Lecture One

Introduction, basic terms and concepts

A study of culture, or the study of contemporary culture

Originates in Great Britain in the 1950s Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy

(1957): emphasis on uneqality, as far as money, health care, education

Raymond Williams: The Long Revolution(1961): culture cannot be uncoupled from society

Hoggart established the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

A move from locally produced cultural forms (holidays, dances, attitudes to family) to the larger picture, or culture produced from afar: by the state-- educational system, or by culture industry—music, film, and broadcasting

Early 1970s: Emphasis on culture’s political function: culture came to be considered a form of hegemony

Term is associated with Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxist,(1920s, 1930s)

Relations of domination which are not visible as such

Involves not coercion, but consent on the part of the dominated, or the subaltern

Forms of hegemony or hegemonic forces alter their content as social and cultural conditions change

Counter-hegemonic strategies have to be revised

Culture is not an expression of local communal ties, but an apparatus within a large system of domination

Culture is broken down into discourses, or signifying practices

Discourse: relationship between power and language

Culture can produce conforming, or docile citizens or bodies

Coercive practices are developed aiming at the manipulation of the human being, his gestures, Docile bodies or engedelmes testek result from disciplinary practices, separating people in space (army, prisons, dormitories, etc.)--Foucault

Louis Althusser: Ideological state apparatus: political party, religion, education, family

Ideology gives us identity, we are subjected to ideology, no free agency or free will for human consciousness, helps us make sense of the world, through it we enter the symbolic order, see ourselves mirrored in it,

Michel Foucault: Discourses are produced historically, examined asylums, prisons, Episteme: regulates the development and transformation of knowledge– a group of rules of what we count as knowledge of the given period

Sign=signifier and signified Polysemy: a signifier always has more than

one meaning Meaning: an effect of differences within the

larger system Meanings are not produced referentially, by

pointing to specific objects, but by one sign’s difference from another

Signs can be substituted for another—paradigmatical relation Marlboro man--toughness

Signs can enter a sequence of other signs—syntagmatical relation Marlboro man-smoking-cancer

A discipline interested in hegemony, discourse, the distribution of power

How groups with the least power develop their own readings of cultural products in articulating their identity

Culture at the interstices, the gaps of power relations

The cultural construction of race, ethnicity, and gender

Subject: expressive, has agency, shapes his or her life—Self

Object: muted, suppressed, deprived of agency--Other

Cultural studies helps us to examine texts from the following aspects:

Spatiality: Phenomenological approach Martin Heidegger: subject dwells in space Edward Casey: body as an organizing

force, a link between self and the lived place

Spatiality: Post-Marxist approach Foucault: spatiality is a social product,

determined by power relations Third Space: fissure in the dominant

discourse—Homi Bhabha

Third space: a hybrid movement of the

subject, not simply a negation of social space: both negating and building upon a socio-spatial paradigm

Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter: condemned as an adulteress, yet by proudly wearing the letter A she reinforces her own identity

Non-place: places of transition, cannot be integrated into any spatial paradigm, expresses rootlessness, expresses difference from the environment (Marc Augé)

Minorities tend to be restricted into non-places

Negative space (Nancy D. Munn): prohibited space, boundary making resulting from racist tactics of space production

Julia Kristeva:”The Powers of Horror” Designates what has been discharged

from the body, expelled, rendered Other Yet, by discharge and expulsion the

identity of the Other is established as well

A cultural studies inspired look at American culture

Contesting national narratives (Native American, White, Asian-American, African-American, etc.)

American exceptionalism: a rooted belief in chosenness, mission concept a core element of national self-definition, promotion of a homogeneous image

Counter discourses: undermining the privileged status of white, heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon episteme

History as a discourse cannot comprehend the whole past, thus there are many differing views of the past--polysemy

The examination of how power works? A continuous debate about power,

authority, and its meaning American culture is dialogical Dialogism, a term by Mikhail Bakhtin: Language, and culture is dialogical:

”interacting Self and Other in a constant process of intermingling of diverse points of view”

A continous interplay of culture, history, and power

Stuart Hall: Cultural identity is not a fixed concept

It is constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative, and myth

America: an assemblage of multiplicity, constantly producing new selves and transforming old ones

Crevecoeur: Grand Alma Mater Lord Bryce: Amazing Solvent Power of

American democracy Gunnar Myrdal: American Creed Melting pot v. Salad bowl Parallel cultures Caleidoscope

Environment is not pristine, no unspoiled wilderness

Indian hunting practices cause a major loss in wild species

Slash and burn agriculture Transformation of the physical

landscape: introduction of private property, cleared, grazed lands are subject to erosion

