401 VO – Introduction to Cultural and Regional Studies (ICRS)

Lecturer: Werner Huber Mitschrift von: Christoph Thaller WS 2005/06

11/10/2005
Course Outline:
Oct. 11 Introduction, Definitions
Oct. 18 Definitions, Contexts, Schools
Oct. 25 Culture as text
Nov. 8 Culture and Anthropology
Nov. 15 New Historicism
Nov. 22 Culture and memory
Nov. 29 Imagology / Alternity (the Other)
Dec. 6 British Cultural Identities: Englishness
Dec.13 Empire / Orientalism / Postcolonialism
Jan. 10 Popular Culture
Jan. 17 Culture and the media
Jan. 24 Intermediality / Recap
Jan. 31 FINAL TEST

Intro:

Cultural Studies
< Area Studies, Landeskunde, Civilisation
emphasis on the knowledge of a country

(inter)cultural competence => the goal of Cultural Studies

cultural analysis => visit foreign places (e.g. Irish pubs)
understanding different cultures => positive effect by learning a foreign language
strong intercultural component, try to communicate

clash of civilisations … 9/11

= clash of two worlds, western vs. Eastern

cultural turn
“the empire writes back” canon => the high style of literature (Shakespeare, ...)
=> “new world”: Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica, ...

David Beckham: as a popstar, icon, hero, ...

as a subject of a cultural football studies course of the University of Staffordshire
doesn’t do or say much, but that’s fascinating
cultural figure: like, love or hate him

Belfast: houses tell stories; one only understands them if he is a cultural expert
“Irelands Holocaust” 1845-1849
Potatoe crops failed

Budweiser: use of Shakespeare

Guiness: “As you like it” used as a slogan

18/10/2005
We shall become Culture Vultures!!! (=Kulturgeier)

Cultural Studies comes out of tradition

What are Cultural Studies?

(J.Hillis Miller – 1990s summary of main points)
• Context-oriented (history and politics), conditions are essential, best understood in context
no difference between ”high” and “low” culture in Cultural Studies
e.g.: Henry James, American novellist of the late 19th century; one has to understand his
background

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 • Cross disciplinary, multi media
e.g.: films, popular music, soap operas, advertisement, painting, novels, dress, art of eating and
cooking, pop music, ...
crossing from one discipline to another; making the best of everything; multi-media breaking
down the traditional way of working with culture
Nick Hornby: pop-culture, not traditional; has a feeling for what is popular
uses: methods of linguistics, ethnology, signs, literature, semiotics, ...
methods that were developed somewhere else
• Canon ó popular culture
clash between high and popular culture; distinction is levelled, had to do with feminist
revolution, youth revolution; rise of literature on the margin (supressed groups: women, native
Americans ...), made themselves heard
Cultural Studies tries to ignore the canons, considering all texts on some level
canon: great works (of art) in a special period (e.g.: Shakespeare’s works)
• Hegemony ó minority discourse
hegemony: supremacy of the ruling class/élite
minority discourse: suppressed by the working class
• Binary definitions: heritage of structuralism
élite vs. popular
hegemonic vs. marginal (ones with power vs. ones in the margin)
theory vs. praxis (theoratical vs. practical approaches)
thematic reading vs. rhetorical reading
• Political aspect: behind Cultural Studies
1950/60s Cultural Studies came out of the Marxist heritage; had an agenda, kind of working
towards (soft revolution); Cultural Studies was critical of current ideology / state of society /
political situation

Latin colere
ð cultus agricultura (=Ackerbau)
ð Zivilisation (external, artificial)
ð Kultur (internal, organic)
ð S. Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur ó Civilisation and its discontents

Culture combines three basic areas:

mental


Culture
 
material social

Definitions of culture: “Mentales Gesamtprogramm, dass sich in den Werken manifestiert.”

