Five Types of Cultural Studies
Name-Daya Vaghani
Paper- Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies
Roll no-06
Enrollment no-3069206420200017
Email id- dayavaghani2969@gmail.com
Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-III)
Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
👉Introduction:
Cultural studies has broader meaning because we see from various perspective then an individual can know what actually it lies in the meaning. Therefore firstly it is necessary to deconstruct the meaning of culture as the meaning is elaborated according to different critics so at first we will have glance on the meaning of culture. Generally it means Way of living life or it can also be said that the life style of people and Matthew Arnold also quotes about Culture that it is a march towards perfection.Cutural study has meaning in very broader sense.Because it includes mny other theory with the help of others.
To know more we will take bird’s view about culture and its types in detail.
👉What is culture?
- Culture means it is the related to the particular society and its idea ,custom ,and art.
- Culture is the word which is impossible to described in the word.
- culture is the consists of activates such as the art and philosophy which are considered to be important for the development of the civilization and peoples mind even particular society or civilization especially consider in the relation to its beliefs way of life or art.
- Culture is the words it's impossible to elaborated in the one word.
👉 What is the cultural studies ?
· We know very well about culture . we all are studied about it culture is the so difficult as well as the cultural studies very much hard to define.
· Cultural studies is the study which is the department of the Anthropology, Archaralogy, History ,sociology ,philosophy, Geography ,literature, and our own.
· In the Cambridge English dictionary states in that find out culture is...
"The way of life especially the general customs and belief the particular group of a people at a particular time".
“Cultural Studies is not a tightly coherent unified movement with a fixed agenda, but a loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and questions.”
Cultural studies is composed of elements of Marxism, Post structuralism and Postmodernism, Feminism, Gender studies, anthropology, sociology, race and ethnic studies, film theory, urban studies, public policy, popular culture studies and Postcolonial studies: those field that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation.
The definition of cultural studies can sometimes be misconstrued. It is not simply the study of different cultures but uses many other studies to analyze different cultures such as philosophy, theology, literature etc.
👉Types of Cultural Studies
Cultural studies is the interdisciplinary field investing the way in which creates and transforms individual experience everyday life ,social relation and power.Cultural studies is the composed of elements of the Marxism ,feminism, gender studies , anthropology, and sociology race and aesthetics studies all this field are attention on social and culture.In a cultural studies in which we have analysed a wide variety of forms of cultural expression like : T.V, Films , art , and all.
· British cultural materialism
· New Historicism
· American Multiculturalism
· Post modernism and popular culture
· Postcolonial studies etc.
Let’s have a glance on each of these in detail.
1. British cultural Materialism
Cultural study is referred to as “cultural materialism in Britain. Matthew Arnold sought to redefine the “givens” of British Culture. Edward Burnett Tylor’s pioneering anthropolog1ical study ‘primitive Culture’
“Culture or civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is a complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”
Cultural Materialism began in 1950s with the work of F.R.Leavis and heavily influenced by Matthew Arnold. Raymond Williams talks about attributes of working class and elite class. As Williams memorably states:
“There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.”
In modern Britain two trajectories for "culture" developed: one led back to the past and the feudal hierarchies that ordered community in the past; here, culture acted in its sacred function as preserver of the past The other trajectory led toward a future, socialist utopia that would annual the distinction between labor and leisure classes. Cultural materialism began in earnest in the 1950s with the work of F.R.Leavis, heavily influenced by Matthew Arnold's analyses of bourgeois culture.
Cultural materialists also turned to the more humanistic and even spiritual insights of the great student of Rabelais and Dostoevsky, Russian Formalist Bakhtin, especially his amplification of the dialogic form of meaning within narrative and class struggle.
2. New historicism
New Historicism historical criticism insisted that to understand literary piece . we need to understands author biography and social background what idea come on that time.
New historicism to find the meaning in so many text by considering the work within the frame work of the privilege idea and assumption of the privilege idea.In which i have observed so many things here history is not a chronicle of fact and events but rather a complex elaborating of the human reality.
