Name : Gond Asmita K
Roll no : 1st
Paper : 8th (
Cultural Studies)
Topic : Five types of cultural studies
Class : M.A.—1, SEM--2
Year : 2014-15
Submitted to : Dr. Dilip Barad
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University.
Topic: Five types of cultural studies
- What is culture:
It is very difficult to define the
word ‘culture’ because it is an umbrella term. The word culture is come
from the word ‘culture’ and ‘colere’. It means is ‘to cultivate’. It also means
to honor and to protect. By the 19th century in Europe it’s meaning
was different it means the habits, customs and tastes of the upper classes.
- Five types of cultural studies:
Cultural studies were divided
into five parts;
So let’ take
introduction on five types of cultural studies.
1) British cultural
Materialism
Cultural studies are referred
to as cultural materialism in Britain.
Matthew Arnold
redefined the ‘givens’ of British culture.
“There are no masses; there
are only ways of seeing other people as masses”
------------Williams
Britain
has two trajectories for culture
1—First leads to past
culture preserver
2—Second leads to
future
Althussar insisted that ideology was ultimately in control of
the people that the main function of ideology was to produce the society’s
existing relations of production and that function is even carried out in
literary texts.
Some cultural materialists
are are:
1) Walter Benjamin
2) Leni Riefenstahl
3) Lukas
Cultural materialists
also turned to
---- Humanistic
-----Spiritual
insight.
Cultural materialists also turned to the more humanized and even spiritual insights of the great students of Rabelais and Dostoevsky, Russian formalist Bakhtn, especially his amplification of the dialog form of communal, individual and social.
2)
New historicism:
“If the 1970s could be called the age of deconstruction
some hypothetical survey of late 20th century criticism might well
characterize the 1980s as marking the Return to History, or perhaps the
recovery of the referent.”
New historicist seek “surprising coincidences “that may
cross.”
Stephen Greenbelt coined the word New Criticism. “New historicism explains the word “Laputa”from Gulliver’s travels.
“Laputa means the whore” it is describes as gigantic trope of
the female body.
The “New Historicism” movement is
led by Stephen Greenbelt. It refers to the historical nature of the text and
textual nature of the history. It is different from the New Criticism in which
theories like deconstruction and structuralism give importance to linguistic
approach of the text. On the other hand, new historicism connects the text with
its non-literary, historical text and breaks down the distinction between them.
It draws inspiration from Michel Foucault’s discourse and power that holds that
we find the active reflection of the power relation of that time in the text
and it makes and remakes the meaning. New historicism is less a theory for
interpreting text and more a set of shared assumption that history and text are
intimately interconnected.
New Historicism focuses on the way literature expresses-and sometimes disguises-power relations at work in the social context in which the literature was produced, often this involves making connections between a literary work and other kinds of texts. Literature is often shown to “negotiate” conflicting power interests. New historicism has made its biggest mark on literary studies of the Renaissances and Romantic periods and has revised motions of literature as privileged, apolitical writing. Much new historicism focuses on the marginalization of subjects such as those identified as witches, the insane, heretics, vagabonds, and political prisoners.
3) American Multiculturalism:
In 1965 the Watts race riots draw worldwide attention. They
were given rights equal to Whites. Leon Botstein emphasized on reading
classical and traditional books Bernard Diaz’s says….
“Every American
should understand Mexico from the point of view the observers of the conquest
and of the history before the conquest. No American should graduate from
college without a framework of knowledge that includes at least some construct
of Asian history of Latin American history, of African history.”
American political
history and we witness bloodshed and atrocities in the name of racism. Fifty
years later, if we look at the matter now, we find the idea of race and
ethnicity has evolved over the years. Social scientists believe that “race” is
the whites’ construct rather than scientifically approved, to assign their
privilege and dominance over the black. Interracial marriage is so widespread
that the bicultural or multicultural American is the norm rather than
exception. With the huge influx of Mexican American, it is predicted that in
2050, English will no more be the national language and Anglo-American a
majority.
American
Multiculturalism includes:
- African American Writers
- American Indian Writers
- Latin Writers Asian American writers
- African American writers
African American writers subjects are multiple and the write
about folk. Their writings target humankind. They are with “double
consciousness.”
- Latin writers
They are
belongs originally to Mexico.
Latina/o Writer Hispanic Mexican American, Puerto Rican Nuyarican
Chicane may be Huizhou or Maya. Which names to use/ the choice after has
political implications.
We will use the
term'' Latina/o to indicate a broad sense of Ethnicity among Spanish speaking
,people n the united states Mexican American are the largest and most
influential of Latina/o Ethnicity in the united states.
They are original American Red Indians.
In pre
dominantly oral cultures, stalling passes and religious beliefs, moral values,
political codes and practical lesson of everyday life .For American Indians
stories are a source of strength in the face of centuries of silencing by Euro
American.
