What is Cultural Studies? Discuss important feature of Cultural Studies?

Name : Radha B. Ghevariya Paper no. : 8 : The Cultural Studies Sem : M.A (Sem: 2)Roll No. : 22 Year : 2015 Submitted to : Smt. S. B . Gardi Department of EnglishMaharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction

•As far as cultural study is concerned , it has border meaning because we see from various perspective then an individual can know what actually it lies in the meaning.• Generally it means way of living life or it can also be said that the life style of people and Matthew Arnold also quote about culture that it is a march towards perfection.

What is Culture ?

-Culture is derived from Latin word ‘Cultura’.- ‘To honour’ and ‘perfect’.- Culture is a symbolic communication.- Culture is the system of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.

“ Culture is the learned behaviour of

society or a subgroup”

What is Cultural Study ?

“ Cultural studies is the

science of understanding modern society, with an emphasis on politics and power cultural studies is an umbrella term used to

look at a number of different subject”

Types of Cultural Studies

British Cultural Materialism

New Historicism

American Multiculturalism

Post Modernism and Popular Culture

Postcolonial Studies

British Cultural Materialism

- Cultural study is referred to as “ cultural materialism” in Britain. Matthew Arnold sought to redefine the “given” of British culture. - Edward Burnett Tylor’s pioneering anthological study ‘primitive culture’

“ Culture or civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is a complex whole which include knowledge,

beliefs,art,morals,law,and any other capabilities and habits

by man as a member of society”

New Historicism

- New historicism is a school of literary theory , first developed in 1980. the term ‘new historicism’ was created by the American critic Stephen Greenbelts. - A new historicism looks at literature in wider historical context , examining both how the writer ‘s times affected the work and how the work reflects the writer’s times, in turn recognizing that current cultural contexts colour that critic’s conclusion.

“ The text is historical , and history textual” Michael Warner phrases “ History is always historicized” - Much new historicism focuses on the marginalization of subjects such as those identified as withes, the insane, heretics, vagabonds , and political prisoners.

American Multiculturalism

- As a philosophy , multiculturalism began as part of the pragmatism movement at the end of the 19th century in Europe and united states. - American multiculturalism was come into existence in 1964 with the passing civil right Act.

“ Every American should understand Mexico from the

point of view of the observer of the conquest and of the history

before the conquest……….”

Postmodernism and popular culture

The term ‘postmodernism’ first entered the philosophical lexicon in 1979, with the publication of The Postmodern Condition by Jean-Francois Lyotard. postmodernism question everything rationalist European philosophy held to be true. Postmodernism possesses several element which are necessary which given by Jean Baudrillard,

Postmodernism Aspect - Jean Baudrillard

Any sign is empty

Virtual Word

Status and Taboos

Hyperreal between The private and public.

Art and Literature

Music

Building Literature

Cinema

Postcolonial Studies

So far as my reading concerned about this study of postcolonial we can say that it is against colonialism because colonialism came into existence at the beginning of the century but slowly and steadily some people started to oppose against it so Anti-colonialism came into Enlightment so post-colonialism came into utilization oppose the colonialism though it came into later on but we can find the post-colonial study in the play.

Four Goals Of Cultural Studies

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Cultural studies transcends the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history.

- Practiced in such journals as critical inquiry, Representations and boundary, cultural studies involves scrutinizing the cultural phenomenon of a text. Like: Italian Opera or A Latino telenovela.- According to Lawrence Gross berg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler:“Cut across diverse social and political interests and address many of the struggles within the current scene.”

Cultural Studies is Politically Engaged

- Cultural critics see themselves as “oppositional”, not only within their own disciplines but to many of the power structures of society at large.

-They question inequalities within power structures and seek to discover models for restructuring relationships among dominant and minority.

-Individual subjectivity is culturally constructed.Such a notion taken to a philosophical extreme, denies the autonomy of the individual.

Cultural Study denies the separation of “high” and “low” or Elite and popular culture

- Cultural critics today work to transfer the term culture to include mass culture, whether popular, folk or urban.

- Jean Baudrillard and Andreas Huyssen, cultural critics argues that after world war II the distinctions among high, low and Mass culture collapsed

- Often only reflects prevailing social, economic and political power bases.

Cultural studies analyzes not only the cultural work but also the means of production

Marxist critics have long recognized the importance of such paraliterary questions:

1) Who supports a given artist?2) Who published the book?3) How are these books distributed?4) Who buys books ? - Cultural studies thus joins subjectivity.Culture in relation to individual lives with engagement, a direct approach to attacking social ills.

- Though cultural studies practitioners deny “humanism” or “the humanities” as universal categories, they strive for what they might call “social reason”.

- Often resembles the goals and values of humanistic and democratic ideals.