Cultural theory Flashcards
(124 cards)
1
Q
What is False Consciousness?
A
It is the second definition of Ideology that conceals is masking or distorting reality. Certain texts or practices hide reality.
2
Q
What is the difference between Adornos understanding of meaning vs Walter Benjamins?
A
Adorno feels that meaning stems from the origin of a text, I.e. From where it is produced whereas Walter Benjamin understands meaning to come at the moment of consumption.
3
Q
A little about the Id
A
Seething excitation
Subject to observance of the pleasure principle
4
Q
Post Structuralism
A
Post-structuralists reject the idea of an underlying structure upon which meaning can rest secure and guaranteed. Meaning is always in process. What we call the ‘meaning’ of a text is only ever a momentary stop in a continuing flow of interpretations following interpretations. S
5
Q
Syntax
A
the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, specifically word order. The term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such principles and processes.[3] The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all
6
Q
Explain the term ‘Americanization’
A
It refers to the origin of pop culture: in The cities of the US mainly LA and NewYork
7
Q
Syntagmatic axis of language
A
Meaning is only to be derived by the accumulation of the unity words in their proper place.
8
Q
What does Lacan say about “the kingdom of culture?”
A
The world of words . . . creates the world of things’ (72).
9
Q
What is one of the main differences between Freuds approach to Psychanalysis vs. Lacan?
A
Lacan Basis his approach to behavior in culture willst Freud does so in Biology. He takes Freud’s developmental structure and rearticulates it through a critical reading of structuralism to produce a post-structuralist psychoanalysis.
10
Q
View on ideology from Antonio Gramsci.
A
That subordinate groups resist the overpower of cultural hegemony and dominant groups use pop culture as a means to control the subordinate groups.
11
Q
Why is it that the content we remember manifested in dreams is so much smaller than the latent content from the unconscious?
A
Because of what Freud called ‘condensation’
(i) latent elements are omitted
(ii) only part of latent elements appear in the manifest content.
(iii) related elements are condensed into composite structures.
12
Q
Marx’s ‘Reflection Theory’ of culture…
A
n which the politics of a text or practice are read off from, or reduced to, the economic conditions of its production. The relationship can also be seen as the setting of limits, the providing of a specific framework in which some developments are probable and others unlikely.
13
Q
What did Arnold mean by ‘Anarchy’?
A
That the new working class-movement was a breakdown of the old feudal duties. That pop culture was an agent to reinfluence, reassert subordination and deference.
14
Q
What does Adorno mean when he says pop-culture is “pre-digested?”
A
Our responses are predetermined rather than the result of a genuine interaction with the text or practice. (I.E. Laugh track)
15
Q
An example like: “While Musicians sing against the system and then their production companies profit from their sales
A
f articulation: the way in which dominant groups in society attempt to ‘negotiate’ oppositional voices on to a terrain which secures for the dominant groups a continued position of leadership
16
Q
What is the origin of mass culture according to Ernest Van Den Haag?
A
That mass society and mass production created mass culture.
17
Q
What did Marx and Engels say about religious suffering?
A
While at the same time it is an expression of real suffering its a protest against real suffering.
18
Q
The functions of Panopticon
A
the major effect of the Panopticon [is] to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. . .
19
Q
From a Marxist approach to culture between the base and superstructure
Which is merely acting in conjunction with a modes of production?
A
The Superstructure- it reflects forms of definite social consciousness which are likewise generated into the institutions.
20
Q
What was part of Paddy Whannel and Stuart Hills method for determining quality in pop-culture?
A
To look at the quality of its effect on people.
21
Q
Freuds displacement.
A
Latent elements manifest through a chain of association.
22
Q
Difference between evaluative and analytic.
A
an evaluation - Decides the value of something. eg Tells you if something is good or bad, useful or not useful, valid or invalid.
an analysis - Finds out the parts of something, eg its elements, structure, processes.
23
Q
What is articulation?
A
A key concept used in post-Marxist hegemony theory that is used in a double sense meaning both to express and make a temporary connection.
24
Q
How do people experience culture?
A
As an endeavor to know the best and to make this knowledge prevail for the good of mankind.
26
What does Walter Benjamin mean by theological l'art pour l'art?
That the traditionalist use of art in Ancient Greece (art as an object of religious devotion) Idols.
Renaissance, art as contemplations of Beauty.