1510 culture = education
1805 culture = intellectual side of civilisation
1840 “culture shock”
1867 culture in the sense of today
1947 culture vulture

I. Kant: external, artificial culture, “romantic period” => Civilisation, internal organic, => Culture

S. Freud: “Civilisation and its discontents”

Culture
“the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life”
(Raymond Williams)
“the whole way of life of a society, its beliefs, attitudes and temper as expressed in all kinds of
structures, rituals and gestures, as well as in the traditionally defined forms of art”
(Richard Hoggart)

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 25/10/2005
Kultur Natur
das Sesshafte das Nomadische
bebaute Flur Wildnis
Téchne Physis
Ordnung Chaos
räumliche Ständigkeit der unstätig-hiatische Zeitraum
zeitliche Stetigkeit das flüchtige Unstete der Zeit
das Dauerhafte das Ephemere
das Bewahrende das Verschwindende
das Ursprunghafte das Herkunftslose
das kulturelle Gedächtnis das Andenkenlose
das Bildende + Bauende das Ungebildete + Unbebaute
das Gehörige das Ungehörige
das Zugehörige das Unzugehörige

Definitions
Origins:
1890 – Englandkunde, Realienkunde, Wesenkunde
1950 – Landeskunde, American Studies
effort to neutralise Nazi ideologies; British Studies still finding its way
1990 – the explosion: English Studies, British Studies, Irish Studies, British Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies (the British variety)

1st phase: preferred subject : popular culture

method : close reading
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), University of Birmingham
study of popular culture has to be seen with a literary discourse; literary critics; have to look at the new
left (1950); Marxism
1956 – beginning of what is seen as new British drama
J. Osborne “Look back in Anger” (1956)
=> main hero: similar biographical features to the new left critics; intellectually, socially things are
coming up from below; new voices coming up
popular culture => the mass media (radio, cinema, ...) in that time period
R. Hoggart (*1918) “The Uses of Literacy” (1957)
he begins to study the effects of massmedia of the working class as an audience, idealisation of the
working class; setting it against the established order
F.R. Leavis “The Great Tradition”
A canonicle work of English literature, referring to the great novels

2nd phase: sociology, ethnology, historical semantics

Raymond Williams (1921-1988), “Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture & Society” (1976)
hist. Semantics: the way in which keywords had different meanings over a certain period
cultural materialism (precise characterization): a theory of the specificities of material, literary and
cultural production within historical materialism;
humans are obsessed with:
“signifying practices”: engaged in rituals, doing things which signify external observers (e.g.: hand
shake)
“structure of feeling” could isolate and define the culture of a period
Edward P. Thompson (1924-1993) “The making of the English working class” (1963)

3rd phase: Stuart Hall (* 1932) immigrant from Jamaica

>> Thatcherism, racism; very influential for the “Open University” => experimental methods of
teaching and learning
articulation = double sense: 1) expression
2) connection (> articulated lorry) different parts but connected

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encoding / decoding
much emphasis on the production / reception process; how do we find information encoded in cultural
artefacts and does the consumer decode the message

circuit of culture (Du Gay et al. 1997:3)

cultural objects have to be seen in circular process; connections between the components

representation

regulation identity

consumption production

case study: Sony Walkman (Du Gay et al. 1997)

ð representation: how is he advertised, what symbols, coolness through sunglasses, race!
ð identity: feeling when carrying a Sony Walkman with you; want to be hip/cool (part of identity)
ð production: mythological story, Japanese firm becoming a global player, success story
ð consumption: way people use it, way Sony reacts to the way they are handled
ð regulation: consumers appropriation becomes active, give a twist to the product by using it in many different
situations – multifunctional network

08/11/2005
hegemony: supremacy in power + moral standards, the right to interpret who is in control
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

Culture as text
“signifying practices”: text means much more than simply written words on paper; culture is the sum of
it; symbolic turn; Semiotics: study of signs and symbols

mental: need a common understanding for the material + social factors – CODE
social: senders vs. Receivers
material: texts

F. de Saussure
signifié / signifiant
ex.: tree  
tree (letters or phonetic symbols [tri:])

signifié: the idea of a tree, we have in our mind

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945): German philosopher

semiotic systems, symbolic forms
“We are symbolic animals”
men are animal symbolicum

index icon symbol

indirect relation: e.g. red face sign working through association e.g.: a rose: symbol
e.g.: emergency exit for love, Cultural
Tradition: Lady Di
“Goodbye
England’s Rose”
indication association convention

a symbol is not understandable without the needed knowledge

culture = text (metaphorically spoken)

Clifford Geertz:
“Thick description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” (1973)