Michel Warner phrases New Historicism motto as , ....
"The text is historical and History is textual".
New historicists seek " Surprising coincidence "that may cross generic , Historical and cultural lines in borrowing metaphor ceremony as popular culture.
Definition: New historicism
“New historicism is that it is a method based on the parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts, usually of the same historical period”.
Louis Montrose defined the new historicism as
A number of historicists claim that these cultural and ideological representations in texts serve mainly to reproduce.A New Historicist looks at literature in a 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 color that critic's conclusions.
“The text is historical, and history textual”
-Michael Warner phrases
“History is always historicized”
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
American multiculturalism have its different four types like:
1-African American Writers
2-Latin Writers
3-American Indian Writers
4-Asian American Writers
In 1965 the watts race riots drew worldwide attention the civil rights acts had passed in the 1964.the terms is used in two broad way likes descriptively or informative multiculturalism centre on thought in political philosophy about cultural and religious differences.Multiculturalism in the America has long silent history.
1]- African American Writers:-
African American studies is pursued in America literature criticism from the recovery of 18th century poet.like Phillis Wheatley to experimental novels of Toni Morison.
In " Shadow and Act " 1964 novelist Ralph Ellison argues that...
" Any Viable theory of Negro American
culture obligates us to fashion
a more adequate theory of
American culture as a whole"
African American writers continued to enter the mainstream with the protest novel of the 1940s.Ralph Ellison was influenced by Naturalism but even by American tradition such as the Trickster , Jazz , Blues ," signifying ,"and political system.This novel of a physical and spiritual Odyssey by a black man who moves in north direction and his journey to reclaim and culture in the novel of ," Invisible Man " (1949) .
· 2 ]- Latino Writers :-
The term " Latina/o " to indicate a broad sense of ethnicity among Spanish speaking people in the united state.Mexican American are the largest and most influential group of Latina/ o ethnicities in the united States.Some Latinas such as" Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton " author of the 1885 novel of "California" , "The Squatter " and , " The Don".
Three cultural archetype have been central to Latina identity :-
1) La Malinche
2) La Virgen De Guadalupe
3) La Llorona,
but this are newly interrogated today.
Rudolfo Anaya's 'Bless Me Ultima' 1973 perhaps the best known novel of the Latino , focuses on impact of World War 2 on small community in New Mexico.Two other by Contribution to Latino fiction are :
1- Oscar Zela Acosta , author of' The Revolt of Cockroach people' 1973
2- Richard Rodriguer - " Hanger of Memory" 1981.
3] -African Indian Literature :-
In predominantly oral cultures , story-telling passes on religious belief moral values, political codes , and practical lesson of everyday life.For American Indian stories are source of strengths in the face of centuries of silencing by Euro-Americans.two types of Indian literature have evolved as a fields of study .Tradition Indian literature includes tales ,song and oratoryturies that have existed on the north American continent for centuries composed in tribal language.
4] -Asian American Writer :-
Asian American literature is written by people of Asian descent in the united state that addressing the living in the society that views them as alien.Asian American autobiography inherited descriptive strategies, Maxine Hong Kingston's: the women warrior : memories of girlhood Among Ghost 1976 illustrate.Asian American studies has been focused on writer from Hawaii Guam Philippines.
4] Postmodernism and popular culture :-
- What is Post modernism ?
" It's like post structuralism and deconstruction is a critique of the aesthetic of the preceding age, but beside more critique ,postmodernism celebrates the very act of dismembering tradition".
A late 20th century style and concept in architecture and criticism which represent a departure from modernism and is ,a characteristic by the self-conscious use of earlier style and convention mixing of different artistic style and media and general destruct of theories.john walkins Chapman suggested " a post modern style of painting " even post modern had been used to described new forms of the arts and music as well as postmodern music is either music of the most important post modernist concern is the Deconstructed.
