scholarly journals Encyclopaedic Fiction, Cultural Value, and the Discourse of the Great Divide

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Simon Cooke
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Objective Quality ◽  
Great Divide ◽  
The Status ◽  
Low Culture

<p>Recent postmodern work on cultural evaluation, such as Barbara Smith's Contingencies of Value (1989), argues that cultural value cannot be treated as an inherent or objective quality of cultural products. Instead, cultural value must be understood as "value for": relative, that is, to the identities and interests of particular cultural consumers and producers. Theorists (for instance, John Frow in his 1995 study Cultural Studies and Cultural Value) have employed similar relativist logic in their analyses of the putative "structures" or institutions that supposedly give shape to Western culture-as-a-whole: "high" culture, "popular" culture, "mass" culture and so on. This "postaxiological" strain of cultural theory undermines the real-world integrity of those categories by suggesting that they (the categories) are merely contingent effects of critical / evaluative discourse. Other archetypically "postmodern" arguments in literary and cultural studies have focused on charting or advocating both the demise of the modernist "great divide" between "high" and "low" culture, and its replacement, in cultural production and criticism, with more permissive and socially egalitarian modes of interplay between "high" and "low" culture. Some critics and critically aware cultural producers have treated these two projects as though they are complementary facets of a general "postmodern" turn. Yet contesting or reversing obsolete hierarchies of cultural value does not necessarily lead critics to contemplate the status of "high"/"low" categories themselves. A meaningful refusal of the logic of the modernist "great divide" would obligate critics and producers to reflect on the contingency of those categories and their own interests with respect to those categories. Juxtaposing an "encyclopaedic" modernist text renowned for its interspersion of "high" and "low" cultural elements (James Joyce's Ulysses) with a postmodern text that seems knowingly to do the same (David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest), two case studies illustrate the inseparability of readings or narratives that are couched in "high"/"low" terms from the particular interests of cultural producers and consumers.</p>

scholarly journals Encyclopaedic Fiction, Cultural Value, and the Discourse of the Great Divide

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Simon Cooke
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Objective Quality ◽  
Great Divide ◽  
The Status ◽  
Low Culture

<p>Recent postmodern work on cultural evaluation, such as Barbara Smith's Contingencies of Value (1989), argues that cultural value cannot be treated as an inherent or objective quality of cultural products. Instead, cultural value must be understood as "value for": relative, that is, to the identities and interests of particular cultural consumers and producers. Theorists (for instance, John Frow in his 1995 study Cultural Studies and Cultural Value) have employed similar relativist logic in their analyses of the putative "structures" or institutions that supposedly give shape to Western culture-as-a-whole: "high" culture, "popular" culture, "mass" culture and so on. This "postaxiological" strain of cultural theory undermines the real-world integrity of those categories by suggesting that they (the categories) are merely contingent effects of critical / evaluative discourse. Other archetypically "postmodern" arguments in literary and cultural studies have focused on charting or advocating both the demise of the modernist "great divide" between "high" and "low" culture, and its replacement, in cultural production and criticism, with more permissive and socially egalitarian modes of interplay between "high" and "low" culture. Some critics and critically aware cultural producers have treated these two projects as though they are complementary facets of a general "postmodern" turn. Yet contesting or reversing obsolete hierarchies of cultural value does not necessarily lead critics to contemplate the status of "high"/"low" categories themselves. A meaningful refusal of the logic of the modernist "great divide" would obligate critics and producers to reflect on the contingency of those categories and their own interests with respect to those categories. Juxtaposing an "encyclopaedic" modernist text renowned for its interspersion of "high" and "low" cultural elements (James Joyce's Ulysses) with a postmodern text that seems knowingly to do the same (David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest), two case studies illustrate the inseparability of readings or narratives that are couched in "high"/"low" terms from the particular interests of cultural producers and consumers.</p>

‘Play it again Sam’: Some notes on the productivity of repetition in popular music

Popular Music ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 235-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Fredric Jameson

Repetition, as a component of musical structure in popular songs, has long played an important part in ‘popular common-sense’ definitions, and criticisms, of the music. ‘It's monotonous’; ‘it's all the same’; ‘it's predictable’: such reactions have probably filtered down from the discussions of mass culture theorists. From this point of view, repetition (within a song) can be assimilated to the same category as what Adorno termed standardisation (as between songs). Of course, the significance of the role played by such techniques in the operations of the music industry – their efficacy in helping to define and hold markets, to channel types of consumption, to pre-form response and to make listening easy – can hardly be denied; it is, however, equally difficult to reduce the function of repetition simply to an analysis of the ‘political economy’ of popular music production and its ideological effects. Despite Adorno's critical assault (see Adorno 1941), despite later twists to the theory by, for instance, Fredric Jameson (1981), who argues that rather than being a negative quality of mass culture, repetition is simply a fundamental characteristic of all cultural production under contemporary capitalism, the question of repetition refuses to go away. Why do listeners find interest and pleasure in hearing the same thing over again? To be able to answer this question, which has troubled not only mass cultural theory but also traditional philosophical aesthetics, as well as more recent approaches such as psychoanalysis and information theory, would tell us more about the nature of popular music, and hence, mutatis mutandis, about music in general, than almost anything else. We must start by locating repetition within an overall theory of musical syntax.

