Ê

Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer. Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies, fourth edition. New York:Ê Longman, ©1998.

PART IX CULTURAL STUDIES [641-652]

"Culture as a concept"

Raymond Williams: "the idea of culture, and the word itself in its general modern uses, came into English thinking in the period which we commonly describe as the industrial Revolution."

social need for this "idea" among English writers and intellectuals

culture in relation to a hierarchical past and in rel to a utopian future

Williams, Marxism and Literature_, 2 senses of culture in relation to humanities and social sciences

The term "culture" "became a noun of 'inner' process specialized to its presumed agencies in 'intellectual life; and 'the arts.'Ê

"It became alsoÊ a noun of general, specialized to its presumed configurations in 'whole ways of life.'"

crucial roleÊ in definitions of the arts and humanities in 1st sense

crucial role in definitions of the 'human sciences' and 'social sciences' in the 2nd sense.

Williams"Ê We cannot separate literature and art from other kinds of social practice

culture includes world of art, "imagination" and ideas and also encompasses the social groupings of people.

the way in which societies make sense of the common experience of its members

describes "a whole way of living of a people."

Early use of term, Matthew Arnold in _Culture and Anarchy_ (1869), where he attempted to find a system of values in a world in which ytaditional religious and social values were crumbling, a world in which the aristocracy no longer commanded the coherence of society and the middle-class ideology of laissefaire capitalism did not address the needs of social and 'cultural' coherence." [643]

E.B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_ (1871) - describes culture as whole ways of life.

nec for cultural studies to acknowledge relation to social sciences as well as humanities

Dick Hebdige.Ê From Culture to Hegemony [656-662]

CULTURE

"Since the eighteenth century [the term culture] has been used by English intellectuals and literary figures to focus attention on a whole range of controversial issues.Ê The 'quality of life', the effects in human terms of mechanization, the division of labor and the creation of a mass society have all been discussed w/in the larger confines of what Raymond Williams has called the 'Culture and Society' debate." [656]

2 directions of dream

back to past and feudal ideal of hierarchically ordered community, cultures has an almost sacred function

towards the future to a socialist Utopia where distinction between labour and leisure was to be annulled

2 definitions of culture

culture as a standard of aesthetic excellence,

'the best that has been thought and said in the world'

appreciation of 'classic' aestheticÊ

traces back to 18th century, Herder, rooted in anthropology [657]

term 'culture' referred to a "...particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning, but also in institutions and ordinary behavior.Ê The analysis of culture, from such a definition, is the clarification of the meanings and values implicit and explicit in a particular way of life, a particular culture

according to TS Eliot, it encompassed "...all the characteristic activities and interests of a people.

The theory of culture now involved the 'study of relationships between elements in a way of life.

Williams proposing a "broader formulation of the relationship bet culture and society, one which thru the analysis of 'particular meanings and values' sought to uncover the conceived fundamentals of history; the 'general causes' and broad social 'trends' which lie behind the manifest appearances of an 'everyday life.'

1966 Hoggar:Ê "1st, without appreciating good literature, no one will really understand the nature of society, 2nd, lit critical anal can be applied to certain social phenomena other than 'academically respectable' lit (for ex, popular arts, mass communications) soass to illuminate their meanings for individuals

Hegemony:Ê the Moving Equilibrium

Meaning of youth subcultures, emergence of such groups has signalled in a spectacular fashion the breakdown of consensus in the post-war period

challenge to hegemony expressed by style

"Style in subculture is, the, pregnant with significance.Ê Its transformations go 'against nature', interrupting the process of 'normalization'.Ê As such, they are gestures, movements towards a speech which offends the 'silent majority', which challenges the principle of unity and cohesion, which contradicts the myth of consensus." [662]

Stuart Hall.Ê Cultural Studies:Ê Two Paradigms [664-78]

"We find ... an untidy but characteristic unevenness of dev.Ê What is important are the significant _breaks_ - where old lines of thought are disrupted, older constellations displaced and elements, old and new, are regrouped around a dif set of premises and themes.

Changes transform the questions asked, the forms in which they are proposed, and the manner in which they can be adequately answered.

Shifts in perspective reflect ... the manner in which real historical developments and transformations are appropriated in thought and provide thought, not w/ its guarantee of "correctness" but w. its fundamental orientations, its conditions of existence." [664]

Williams in _Culture and Society_ and other books forced attention to proposition: "concentrated in the word _culture_ are questions directly raised by the great historical changes which the chcnages in industry, democracy and class, in their own way, represent, and to which the changes in art are a closely related response." [665]

NB this line of thinking is the "agenda" of the early "New Left"

culture relative to sum of the available descriptions thru which societies make sense of sand reflect their common experiences.

art is now redefined as only one, special, form of a general social process:Ê the giving and taking of meanings, and the slow dev of common meanings - a common culture. [666]

What Is Literary Studies?
What is Literary Theory? - 1
What is Literary Theory? - 2
Deconstruction
Cultural Studies