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 “thick description” (G. Ryle)
armchair anthropology; theoretical perspective; uncovers meaningful structure
twitch / wink: has a code the other person knows, because it is part of culture; message behind it
 involuntary
“a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures”
 how do we interpret gestures, behaviours of human beings

sciences => humanities

15/11/2005
text  anthropology
humanities  sciences
empirical cultural scientist never in Cultural Studies

hermeneutic: trying to adopt a point of view

William Dilthey (19th century philosopher): humanities = Geisteswissenschaften
thought autobiographies are a good approach

human behaviour seen as “symbolic action”

“to penetrate an unfamiliar universe of symbolic action”

Culture becomes a manuskript which we read

inspecting > inscribing

first you inspect the things and then you inscribe them

inscription (thick description)

specification (diagnosis)

by describing (close analysis), formulating context, you create specification.

Cultural analysis: “guesses of meaning”, “drawing conclusion from better guesses”

“Metahistory”
implotment; making text out of history

Hayden White
historical narrative as verbal artefacts, verbal fictions
Northrop Frye
archetypal myths (pre-generic plot structures)

stories  mere chronicles

emplotment: create a plot

psychotherapy: re-emplotment, re-familiarisation of traumatic events

historical narrative: de-structurisation, re-structurisation

myths, archetypes: Romance, Comedy, Tragedy, Satire / Irony

tropological modes: metaphor  metonymy
22/11/2005
New Cultural History
- Metahistory
- New Historicism
- History of Mentalities

mentalités / mentalities
(immaterial dimension of culture)
branch of cultural history; identified a mental component in what is culture; mental + social aspects
sets of values; convictions, ... make up the mental horizon of a certain group
“Annales d’histoire économique et sociale”

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New Historicism
relevant in Cultural and Literary Studies; was a revolution and is now an established methodology
Stephen Greenblatt (“representations”)
verbal icons ó cultural artefacts
cultural poetics, new historicism

ó Old Historicism (positivism)

ó essential humanism
new criticism (= immanente Kritik): leave out all the elements that are important for cultural
 studies; text taken out of context, conditions are ignored.
only in the text, nothing about author
historicity of texts vs. textuality of history (L. Montrose)
make us aware of the historical determination in every text => historical context
“The well-wrought Urn” – famous (new critical) title

literature as carrying humanist’s values

energy: “a stir to the mind”, reception theory: how do we perceive works of art.
Negotiation (French: negoce), symbolic economy
“all great works of art are reflection of social enrgy”, Greenblatt
“interchange of cultural information between cultures”
energy + negotiation:
energy: kind of aspect in the reader’s views; how do we perceive works of art?; social energy: cultural
artefacts to provoque reactions => transacted in cultural artefacts
negotiation: word play; language of exchange; work of art is not generated but determined by echoes,
exchange, interchange between different areas of cultural interpretations

Elizabethan + Jacobean theatre: ideal market-place for interchange of cultural artefacts (Shakespeare’s
theatre)

self fashioning – “to fashion a gentleman” (E. Spenser) – to be conscious of ones appearance in public;
theatres and public performances are thrown into discussions, are tried out; witches, jews, catholics =>
being discussed freely in the theatre with no regard to public restrictions
poetics of culture
typical methodology: teleology – pre-defined plan, New Historicism denies it
contrast, anecdote, deviance ó grand recit (master narrative) = denial of the grand story

29/11/2005
simile vs. metaphor
 
fighting like a lion am Fuße des Berges

Culture and Memory

Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1949) – French Historian
“memoire collective” – memory can only be collected by social interchange
Aby Warburg (1866-1929) – art historian
Pioneers of culture as memory

“invention of tradition” (E. Hobsbawm)

selection + tradition; memory functions, which events do you want to remember – selection; look at the
importance of memory

Jan Assmann (Egyptologist)

Memory equals culture; link between present and past events, mentalities; historical development

“alle semantischen oder symbolischen Artikulationen, die in einer gegbenen Gesellschaft im Rahmen
‘zerdehnter’ Situationen kommuniziert werden”
semantic + symbolic articulation

Northern Ireland – protestants + catholics

World War I – Britain, christmas => truce, played football
truce – Waffenstillstand; exchanged presents

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 rite – text

“lieux de mémoire” (sites of memory)

“Gedächtnishorizonte” – memory built up through exchange!