Balancing Act: Identity and Otherness among Latin American Immigrants and their Food Practices

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Paulette Kershenovich Schuster
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Cultural Perceptions ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Food Practices ◽  
Food Research ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Latin American Immigrants

This article deals with the identity construction of Latin American immigrants in Israel through their food practices. Food is a basic symbolic element connecting cultural perceptions and experiences. For immigrants, food is also an important element in the maintenance of personal ties with their home countries and a cohesive factor in the construction of a new identity in Israel, their adopted homeland. Food practices encode tacit information and non-verbal cues that are integral parts of an individual’s relationship with different social groups. In this case, I recruited participants from an online group formed within social media platforms of Latin American women living in Israel. The basic assumption of this study posits that certain communication systems are set in motion around food events in various social contexts pertaining to different national or local cuisines and culinary customs. Their meaning, significance and modifications and how they are framed. This article focuses on the adaptation and acculturation processes because it is at that point that immigrants are faced with an interesting duality of reconstructing their unique cultural perceptions to either fit the existing national collective ethos or create a new reality. In this study, the main objective is to compare two different immigrant groups: Jewish and non-Jewish women from Latin America who came to Israel during the last ten years. The comparative nature of the research revealed marked differences between ethnic, religious and cultural elements that reflect coping strategies manifested in the cultural production of food and its representation in two distinct domains: private and public. In the former, it is illustrated within the family and home and how they connect or clash with the latter in the form of consumption in public. Combining cultural studies and discourse analysis, this article offers fresh insight into new models of food practices and reproductions. The article’s contribution to new food research lies in its ability to shed light on how inter-generational and inter-religious discourses are melded while food practices and traditions are embedded in a new Israeli identity.

Unpopular Culture

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Ernest Hemingway ◽  
David Foster Wallace ◽  
The Simpsons ◽  
Low Culture

This volume introduces a new concept that boldly breaks through the traditional dichotomy of high and low culture while offering a fresh approach to both: unpopular culture. From the works of David Foster Wallace and Ernest Hemingway to fanfiction and The Simpsons, from natural disasters to 9/11 and beyond, the essays find the unpopular across media and genres, analysing the politics and aesthetics of a side to culture that has been overlooked by previous theories and methods in cultural studies.

Neoliberalism in Mexican Cultural Theory

ARTMargins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 86-87
Author(s):  
Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Shadow Economy ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Frame ◽  
Mexican Politics

This essay reviews two theoretical books on neoliberalism written by Mexican cultural critics: Capitalismo gore (Gore Capitalism), by Sayak Valencia, published originally in Spanish in 2010 and translated into English in 2018, and La tiranía del sentido común ( The Tyranny of Common Sense) by Irmgard Emmelhainz, published in Spanish in 2016 and yet to be translated into English. These works are pioneering in their discussion of the correlation between neoliberalism, subjectivity, and culture in Mexico, and they have become widely influential in broader discussions of art, visual culture, literature, and cultural production. They add to the work of economic and political historians, such as Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo and María Eugenia Romero Sotelo, by connecting landmark moments in neoliberalization (from the financialization of the global economy in the 1970s to the War on Drugs in the 2000s) to changing paradigms in art. Author Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado contextualizes both books within larger discussions of Mexican cultural neoliberalism and describes the theoretical frame works through which both authors read Mexican politics, art, and popular culture. In Valencia's case, Sánchez Prado discusses her idea of “gore capitalism”: a framework for understanding how neoliberalism relies on dynamics of the shadow economy and on the subjectification of gore (what Valencia calls endriago subjectivity) to function at the social and artistic levels. In the case of Emmelhainz, Sánchez Prado engages with the author's idea of semiocapitalism, a term borrowed from theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi, which Emmelhainz deploys to account for the interrelation between culture and capital in the era of neoliberalism. As such, Sánchez Prado argues, Emmelhainz and Valencia provide ways of reading artistic and visual production, including museum curatorship and narcocultura, in ways that show their organic relationship to neoliberal economic and political reforms. Find the complete article at artmargins.com .

The City: A Window to Utopia?

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anti Randviir
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Universal Logic ◽  
The Status ◽  
Practical Development ◽  
The City

AbstractIn addressing the semiotics of utopia and the utopian, we target the semiotic techniques and principles applied in More’s seminal text Utopia (1516) that established the universal logic for utopian discourse, and raise the question of the legitimacy of describing certain cultural production as utopian. Utopian discourse is often tied with an urban context. We question this association. The semiotic interpause is hard to achieve in the context of the physical environment. Yet this is where the utopia, the city, the society, and the utopian come together. Thus it is useful to review the notion of utopia in connection with the quite practical development of the (urban) sociocultural life in which the status of objects in communicative situations is continually redefined.

Japanese Soft Power in Indonesia on Anime Entitled Ufo Baby: Study of Popular Culture

IZUMI ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-337
Author(s):  
Risa Yuliani ◽  
R.M. Mulyadi ◽  
M. Adji
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
World Community ◽  
Interpretive Analysis ◽  
The World

Anime as Japanese popular culture has been successfully consumed by mass in many countries. It indicates that Japan's strategy to make anime one of its soft power has been successfully accepted by the world community. In Indonesia, since anime entered the television, the enthusiasm given by the community has been good and positive. Anime is liked by various circles, especially children, even today. Ufo Baby is one of the shows on RCTI, even though it's not as global as Doraemon, for example, but apart from an interesting storyline, this anime also incorporates many elements of Japanese culture. The aim of this study is to explain the soft power of Japan in Indonesia on anime entitled “Ufo Baby”. The research method uses a qualitative approach with interpretive analysis. The researched part is scenes from anime that contain cultural elements. The approach used is John Storey's cultural theory and Nye Joseph's theory of soft power. Data collection was conducted to examine the influence of Japanese culture on Indonesian society by using interview techniques. The results of this study reveal that in the Ufo Baby anime there are elements of soft power culture used by Japan. From the results of research, the culture shown in anime has an influence on Indonesian society marked by the community's participation in celebrating traditional Japanese festivals and the discovery of many typical Japanese goods sold in local shops.

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