Indian trading practices (trinkets for furs) deplete large mammal population

18th century: 3 % population growth Rise of large and multi-generational

families Scarcity of women Average age of 20-21 Greater longevity, lower death rate in

Europe Average age 1790, 16

Pre-supposed inferiority (weaker vessels) John Winthrop: A true wife accounts her

subjection as her honor and freedom Barred from preaching, holding office,

entering public schools, making contracts, owning property—negative space

Emphasis on family values leads to improvement, yet superior aspect of life was masculine and eternal—third space or hybridization

Inequality: gender and economics-based Form of hegemony: WASPM Exclusion from discourse: Native

Americans, women, children, slaves Episteme: WASPM, ideological state

apparati are controlled by patriarchy Power at the interstices or gaps: scarcity

of women, Puritan laws and emphasis on family values protect them from physical abuse, allow for divorce

EPISTEME: The Bible   SPATIALITY: We shall be a city upon a hill, that is we

construct the given space, the subjects form the respective space, we pervade through space

  DYNAMICS OF SUBJECT, OBJECT: Settlers see

themselves in Subject position, no mention of natives or “Others”. Except an allusion to being seduced to worship other Gods. Yet if straying from ruling discourse and episteme: we perish, we be consumed out of the good land, thus reference is made to abject status

Colonial society and culture

The rise of nationalism after the end of Hundred Years War in 1453

European societies remained highly hierarchical

A patriarchal system of family governance

The English Reformation Rejection of Catholic rituals Rejection of established Church

hierarchy Salvation can only be achieved by faith

A product of Reformation, Renaissance Economics, politics joined hands with

theology Puritanism promoting individualism

presents a challenge to English institutional life

Two stage evolutionary process: 1. Dissipation of corporate feudal order

into unregulated members of society 2. Struggles of individuals to regroup

themselves into new social commonwealth

Puritan revolution of capable middle class Demanding greater freedom of trade English Revolution promotes the

development of the system of capitalism and that of parliamentary government

Anglican: Absolutist principle of church and state, dominated by the feudal spirit of corporate unity, stood for Bishop and King, divine right

Presbyterian: elected stewardship supersedes divine right, a compromise between aristocracy and democracy

Independent: consciously democratic, one aspect: Separatists: „Come out from among them and be ye separate” (Paul)

Total depravity: effect of the Fall, sin extended to human thinking, emotion, and will

Unconditional election: God provides knowledge of himself only to those whom he was pleased with

Limited atonement: Christ died for specific people with specific sins

Irresistible grace: All elected by God will come to a knowledge of him

Perseverance of the Saints: The Saints whom God glorified remain with him until death

The Columbian landfall. First messenger of Western Civilization

in the Americas Columbus was promised title of the

Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 10% of the profits, governorship of new lands

Meets Arawaks, agricultural people living in village communes

Columbus sends exaggerated reports back to Madrid

Search for slaves and gold Exhaustion of resources, total control of

Indians Unspeakable cruelty Reports by Bartholomeo las Casas

History of the Indies: ”Endless testimonies prove the mild and

pacific temperament of the natives. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle, and destroy. The Admiral so anxious to please the king committed irreparable crimes against the Indians”

Aztec civilization: based on the heritage of the Mayan, Zapotec, and Toltec cultures

Public constructions built by stone tools and organized human labor

Ritual killings, sacrifices Yet, innocent and naive upon arrival of

Spaniards: bearded white men in armor, riding horses were considered the personification of Quetzalcoatl, a man-god who died three hundred years earlier and promised to return

Obsessed with finding gold March of death from town to town, Cholula massacre Breaks the will of the Aztec

people,death of Montezuma Same techniques followed by Francisco

Pizarro in Peru

1585: Richard Grenville lands in Virginia, destroys local tribes on the pretext of a stolen silver cup

1610: Starving time, settlers join Indians, when refused to return and believed to have been kidnapped colonists attack Indian settlement

Powhatan war 1622-1632: a response to Jamestown Massacre

Indian land was legally in a vacuum. Indians had not subdued the land, they had only a natural right to it not a ”civil right”--Winthrop

Justification from the Bible: Psalm 2:8: Ask of me, and I shall give

thee.the heaven for thy inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Romans 13:2:Whosoever resisted the power, resisted the ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation

1636: murder of a white trader leads to conflict

Punitive expedition Puritans use Cortés’ tactics, destroying

civilian population to terrorize people into submission

Mystic River Massacre