But now in mass culture art has become commercialized.
27
What do cultural theorists mean when they refer to 'reading' or 'readers' of a text?
They are referring to the subject who is receiving or interpreting the message i.e. TV show, art etc.
28
Describe Derridas new word to explain signs.
Differance meaning both to defer and differ
29
What does Richard Hoggart mean by 'moral tone.'
When a text has certain moral aesthetic (it tells us what to think in a way)
30
The psyche is a site at conflict. What do we call the conflict between the Id and the ego?
The Id wants to fulfill its desires at conflict with culture and the ego wants to appeal to the culture (sometimes working with the super ego)
31
How does Marx claim men and women make history?
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’ (structural determinants)
32
Explain the retroactive nature of desire.
By getting to close to what we desire threatens to eliminate 'lack' as zizek observes desire is paradoxical in that it retroactively posits its own cause. I.E. object A [object small other] can be perceived only by a gaze. Fantasy fixes on an object which generates the desire and draws me to the object.
33
How do people experience culture?
As an endeavor to know the best and to make this knowledge prevail for the good of mankind.
34
How do Marxists argue that the nuclear family performs ideological functions for Capitalism?
the family acts as a unit of consumption and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy. It is also the institution through which the wealthy pass down their private property to their children, thus reproducing class inequality.
37
What is the difference of a conflictual world rather than a consensual world and what type of ideology does it suggest?
It suggests an ideology of texts that side with the oppressors and construct a distorted view of reality. The oppressed think they are free the oppressors think they are not oppressing. It is a world of alienation, inequality and oppression.
38
Criticisms of mass art say that it is:
Formulaic, escapist, aesthetically worthless, emotionally unrewarding
39
Greshems law of culture
The good will drive out the bad.
40
How is Macherys literary analysis like Freuds analysis of his patients?
That what is important is not what is said but what is not said. Like Freud understanding the cause of his patients turmoil lay in the unspoken unconscious.
41
According to Samuel Taylor what is the difference between Civilization and Cultivation?
Civilization- a mixed good with a more corrupting influence
| Cultivation-the harmonious development of those qualities and faculties which characterize our humanity.
42
What are the 3 levels of culture?
superior' or 'refined' culture, 'mediocre' and 'brutal
43
In referring to the colonialism of the Caribbean what is indicated by the 'carribean' dialect and what does this tell us about Hegemony?
The English language being imposed on the people (with its grammar) was dominant but also mixed with African language elements. The result is a negotiation between dominant and subordinate.
Marked by 'resistance' and then 'incorporation.'
It tells us that hegemony is not always just power imposed from above but negotiations between dominant and subordinate groups.
44
What is the castration complex?
It is the fear the young boy has when he realizes his father has the power to remove his penis. In girls they compensate for the lack of penis by having a baby.
45
How is Joke Hermes 'post-modern' like Walter Benjamins text interpretation and what is she opposing?
She opposed the implicit idea that readers of popular culture texts have been duped and at implicitly incapable of forming correct meaning without some sort of feminist 'translator.'
Instead she creates a more post modern celebratory view of text readers as creators of their own meaning (Walter Benjamin.)
For even feminists get some sort of enjoyment out of the things which they criticize. I.E. Sarkissian
46
Subjective destitution
when symbolic representation falls away alike the big other and we lose our sense of symbols.
47
How do feminists set themselves up to forming a violent hierarchy?
nists are setting themselves distinctly apart: ‘us’ who know and reject most popular cultural forms (including women’s magazines), ‘them’ who remain in ignorance and continue to buy Woman’s Own or watch Dallas. The irony, however, is that many of ‘us’ feel like ‘them’: closet readers and viewers of this fare (14
48
Ideological forms
How do texts ( music, movies, books etc.) present an image of the world?
Bertoldt Brech
All art contains an image of the world. Good or bad. Art is not without its consequences.
48
According to Leavism there was a "cultural golden age". What made it so?
It was Shakespeares time and it was when art was not contaminated with commercial interests and could be enjoyed and appealed to the populace and the "cultivated" or elite.
49
How does Chantal Mouffe refer to popular culture?
A process to make a disarticulation-articulation
52
What is Substitute living according to F.R. Leavis?
The growing focus on leisure is to distract us from the monotony of the lives we lose as a result of labor under capitalism. Thus, like addicts, we turn to mass culture to compensate us.
