s travels? It is question that has tantalized readers since the eighteenth century. The science fiction aspect of that island still amuses us, but why? The where? There may be an answer but we will discuss later on this question.

        “If the 1970s could be called the age of ‘deconstruction’ writes Joseph Latvia” some hypothetical survey of late twentieth century criticism might well characterize the 1980s making the return of history.    

Michael Warner phrases new historicism’s motto as “the text is historical and history is textual”. Fredric Jameson insisted “always historicize” (the political unconscious). As a return to historical scholarship new historicism concerns itself with ‘extra literacy matters’, letters ,diaries, films, painting, medical treatises looking to reveal opposing historical tensions in a text. New histories see such cross cultural phenomenon as texts in themselves’ Stephen Greenbelt’. A renaissance scholar and founding editor of the journal presentations may be created with the coining of the term’ new historicism’ what about Laputa? How can new historicism help us answer the question raised a few pages ago?

                   “In the flying island and female anatomy, gynecology and power in Gulliver Travels, Susan Bruce offers a reading of book third that makes some new historic sense out of swift’s use of Laputa. 

                    Gulliver and Laputains are able to enter this cavity at will and not only the movements of lodestone and island, but also the entire society.   

C. American Multiculturalism:

                                   In 1965 there were dangerous riots drew attention of whole world toward America. James Meredith, the first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi was wounded by a white segregationist, Julian Bond; duly elected state representative was denied his seat in the Georgia house.

                                   American should graduate from college without a frame work of knowledge that includes at least some construct of Asian history of Latin American history, of African history.

1.    African American writers: African American studies are widely pursued in American literacy criticism. From the recovery of 18^th century poets such as Phyllis Wealthy to the experimental novels of Toni Morison one of great writer of this period was Harriet E Wilson whose our Nig or sketches from the life of a free black in a two story white house north(1859) was the first novel published by an African American. Other writers were Linda Brent, Frances, Ellen Watkins, and Harper Etc.

2.    Latina/o writers: we will use the term Latina/o to indicate a broad sense of ethnicity among Spanish speaking people in the United States. There were also great writers towards literature likewise San Antonio his first book’ the house on mango street’ (1984), Rudolf Anaya’s ‘Bless me ultimo’ (1973). Perhaps the best known Latin novel focuses on the impact of world war two.

3.    American Indian literature: “American Indian” is often preferred by Indians over “native American” as demonstrated in the names of such organization as the American Indian movement (AMI). During this period great works came out one of them Samson Occom a Mohegan schoolmaster in1772. others were William Apess , Yellow Bird (John Rollin Ridge) ,Simon Pokagnon, Sara Winnemucca Hopkins etc.

4.    Asian American writers: Asian American literature is written by people of Asian descent in the United States. Addressing the experiment of living in a society that views them as alien. Edward said has written Orientals. Asian writer include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Philippine, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Polynesian and many other people of Asia. Many great Asian writers were there including Hong Kingston ‘the woman warrior: memories of girlhood among ghosts’ (1976). Chinese woman also came across to produce literature such as Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912). Onoto Watanna was the author of ” Japanese”

D. Postmodernism and Popular Culture:

               Postmodernism is also like post structuralism and deconstruction critique of the aesthetics of the preceding age lout as in such a way of critique postmodernism has very out of dismembering tradition.

                     Beginning in the mid of 1980 post modernism emerged in art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communication, fashion and fields.

                      Modernist argued the Victorian aspects of morality and came out with new techniques, ideas, psychology experimented with point of view time space and stream of consciousness writing.

                      Post borrows from modernism disillusionment with the given of society Fredric Jameson sees artistic movements like modernism and post modernism. A grand narrative in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most important but post modernism prefers ‘mini-narratives’ of local events think for example of video games or music albums, reproduction of original painting or statues. Perhaps post modernism is best compared to the emergence of computer technology post modernism thus reflects tooth the energy and diversity of contemporary life as well as its frequent lack of coherent and depth.

2.    Popular culture:

There was a time in 1960s when popular culture was not studied by academics it was just like popular culture for few people what they are writing , directing, producing. One of the great examples is Rabindranath Tagore. But one question arise in our mind that culture and nature different things, if it is natural than it is very difficult to change. Time and again culture became product one of the great Indian film “Amar Akbar Anthony” represents popular culture.

      There are four main types of popular culture analysis: production analysis, textual analysis. These analyses seek to get beneath the surface (denotative) meanings and examine more implicit (connotative) social meanings. These approaches view culture as a narrative or story telling process in which particular texts or cultural artifacts (i.e.) a hit song or a television programs consciously or unconsciously link themselves to larger stories at play in the society.

                                                      Production analysis asks the following kinds of question. Who own media? Who creeds texts and why?  What constraints? Hoe democratic or elitist is the production of popular culture? What about works written only for money?

                  As we will demonstrate in our discussion of Frankenstein sometimes popular culture can so a literature work that is impossible to read the original text without reference to many layers of popular culture that have popular culture reconstruction of a works like Frankenstein can also open it to unforeseen new interpretation.

F.    Post canonical studies:

                                           Post colonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by third world countries after the decline of colonialism for example when countries in Asia, Africa, Latina America and Caribbean separated from the Europeans empire and left to rebuild themselves.

                  At first glance post colonial studies would seem to be matter of history and political science rather than literacy criticism. However, we must remember that English as in “English department” or “English literature” has been since the age of the British Empire a global language.

                         Homi K. Bhabha’s post colonial theory involves analysis of nationality, ethnicity and politics with post structuralism ideas of identity and undermines defining post colonial identities as shifting hybrid constructions. Post colonial critics accordingly study Diasporas texts outside the usual western genres, especially, immigrants and refuges. Postcolonial literature from emerging nation by such writers as china’s Ache be Camus and Salman Rushdie are real alongside European responses to colonialism by writers such as George Orwell and Albert Camas. We can see some conflicts arise from the colonial past in Rush die’s Midnight’s children (1980). For example which deconstruct from a post-colonial view point the history modern India?

Conclusion:

 thus I have to conclude with the meaning of culture studies, how is it important in language and in literature. It is provisional because time and culture of human being changing according to the period in this period social, political, religion, media, and fashion these all aspects are playing a vital role. Four goals of cultural studies and five types of cultural studying are also throw light on this topics and we can hoe the things happening around us also played its role to create a new culture. So time and again we will have different culture and the taste and shackle also may be different as the time is turning its shape.