Painting historiography: Meleko Mokgosi's Democratic Intuition

Soundings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (79) ◽  
pp. 153-164
Author(s):  
Meleko Mokgosi ◽  
Ashleigh Barice
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
History Painting ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
Democracy Education ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Representational Space ◽  
Black Skin ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Hayden White

This interview focuses particularly on Democratic Intuition (2013-20), Meleko Mokgosi's epic, eight-chapter painting cycle, the title of which references Gayatri Spivak's lecture on the necessary relationship between education and democracy. Education, reflection on theory and practice and engagement with young practitioners are all important parts of Mokgosi's work. The interview discusses the way the chapter format of Democratic Intuition is influenced by film processes, and the research and critical analysis on which his work is based; this includes historiography; the western genre of history painting; narrative tropes and the work of Hayden White; and painting techniques that more accurately construct Black skin tones. It also discusses discourses of race and assumptions about whiteness in the western canon; and whether there is a possibility for the Black subject to inhabit allegorical representational space without being overdetermined by histories of Blackness and race discourse. Stuart Hall's work has been important to Mokgosi because of its analysis of the complexities of the discourses within which cultural production and consumption is located. This has been helpful for reflecting on the location of the western art tradition within discourses of the Enlightenment and western humanism, which provide specific rules of circulation and consumption, and structures of authority. Such discourses assume that the viewer has the necessary tools or literacies to read in order to arrive at the meanings proposed in cultural objects. Mokgosi is engaged in continuous reflection on the extent to which, in spite of this, he, as a particular subject from Botswana, has managed to locate meaning within the narrow practice of painting.

Comparative research on cultural production and consumption

Poetics ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 253-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Janssen ◽  
Richard A. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Production And Consumption

scholarly journals ‘What Difference does it Make? Women's Pop Cultural Production and Consumption in Manchester’

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Richards ◽  
Katie Milestone
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Gender Characteristics ◽  
Gender Power ◽  
The City ◽  
Experiences Of Women

This paper explores the experiences of women in small cultural businesses and is based upon interviews with women working in a range of contexts in Manchester's popular music sector. The research seeks to promote wider consideration of women's roles in cultural production and consumption. We argue that it is necessary that experiences of production and consumption be understood as inter-related processes. Each part of this process is imbued with particular gender characteristics that can serve to reinforce existing patterns and hierarchies. We explore the ways in which female leisure and consumption patterns have been marginalised and how this in turn shapes cultural production. This process influences career choices but it is also reinforced through the integration of consumption into the cultural workplace. Practices often associated with the sector, such as the blurring of work and leisure and ‘networking’, appear to be understood and operated in significantly different ways by women. As cultural industries such as popular music are predicated upon the colonisation of urban space we explore the use of the city and the particular character of Manchester's music scene. We conclude that, despite the existence of highly contingent and individualised identities, significant gender power relations remain evident. These are particularly clear in discussion of the performative and sexualised aspects of the job.

scholarly journals TO THE DEFINITION OF THE CONCEPT "CULTURAL INDUSTRY": DESCRIPTION OF SYMPTOMS AND ANALYSIS OF TRENDS

2017 ◽  
pp. 39-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Y. Pavlova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Industrial Production ◽  
University Education ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Cultural Industry ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
Material Component ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cost

The article is devoted to the analysis of such extensively studied phenomenon of modernity as cultural industry, which includestwo opposite tendencies: the industrialization of cultural objects production and the "culturification" of industry. The former presupposes the presence of such symptoms of modernity as: a modernist version of the commodification of cultural objects (works of art, university education, etc.) as well as their massive reproduction. In addition, this tendency includes the following positions: the commodification of consumption, the lossof cultural objects of their regulatory and critical functions, the projectivity of cultural production. The reverse tendency – "culturification" of industry – contains the following aspects: the reduction of commercial goals of industrial production, the "economy of signs": an increase in the role of cultural competence in the process of actual industrial production, a reduction in the cost of the material component of the production. The proposed classification of tendencies and symptoms of the cultural industry does not claim for exhaustiveness and completedsystematicity. It is designed to clarify the logic of the formation of this phenomenon of culture, not only as a form of de-differentiation of cultural (in the sense of high culture) and industrial (as a historical form of social),but also as the de-differentiation of cultural and social ones in general. The industrial society, whose existence is the basis for the absolutization of the industry autonomy, is one of the historical forms of the social itself. In this type of society, cultural autonomyis realized as the closure of an elitist social structure. Withdrawal from an industrial society implies "Reassembling the social", a synthetic unity of social and cultural. In the logic of "liquidity of Modern" (opposite to solidity) and of the subject-object opposition, this process manifests itself in the process of human and things synthesis (as a "Making things public"), that is, in the de-differentiation of material and spiritual production and consumption, is therefore in social and cultural. The definition of the cultural industry clarifies the meaning of culture as a way of being a human in the perspective of the sustainability of his efforts, the kind of their institutionalization and signification.