53
What does Walter Benjamin mean by the 'aura' of a work?
It refers to its loss of authenticity as a center of authority. It is no longer autonomous in itself but at a distance from its origination.
The decay of the aura detached it from the traditions. It brings it into a personal space.
54
Of what does the Marxist base consist?
1. The forces of production
| 2. The relationships of production
55
What is 'the politics of signification '?
Texts which compete to offer their own collective understandings in order to influence or win others to its worldview.
55
What does Matthew Arnold mean by 'a common basis?'
That there is an underlying human nature regardless of our class distinctions.
57
What is the primary difference between Raymond Williamd' definition of Culture and "Leavism?"
Culture is the 'lived experience' of 'ordinary' men and women made in the daily lives. Forms the basis of a "democratic" explanation of culture. Whilst they both want a 'common culture' Leavism asks for a hierarchical culture made up of difference and deference.
57
How does class form according to E.P. Thompson?
class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs’ (8–9). The common experience of class ‘is largely determined by the productive relations into which men are born – or enter involuntarily’
57
What does Walter Benjamin claim about the conditions of capitalism?
That capitalism would soon create conditions for the very abolishing of capitalism itself.
Through the reproduction of culture in society it changes the very conditions of culture itself. So even the original work escapes meaning on the grounds of its technical reproduction. 'Auora'.
58
How is gender reality maintained
It is maintained through continued social performances
59
What is Luis Althusser main contention about ideology?
That it is not only a collection of ideas but also a material practice. I.E. ideology is encountered in the practice of every day life.
59
In a Marxist interpretation of culture where the upper class control over material modes of production guarantees them the intellectual rights over ideological forms how can do we resist our analysis reducing to a meet analysis of economy?
By making the distinction between the inherent dialect of the agency and the structure.
62
Emotional Realism
Collective representations that young people connect with. Using them as guiding fictions (folklore) which help shape mental pictures of the world.
63
What does Freud say about civilization?
That it causes us to repress our instincts.
64
Cultural Nostalgic
Those who romanticize the past to condemn the present
64
What's 'interpretive fallacy' and what philosopher is it associated with?
The view that a text has a single message and it is the task of criticism to uncover it.
67
What does post-feminism suggest?
it suggests that feminism no longer has a simple coherence around a set of easily defined principles . . . but instead is a much richer, more diverse and contradictory mix than it ever was in the 1970s’ (ibid
68
What did Benjamin Disraeli mean by "two nations"
The new ideology which came with capitalism (industrialization and urbanization) made no promise to emancipate people from the old order where those with power and privilege dominated the subordinate classes.
68
What does Matthew Arnold mean by 'Cultivated Inaction' with culture as a 'seeking' culture.
1. The ability to know what is best.
2. What is best
3. The mental and spiritual application of what was best.
4. The pursuit of what it best.
69
What is a myth?
Myths are stories we tell ourselves as a culture in order to banish contradictions and make the world understandable and therefore habitable; they attempt to put us at peace with ourselves and our existence
70
How do dreams function as 'a compromise structure?'
A compromise between desires coming from the Id and censorship from the ego. Dreams ares still censored but they come out encoded to evade the ego.
72
In Roland Barthes example of French Imperialist Ideology describe the implicit connotations and Denotation.
A young black man saluting the French flag on the cover of a magazine.
That the primary sign 'black soldier saluting the French flag.
The secondary sign is where the signified that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so called oppressors. I
73
What is 'the repressive state apparatus'?
The army, police, prison system etc.
74
What is according to Roland Barthes "the operations of Ideology"
Ideology seeking to make universal what is in fact partial and particular.
An attempt to pass of what is culture 'human made, as that which is natural"
75
What is Derridian violent hierarchy?
Where binary opposites suggest one being bad and the other good: black (bad) vs. White (good), working (good) vs not working (bad)
76
What does Roland Barthes mean by a signs 'anchorage?'
There potential for multiple signification
77
Explain J.L Austins theory of performative language.
Constative-descriptive "the sky is blue"
| Performative- its use brings something into being "I now pronounce you husband and wife."
78
What does Matthew Arnold mean by 'Cultivated Inaction' with culture as a 'seeking' culture.
1. The ability to know what is best.
2. What is best
3. The mental and spiritual application of what was best.
4. The pursuit of what it best.
78
What is culturalism?