(Aleida Assmann)
• individuell: communicative memory, within larger groups (family)
• Generationen-: shifting trends, fashion, memorised of generation
• kollektiv: collective memory; a nation based on selection, repression; how does a nation react
• kulturell: any kind of cultural artefact / attitude; region, groups, distinction between memory
and archive
Memory is a big part of identity

Imagology / Image Studies

I - Me ego identity through interchange


‘I’ as seen by others / reacted to by others
George H. Mead (sociologist, 1934): personal identity as being an exchange with a social group, reflex
R. D. Laing, Erving Goffman: identity as roleplay in a theatre

Alterity / Other
My image vs. other people’s images

The ‘I’ is the response of the organism to others

The ‘Me’ is the ‘I’ as seen by others, myself in the eyes of others

Identity as role
Identity is a role in a cultural environment; interchange with others

in-group ó out-group
William G. Sumner (1906)
e.g.: Irish / Polish jokes
Vienna – Burgenland

stereotypes as defense
W. Lippman
Anton C. Zijderfeld: provide people with security and stability; kind of language to speak of the own
nation; contain collective experiences – are true.
stereotypes: fixed images in our head; played important role (psychology), pupose of categorisation, to
be able to encounter the world, cannot analyse every event in detail, has negative connotations.

Personal level: social context, ethnic jokes about people from other regions, areas ...
06/12/2005
need stereotypes as categories; stereotypes to simplify our approach to the world

auto-stereotype (Selbstbild) ó hetero-stereotype (Fremdbild)

“l’étranger tel qu’on le voit”
comparative literature studies
“Aachener Schule”: Hugo Dyserinck, Joep Leerssen

discourse formations: stereotypes are functional parts of it

Imagology does not deal with hard facts but with images
Images that one group has from another; critical revisionist function
purpose: deconstruction of our images, of ourselves

Sir Karl Popper:

Welt 3: “objektive Gedankeninhalte”: mentalities similar, mental dimension of cultural studies, rather
than material
Welt 2: “persönliche Erfahrung”
Welt 1: “physikalische Welt”

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 Images: are in mind and language
discourse analysis: (stereotypes) relies on myth, clishées, ... transported in literary texts
historical semantics: how stereotypes change over time (are revised)
stereotypes always change: James Bond: enemies/bad guys turned from Russian communists to Islamic
terrorists

“imagotypes”: stereotypes often have negative connotations, but keep changing (same principle as
Selbst- und Fremdbild)

hetero-image vs. auto-image


almost always connected to their hetero-image
2 mechanisms:
• projections: the in-group projects things onto the out-group; describes auto-group; barbarians
• reaction: (counter definition); derive your self-image from hetero-image playing with counter
definitions; negritude: e.g. African self-image was derived from European hetero-images about
Africa; Stage Irish: loves to drink a lot, talks a lot, quarrels, ... built up by the time of
Shakespeare

Imagology: the study of national, regional images, no limits for classification

British Cultural Identities / Englishness

Britishness:
England St. George Rose Red cross on a white flag
Scotland St. Andrew Thistle White X on a blue flag
Wales St. David Daffodil, Leek -
(Northern) Ireland St. Patrick Shamrock, Harp Red X on a white flag

image of Britain as an island apart from the rest of Europe; John of Gaunt in Shakespeare’s Richard II.
(2.1.40-51; 57-60)
anaphora: “This” occurs several times
describes Engalnd; as an image
contrast; pathetic language at beginning; anaphoric construction; images all set up England as a fortress
every age creates its own images
13/12/2005
insularity -> separated from Europe

Britishness (Colley): has to be defined against some other

British ó Other
British is not English
England > Celtic Fringe
Celtic country before the Jews and the Anglo-Saxon came; forces drove the Celts into the outskirts
(Wales, Cornwall) => Celtic Fringe
England was the Center

Britishness (Protestantism)
ð the Catholic Other (Continental Europe)
Guy Fawkes Day (Nov. 5th): wanted to blow up the English parliament
unite different components of the British Isle
Jacobite Risings: the ’45 (=1745)
the short dynasty (=> Catholic) to regain the English crown; becomes a famous novel by
Scott, Waverly (1814)

Ireland difficult to fit in

The circle is widened; focusses about 1800 and France; French Revolution; the importation of
revolutionary ideals; fear of French invasion; Britain as a fortress

ð some people think that this is still going on; Britain inthe EU; still isolated in a special position;
problems in the EU; fear of giving up British identity by adopting too closely to central European
agendas; cultural memory => to lose sth.