scholarly journals Continental shifts: capitalism, communications and change in Europe

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
Graham Murdock
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Classic Approach ◽  
Media Markets ◽  
The Media ◽  
Distribution Of Power

This article puts forward the fundamental lines of thought on the Political Economy of Communications and the Media, since the development of capitalism up to the present day. Clarifying the distinction between Economy and Political Economy, this work examines the central split between two traditions within Political Economy: the Classic approach which is centred on markets and competition mechanisms and the Critical approach which is centred on the analysis of property and the distribution of power in society. Despite internal distinct traditions, for political economists’ questions about cultural production and consumption are never simply matters of economic organisation or creative expression and the relations between them. They are always also questions about the organisation of power and its consequences for the constitution of public life. Based on different Political Economy perspectives, this article attempts to present the most recent developments on communications and media markets in Europe and the major challenges and opportunities the discipline faces in a time marked by the emergence of a digital public sphere.

scholarly journals Όψεις και μορφές της μεταμυθοπλασίας και της μεταϊστορίας στο ελληνικό μυθιστόρημα κατά το δεύτερο μισό του 20ού και τις πρώτες δεκαετίες του 21ου αιώνα

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ειρήνη Χατζοπούλου
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Laurence Sterne ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Historical Imagination ◽  
Tristram Shandy ◽  
Hayden White