Culturalism is a methodology which stresses culture (human agency, human experience, human values)
78
What three masters does the ego serve?
The external world, the libido of the Id and the severity of the super ego.
79
Richard Maltby quote on pop culture.
Escapism that is not an escape from or to anywhere, but an escape of our Utopian selves.
81
What according to stuart hill are the three key moments of western racism?
Slavery, imperialism and colonialism
82
What is the ego according to Lacan?
Ego is just a narcissistic process whereby we bolster up a fictive sense of unity selfhood by finding something in the world with which we can identify.
83
Which philosophy of Pop Culture aligns with the idea "enlightened minority, degraded mass?"
Leavism
84
How can we relate mass culture to Freuds concept of 'Substitutive Gratifications?'
Mass culture is a drug which diminishes people's experience of life itself. It marks the de-individualizations of life and a forever chasing after these Substitutive Gratifications. Making mass culture a sort of repression by shutting out 'real gratifications.'
84
What is a contention against Mulveys male gaze in the cinema?
That it may not be generally male but merely the dominant gaze.
84
What is Simone De Beauvoir famous quote.
One is not born a woman but becomes one.
85
What is Freuds 'fore-pleasure?'
How the pleasures of the text make way for the release of greater pleasure in deeper psychic sources. Fiction allows for fantasy which offer subconscious satisfaction.
85
What is the difference between Langue and Parole?
Langue -refers to the system of language, the rules and conventions that organize it. This is language as a social institution, and as Roland Barthes (1967) points out, ‘it is essentially a collective contract which one must accept in its entirety if one wishes to communicate’
Parole-efers to the individual utterance, the individual use of language. To clarify this point, Saussure compares language to the game of chess. Here we can distinguish between the rules of the game and an actual game of chess. Without the body of rules there could be no actual game,
86
Why according to Stuart Hill, do we do Cultural studies?
To aim our intellectual resources toward culture (the way we live and the ideas we hold) to critically combat the inherent problems which are deeply anti-human. Ex. Racism, sexism etc
Cultural studies can find ways to help people cope with the unfamiliar or different without becoming fearful or hostile.
87
Who calls Post-Modernism a 'buzzword' and why?
Dick Hebdiges and he calls it a buzzword because it is a go to word that people use when they try to describe an assortment of different attributes of contemporary society. I.E.
g, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle age, the ‘predicament’ of reflexivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political, or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/ discourse formations, the ‘implosion of mea
88
What, in postmodern philosophy, is meant by new sensibility?
n revolt against the canonization of modernism’s avant-garde revolution; it attacks modernism’s official status, its canonization in the museum and the academy, as the high culture of the modern capitalist world.
89
How does Matthew Arnold define culture?
As the best that has been thought and said
90
According to Lyotard what is the Crisis in western knowledge which lead us to the postmodern condition?
The incredulity of meta narratives
91
Why does Baudrillard claim it isn't longer possible to separate the economic/productive realm from the realm of ideology and culture?
We live in a world that shifted from producing of things to one of producing information, the simulacra emerged to a world where the difference between original and copy has been destroyed.
92
How does Baudriallard describe simulation?
n ‘the generation by models of a real without origins or reality: a hyperreal’ (2). Hyperrealism, he claims, is the characteristic mode of postmodernity. In the realm of the hyperreal, the distinction between simulation and the ‘real’ im
93
What does Baudrillard say about the leakage of hyperreal of television into the real world?
The dissolution of TV into life, the dissolution of life into TV.
94
What is a negative effect of hyper realism?
It marks a decline in people's ability to distinguish fiction from reality.
95
What is John Friskes Claim about the Media?
That the post modern media no longer creates secondary representations of reality: they affect the and produce the reality that they mediate.
96
What does Baudrillard mean by 'simulation of a scandal to regenerative ends?'
By the report of events as 'scandal' it frames the commonplace in a way which brings our attention to it. It revives a stagnating principle.
97
How did Paul Ricouer refer to the modernist Era?
As 'the hermeneutics of suspicion.' The search for meaning in the underlying meaning of appearance.
98
How does Baudrillards interpretation of texts (images) attempt to refute the Macherey/Althusserian psychoanalytic readings into cultural analysis?
By the real collapsing into the hyperreal the texts images no longer represent the real but BECOME the real experience themselves. Pirates of the Carribean is not a representation of Americans experience of Pirates it IS American experience of pirates. This dissolution of authority destroys the inherent latency of meaning in the unconscious of the experience referred by macherey.