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 Sun newspaper article (1999); St. George’s special
English self confidence; football world cup; more English flags (St. George’s cross) than union jack;
increase of English nationalism
100 reasons, why it is great to be English!
1. Queen Mum
2. The Beatles (best band ever)
3. Radio 4 Today
4. Barbara Windser
5. Pintes (of milk) at the door step
...
9. Shakespeare
...
14. Robbie Williams
10/01/2006

John Cleese = icon of Englishness!

Englishness
Empire: contemporary cultural thinking
“the Empire writes back”

1497 John Cabot, Newfoundland discovered; first serious attempt of establishing an empire of the sea
1600 East India Company; idea of the empire of the sea strengthened; navigation acts, trade monopoly,
Empire of the sea.

Golden triangle: result of the trade monopoly; kind of triangle goods from England were traded to
Africa -> slaves (3,5 million Africans were displaced – forced into slavery) brought goods to the
Caribbean; sugar was brought back to England

England

Caribbean Africa

1947 India / Pakistan; jewel of the Indian English Empire; India is breaking away -> largest part of the
empire => collaps!

1950s Black British; beginning of the multicultural England; new element dissolving the idea of white
Anglo-Saxon England

Queen Victoria assembling her “children” from all cultural backgrounds.

Edward Said (from Palestina)

“Orientalism” 1978 famous book
“Culture and Imperialism” 1993
first to draw attention to the relevant influence of other cultures, in particular the Orient (in Europe)
takes his examples from romantic and post-romantic writers, mainly Britain
culture constructs events on many different levels
Said: “Orientalism = cultural enterprise”
The coloniser and the colonised
19th century view of Orient: kind of Othering
Orient = what we don`t want to be: corrupt, exotic, wild, strange
17/01/2006
Englishness
icons of Britain (BBC Homepage)
“Fancy a cuppa?” => symbolises so much about England as a country and as a people
Stonehenge, FA Cup, double decker bus, Alice in Wonderland ... => Icons of Britain

Salman Rushdie (novelist, *1947, was also the date of the break up of the British Empire in India)
Post-colonialism is derived from oriental discourse; origins are in the study of literature.

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 “Commonwealth literature(s)” => politically incorrect; keeps the hegemony alive; everything centered
on England; hybridity / hybridisation
New literatures in English
“The Empire writes back” with a vengeance (1982)
1950s-60s-70s => New Voices writing back to the centre; Hierarchy; London is not the important;

Commonwealth literature => do not use this term; highly politically incorrect; as if you were born in the
19th century; better term: (New) Literatures in English, Anglophone literature, they are more inoffensive

J. Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea

Discovery of post-colonial attitude leads to a central theme, that is hybridisation; actual experience (e.g.
global traffic, immigration to Britain, bringing in their experiences and local traditions)
Black British literature => Caribbean, Asian, ... => not black in the sense of African => simply foreign
great potential in Bradford and Birmingham

hybridity => between cultures; kind of mixture, a coming together

Popular Culture

ð phenomenon of industrialisation
Marx: emphasis on alienated live takes place in the free time; consumer societies
Grumsky: hegemony
Alienation: production > consumption

very basic principle, rise of capitalism; everybody is defending himself; industrial society, you leave the
worker => is alienated, loses the connection to what he produces;

you find some identity that you don’t find in the production process, or work process
cultural differences as social / class difference; hegemony: cultural difference is marked by social
differences such as belonging to local or low-level culture.

consumtion as a way to find identity

“conspicious consumption” (Th. Veblen); consumption => identity marker

Subculture / Youth Culture

adolescents rebelling against controlling culture

contradictions: dominant culture vs. parent culture

1960-70: “mods” => alternative culture

modernists (David Bowie, The Who, ...)
intention of parody; tried to be different; process of mixing up different styles; a bricolage; a revival
with a renewed revolution comes up again and again
commercial incorporation, ideological defusion

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