- Asian American Writers
They are Asian immigrates Chinese
women make up the targets and most influential group of Asian American writers.
Asian American literature is written by people of Asian descent in the
United States addressing the experience of living in a society that views them
as alien. Asian immigrants were denied citizenship as late as the1950s.Edward
said has written of Orientals, or the tendency to objectify and exoticism
Asian, and their work has sought to respond to such stereotypes Asian American
writer include Chinese Japanese , Korean Filipino, Vietnamese, Asian ,
Polynesian and many other peoples of as a the Indian subcontinent , and
pacific.
The idea that American identity is
vested in a commitment to core values expressed in the American Creed and the
ideals of Exceptionalism raises a fundamental concern that has been the source
of considerable debate. Can American identity be meaningfully established by a
commitment to core values and ideals among a population that is becoming
increasingly heterogeneous? Since the 1960s, scholars and political activists,
recognizing that the “melting pot” concept fails to acknowledge that immigrant
groups do not, and should not, entirely abandon their distinct identities,
embraced multiculturalism and diversity. Racial and ethnic groups maintain many
of their basic traits and cultural attributes, while at the same time their
orientations change through marriage and interactions with other groups in
society. The American Studies curriculum serves to illustrate this shift in
attitude. The curriculum, which had for decades relied upon the “melting pot”
metaphor as an organizing framework, began to employ the alternative notion of
the “American mosaic.” Multiculturalism, in the context of the “American
mosaic,” celebrates the unique cultural heritage of racial and ethnic groups,
some of whom seek to preserve their native language and lifestyle.
(4)
Postmodernism and popular culture:
Introduction:
“Postmodernism” is a term usually applied to
the period in literature and literary theory since the 1960s,
though some regard postmodernism as the prevailing intellectual mood since
World War-2 ended in 1945. Numerous Philosophers, critics, and belletristic
writers can be seen as precursors or early representatives of the cultural and
aesthetic approach that would come to be called postmodernism, among them
Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Bretch, Jorge Luis Borges, and
Roland Barthes. Postmodernism is characterized by a strikingly radical
skepticism toward all aspects of western culture, the impetus for which many
practitioners of postmodern theory they trace back to the writings of the
nineteenth century, philosopher Frederic Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s spiritual
descendants seek, in so many words, a new kind of meaning independent of the
prevailing cultural “myth” of objective truth.
Recently
the notions of met modernism, post-postmodernism and the ‘death of
postmodernism’ have been increasingly widely debated in his introduction to a
special issue of the journal 20th century literature titled ‘After
postmodernism’ that “declarations of postmodernism’s demise have become a
critical commonplace”. The exhibition postmodernism- style and subversion
1970-1990 at the Victorian and Albert Museums was billed as the first however
to document postmodernism as a historical movement.
Popular
culture divided into…
Popular
culture is studied after 1960s popular culture reshaped……..
Popular culture…
1) Ethnicity
2) Race
3) Gender
4) Class
5) Age
6) Region
7) Sexuality.
Popular culture is the entirely of ideas, perspective,
attitudes, images and other Phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given
culture, especially western culture of the early to mid 20th
century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and
early 21th century. Heavily influenced by mass media, this
collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society.
Popular culture is often viewed as being trivial and dumber
down in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. As a
result it comes under heavy criticism from various non mainstream sources (most
notably religious groups and counter cultural groups) which deem it
superficial, consumerist, sensationalist, and corrupted.
5) Post colonial studies:
Post colonial literary theorist study the English language
within the political zed context.
Gayatri Chakravorly Spivak is post colonial feminist who
examined the effects of political independence upon “subaltern” sub proletarian
women in the Third World. The critical nature of postcolonial theory entails destabilizing Western
ways of thinking, therefore creating space for the subaltern or marginalized
groups, to speak and produce alternatives to dominant discourse. Often, the
term post colonialism is taken literally, to mean the period of time after
colonialism. This however, is problematic because the ‘once-colonized world’ is
full of “contradictions, of half-finished processes, of confusions, of
hybridist, and liminalities” .In other words, it is important to accept the
plural nature of the word post colonialism, as it does not simply refer to the
period after the colonial era. By some definitions, post colonialism can also
be seen as a continuation of colonialism, albeit through different or new
relationships concerning power and the control/production of knowledge. Due to
these similarities, it is debated whether to hyphenate post colonialism as to
symbolize that we have fully moved beyond colonialism.
Conclusion:
Thus, in cultural
studies we can find five types of cultural studies. Which were helps to recognize
the different cultures with the different communities and histories.
Good point is cultural studies and nice work in your assignment.
ReplyDeleteyou done good with approriate chart and images...
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