Post modern is the fashionable terms used to described contemporary culture or the recent culture which we live amongst .We are inhabiting a postmodern world.
post moderns media rejects the idea of that any media product that or the text any greater value then other .
The distinction between media and rejecting has collapsed ,postmodern text become mediated version of reality audience start interpreting reality based on interpretation rather than experience,major figure of the high modernism : Virginia Woolf ,James Joyce , Ezra pound , T.S Eliot, etc...
- Popular Culture :-
The term " Popular culture " was coined in the 19th century or entirely about ides, perspective , attitude , images , and other phenomena .the Abbreviated from " pop" for popular culture id connected with our society and our everyday life.Before 1960s there was a time when popular culture not a studies of academic way but when it was just a popular culture only, comic books ,television films , advertising popular music and computer cyber culture they access how much culture factors as ethnicity , race, gender , class ,age, region, and sexuality, are shaped by in popular culture.this chart reshaped the popular culture :there are four types of popular culture analysis :-
This all analysis seek to get beneth and surface meaning and examine implicit social meanings:
Sometimes popular culture can be over take and repackage a literary work that is impossible to original text about without references about to many layers of the popular culturehere we will add to one more point the popular culture reconstruction of a work like Frankenstein can also open it to unforeseen new interpretation
Once we define the term and then it becomes very easy to understand this term as it is also known as Pop-Culture so The term ‘Popular Culture' was coined in the 19th century or earlier. Traditionally, the term has denoted the education and general “culturedness” of the lower classes, as opposed to the “official culture” and higher education emanated by the dominant classe.The stress in the distinction from “official culture” became more pronounced towards the end of the 19th century, a usage that became established by the interbellum period.
Popular culture is often viewed as being trivial and dumbed 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.
There are four main types of popular culture studies analyses like:
· Production Analysis
· Textual Analysis
· Audience Analysis
· Historical Analysis
So with the help of these an individual can analyze the types as production analysis deals with the production and while on the other hand Textual analysis deals with the text and on the other side we can also say that the third one is audience analysis which has more importance in the popular culture because Audience remains at the center in this kind of analysis while last but not the list kind is Historical analysis which plays vital role in the popular culture or so called Pop-culture.
5 Postcolonial Studies
So far as my reading is concerned about this study of Postcolonial we can say that it is against colonialism because colonialism came in to existence at the beginning of the century but slowly and steadily some people started to oppose against it so Anti-colonialism came into enlightenment so Post-colonialism came into utilization to oppose the Colonialism though it came into later on but we can find the post-colonial study in the play A Tempest which is written by Aime Ceaser which also deals with the Post-colonial study because in this kind of study an Individual can find the conflict between colonizer and the colonized people as it is found in many of work of literature and the best example is A tempest which also highlights the same thing in the play.
At first glance postcolonial studies would seem to be a matter of history and political science, rather than literary criticism. Britain seemed to foster in its political institutions as well as in literature universal ideas for proper living, while at the same time perpetuating the violent enslavement of Africans and other imperialist cruelties around the world, causing untold misery and destroying millions of lives. Postcolonial literary theorists study the English language within this politicized context, especially those writings that developed at the colonial “front,” such as works by Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Foster, Jean Rhys, or Jamaica Kincaid. Earlier figures such as Shakespeare’s Caliban are re-read today in their New World contexts. Works such as ‘The Empire Writes Back’, edited by Bill Ashcroft and others, and ‘The Black Atlantic’ by Paul Gilroy have radically remapped cultural criticism.
Therefore we can say that all cultural studies possess its own value by its culture. Thus, postcolonial study studies opposite to colonial studies; it studies beyond to colonial studies.
👉Conclusion
These Cultural Studies exists with particular ideas which shows particular cultural world. Sometimes popular culture can so overtake and repackage a literary work that it is impossible to read the original text without reference to the many layers of popular culture that have developed around it.
Reference
Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Nayar, Pramod K. An Introduction to Cultural Studies. 2008.
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