99
Why, in referring to cultural style, does Frederic Jameson call capitalism a 'periodizing concept?'
It is a cultural dominant that reflects late multinational capitalism
100
Eric Mandela capitalism three stage development
1. Market capitalism
2. Monopoly capitalism
3. Late multinational capitalism
101
What are the three cultural movements according to Raymond Williams?
Emergent-dominant-residual
The change in a historical period does not completely install one cultural mode with another but brings a bout a shifting of cultural modes.
They all can exist at the same time: example
Socialism is the emergent
Capitalist is the dominant
Feudal as the residual
102
What, in postmodern study, is meant by 'pastiche?'
The complacent play of historical allusion
103
How according to Stuart do we idealize postmodern America?
We are dreaming about how we want America to be by the tidbits we consume.
104
Convergence culture
Where old and new media collide
105
Cultural Populism
the intellectual assumption, made by some students of popular culture, that the symbolic experiences and practices of ordinary people are more important analytically and politically than Culture with a capital C
106
How does Niches las Garnham argue we vastly overestimated the power of consumers?
By failing to keep in view the determining role production plays in limiting consumption.
107
What is it that Bourdieu calls 'ideology of natural taste?'
What is cultural (i.e. acquired) is presented as natural (i.e. innate), and is, in turn, used to justify what are social relations. In this way, ‘art and cultural consumption are predisposed . . . to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences’ (7). Bourdieu calls the operation of such distinctions the ‘ideology of natural taste’
108
How did we lose the aestheticism and artistry in everyday objects?
Through mass production but also, according to Paul Willis, the institutionalization of art by
109
What are the two types of fan pathology?
1. Obsessed individual (usually male)
| 2. The hysterical crowd
110
The hermeneutic code
The hermeneutic code (HER.) refers to any element in a story that is not explained and, therefore, exists as an enigma for the reader, raising questions that demand explication.
111
Expanding the series timeline
the production of vignettes, short stories, novels which provide background history of characters, etc., not explored in broadcast narratives or suggestions for future developments beyond the period covered by the broadcast narrative.
112
Refocalization
this occurs when fan writers move the focus of attention from the main protagonists to secondary figures. For example, female or black characters are taken from the margins of a text and given centre stage.
113
Moral realignment
version of refocalization in which the moral order of the broadcast narrative is inverted (the villains become the good guys). In some versions the moral order remains the same but the story is now told from the point of view of the villains.
114
. Genre shifting
characters from broadcast science fiction narratives, say, are relocated in the realms of romance or the Western, for example.
115
Cross-overs
characters from one television programme are introduced into another. For example, characters from Doctor Who may appear in the same narrative as characters from Star Wars.
116
Character dislocation
characters are relocated in new narrative situations, with new names and new identities.
117
Personalization
he insertion of the writer into a version of their favourite television programme. For example, I could write a short story in which I am recruited by Doctor Who to travel with him in the Tardis on a mission to explore what has become of Manchester United in the twenty-fourth century. However, as Jenkins
118
Emotional intensification –
the production of what are called ‘hurt-comfort’ stories in which favourite characters, for example, experience emotional crises.
119
Eroticization
stories that explore the erotic side of a character’s life. Perhaps the best known of this subgenre of fan writing is ‘slash’ fiction, so called because it depicts same-sex relationships (as in Kirk/Spock, etc.).
120
Use Value
. Use value refers to ‘the ability of the commodity to satisfy some human want’ (539). Such wants, says Marx, ‘may spring from the stomach or from the fancy
121
Exchange Value
exchange value of a commodity is the amount of money realized when the commodity is sold in the m
122
Marx's Dialectic simple
We are made by history/we make history
123
Which philosopher came up with the idea of “False Consciousness?”
The idea of “false consciousness” is usually attributed to the Hungarian philosopher and literary critic György Lukács, who discussed the concept in his 1923 book History and Class Consciousness1. However, the concept can also be traced back to the earlier writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who used the term “ideology” to describe the ways in which the ruling class imposes its worldview on the subordinate classes2.
124
Purpose behind “the culture industry”
“The purpose of what Adorno termed the “culture industry” is to rid from art the capacity to create new and shocking moments that might shake people from their objective complacency as workers whose sole purpose is to produce capital.”