Η παρούσα διατριβή έχει ως αντικείμενο να διερευνήσει αν και σε ποιο βαθμό η ελληνική πεζογραφική παραγωγή των ετών 1960-2010 έχει επηρεαστεί από τα θεωρητικά σχήματα της Μεταμυθοπλασίας και της Μεταϊστορίας, τόσο σε επίπεδο μορφής, τεχνικές και στρατηγικές, όσο και σε επίπεδο ιδεολογικών στοχεύσεων. Τα σχήματα αυτά θεμελιώθηκαν θεωρητικά και μεθοδολογικά περίπου σε αυτή τη χρονική περίοδο και έδωσαν μια αξιοσημείωτη ώθηση στην παραγωγή μυθιστορημάτων στον διεθνή δυτικό χώρο, τον αγγλοσαξονικό κυριότερα, αλλά όχι μόνο. Τα μυθιστορήματα που αποτελούν το αντικείμενο της παρούσας εργασίας είναι τα παρακάτω: Η κάθοδος των εννιά του Θ. Βαλτινού (1978), Το Κιβώτιο του Άρη Αλεξάνδρου (1975), … από το στόμα της παλιάς Remington του Γιάννη Πάνου (1981), Ο εχθρός του ποιητή του Γ. Χειμωνά (1990), Το ελληνικό σταυρόλεξο του Θ. Σκάσση (2000), Η μέρα με τις δεκατέσσερις νύχτες του Κ. Βούλγαρη (2007). Κρίθηκε επίσης σκόπιμο να εξεταστούν και κάποια πρωιμότερα ελληνικά παραδείγματα, καθώς οι θεωρητικοί της Μεταμυθοπλασίας έχουν ήδη επισημάνει ότι αντίστοιχες στρατηγικές έχουν παρατηρηθεί πρώιμα σε έργα πολύ προγενέστερα από τον 20ό αιώνα, όπως ο Δον Κιχώτης του Θερβάντες (1604) ή ο Tristram Shandy του Laurence Sterne (1760). Επιλέχθηκαν έτσι ως ερευνητικό αντικείμενο τα έργα των Ν. Μαυροκορδάτου, Φιλοθέου Πάρεργα (1716-1718), του Αδ. Κοραή, ο Παπατρέχας (1811-1820) και του Εμμανουήλ Ροΐδη, η Πάπισσα Ιωάννα (1866). Τα έργα αυτά, όπως διαπιστώθηκε, εκφράζουν πρώιμα και σπερματικά το πνεύμα και την ιδεολογία της νεωτερικότητας, εφόσον συστήνουν και αξιοποιούν πολλαπλές αυτοαναφορικές-ναρκισσιστικές στρατηγικές, οι οποίες συνειδητά εφαρμόζονται και πυκνώνουν πολύ αργότερα, σε έργα του 20ου αι.. Τα θεωρητικά εργαλεία που αποτελούν τη βάση της εργασίας είναι οι μελέτες των Patricia Waugh Metafiction, The theory and practice of self-concious fiction, (1984), τα δύο εμβληματικά έργα της Linda Hutcheon για τη μεταμυθοπλασία, Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox (1980) και το νεότερό της, A Poetics of Postmodernism (2004), όπως και το έργο του Brian McHale, Postmodernist fiction (2004). Για το πεδίο της Μεταϊστορίας αξιοποιήθηκε το έργο του θεμελιωτή της αντίστοιχης Σχολής, George R. Collingwood The Idea of History (1946), αλλά κυριότερα οι μελέτες του συνεχιστή του, θεωρητικού ιστορικού επιστήμονα, Hayden White, Metahistory, The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (1973), The content of the form (1987) και πολλά ακόμη αντίστοιχα άρθρα. Από τα μυθιστορήματα που μελετήθηκαν προκύπτει ότι Η κάθοδος των εννιά, Το Κιβώτιο, …από το στόμα της παλιάς Remington, Το Ελληνικό Σταυρόλεξο και Η Μέρα με τις δεκατέσσερις νύχτες, αξιοποιούν αρκετές μεταμυθοπλαστικές στρατηγικές με συνειδητή πρόθεση να αυτοπαρουσιαστούν ως κειμενικές και γλωσσικές κατασκευές, διαλύοντας έτσι την «ψευδαίσθηση της άμεσης αναφορικότητας» για τα έργα μυθοπλασίας. Αξιοποιώντας ποικίλες και προωθημένες αυτοαναφορικές στρατηγικές, εκθέτουν μέσα στον μυθοπλαστικό τους σύμπαν μαζί με τον μύθο και την διαδικασία κατασκευής τους. Ταυτόχρονα θέτουν –άλλα περισσότερο άλλα λιγότερο– και μεταϊστορικούς προβληματισμούς, καθώς διατηρούν μια κοινή δυσπιστία ως προς την πιστότητα και αντικειμενικότητα που μπορεί να διασφαλίσει ο αφηγηματικός τρόπος στην απεικόνιση και αναπαράσταση του παρελθόντος και πειραματίζονται με νέους και αναθεωρητικούς τρόπους αναπαράστασης της Ιστορίας. Η περίπτωση του Χειμωνά κινείται περισσότερο στον χώρο της μεταμυθοπλασίας, επιχειρώντας, ταυτόχρονα, να πειραματιστεί με κάποια μεταμοντέρνα αισθητικά και ιδεολογικά προτάγματα. Το αξιοσημείωτο εύρημα είναι ότι η ελληνική μυθοπλασία –στο πλαίσιο πάντα των έργων που μελετήθηκαν– χαρακτηρίζεται από ευελιξία και δεκτικότητα στα ρεύματα των καιρών, καθώς δεν σταματά να δοκιμάζει και να πειραματίζεται με τα όριά της, αναζητώντας νέους εκφραστικούς τρόπους, ώστε να ανανεώνεται και να εκφράζει τη σύνθετη εμπειρία από τον κόσμο και τη διαρκώς μεταβαλλόμενη πραγματικότητα.

scholarly journals Trysting Genres: Andrew Lang’s Fairy Tale Methodologies

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly Clark Hillard
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Science Writing ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Production And Consumption

Andrew Lang represents an alternative model to the cult of the solo literary genius that occupied so much of the Victorian literary landscape, a model that is defined by collaboration and coterie production, and one that troubles the rigidities of discipline and genre. This essay, with Lang at its core, throws into relief the extent to which all authorship is a collective endeavor between forms and across time. While Lang’s entire oeuvre is important, this essay is most interested in his work on the fairy tale. For this essay, Lang is one practitioner of a kind of discourse generated in the wake of the Victorian fairy tale surge—the widespread incorporation of fairy tales into other Victorian literary and cultural forms like theater, fine arts, and literature. What a fairy tale was, and to whom or to what it belonged, were questions that frequently ran through contemporary discourse about literary production, like the copyright debates, the plagiarism debates, and the ongoing discussion about whether social science writing was or was not a kind of creative work. Lang’s treatment of the fairy tale, especially in his popular Colored Fairy Books, places him at the end of this century-long conversation about the nature of originality. This essay considers how Lang’s position at the center of multiple, linked networks might owe something, or everything, to his play with the fairy tale, arguably the most “networked” of forms. Lang’s very interdisciplinarity can help us to understand the extent to which the fairy tale’s language, figures, structure, authors, and methods of production had come to influence other forms of cultural production and consumption.

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