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Name: Kailash P. Baraiya
Study: M.A.
Roll no: 10, Paper: 08
Enrolment No:
2069108420170001
Subject: - the cultural
studies
Topic: Limitations of
Cultural Studies.
Submitted To: Pro. Dr. Dilip
Barad, Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University
What is cultural studies?
The word ‘culture' itself is
so difficult to pin down, 'ciltural
studies' is hard to define. As was also the case in chapter 8 with Ealing
showalter's 'cultural' modal of feminine difference, 'cultural studies' is not
so much a discrete approach at all, but rather a set of practices. As Patrick
Branlinger has pointed out, cultural studies is not 'a tightly coherent,
unified movement with a fixed agenda, 'but a loosely coherent group of
tendencies issues and questions'. Arising from the social turmoil of the 1960s,
cultural studies is composed of following element like:
Ø Marxism
Ø Post
Structuralism
Ø Post
Modernism
Ø Feminism
Ø Gender
Studies
Ø Feminism
Ø Anthropology
Ø Sociology
Ø Race
Ø Ethnic Studies
Ø Post-Colonial
Studies
Those fields that
concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause
division and alienation. For example, drawing from Roland Barthes on the nature of literary language and Claude
Levi-Strauss on arthropology, cultural studies was influenced by structuralism
and post-structuralism. Jacques Derrida’s 'deconstruction' of the word-text
distinction like all his deconstructions of hierarchical opposition, has urged
or enabled- cultural to erase or the boundaries between high and low culture,
classic and popular literary texts and literature and other cultural discourses
that following Derrida, may be seen as manifestation of the same texuality.
The discipline of psychology has
also entered the field of cultural studies. For example, Jacques Lacan’s
psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious structured as a language promoted
emphasis upon language and promoted emphasis symbolic system, from Michel
Foucault came the notion that power is a whole complex of forces it is that
which produces what happens. A tyrannical wield power but is empowered by
discourse accepted ways of thinking writing and speaking-and practise that
embody exercise and amount to power. from punishment to sexual mores, foucult’s
'genealogy' of topics includes many things excluded by traditional historians,
from architectural blue prints for prisons to memories of deviants'.
Psychoanalytic structuralism approaches are treated elsewhere in this Handbook,
in the present chapter we review cultural studies, connections with Marxism,
the new historicism, multiculturalism, postmodernism popular culture and
post-colonial studies before moving on to our group of six literary works.
There
Is a Five Types of Cultural Studies:-
Five
Types of Cultural Studies:
1) British
Cultural Materialism
2) New
Historicism
3) American
Multiculturalism
4) Post
Modernism and Popular Culture
5) Post-Colonial
Studies
In
my assignment I am focusing on limitations of culture studies.
The weakness of cultural
studies is in its very strengths, particularly he emphasis upon diversity of
approach and subject matter. Cultural Studies can at times seem merely am
intellectual smorgasbord in which the critic blithely combines artful helpings
of texts and objects and then 'finds' deep connection between them, without
adequately researching what a culture means or how cultures have interacted. To
put it bluntly, cultural studies is not always fuelled by the kind of hard
research that historians have traditionally practiced to analyse 'culture'.
Cultural studies practitioners often know a lot of interesting things and possess the intellectual ability to play
them off interestingly against each other, but they sometime lack adequate
knowledge of the 'deep play' of a meaning or
'thick description' of a culture that ethnographer clifford Geertz
identified in his studies of the Balinese. Sometimes students complain that
professors who overemphasize cultural studies tend to downplay the necessity of
reading the classics, and that they sometime coerce students into 'politically
correct' views.
David Richter describes cultural
studies as about whatever is happing at the moment, rather than about a body of
texts created in the past. 'Happening’
topics’, generally speaking are the mass media themselves, which in s
postmodern culture, dominate the cultural lives of its inhabitants, or topics
that have been velarized by the mass media. But he goes on to observe that is this
seems trivial, the strength of cultural studies is its “ relentlessly critical
altitude toward journalism, publishing cinema, television, and other forms of
mass media, whose seeming transparent windows through which we view reality
probably constitute the most blatant and pervasive mode of false consciousness
of era. If we are tempted to dismiss popular culture, it is also worth
remembering that when works like hamlet or huckleberry Finn were written, they
were not intended for elite discussions in English classrooms, but exactly for
popular consumption.
Defenders of traditions and advocates of cultural studies are waging
what is sometimes called the 'culture wars' of academia. On the one hand are
offered impassioned defences of humanism as the foundation, since the of the
ancient Greeks of western civilization and modern democracy. On the other hand,
as Marxist theorist Terry Eagleton has written, the current crisis in the
humanities can be seen as a failure of the humanities, this body of discourses
about imperishable values has demonstrably negated those very values in its
practise.
Whatever the emphasis, cultural
studies makes available one more approach –and several methodologies to address
these questions.
Limitations
of cultural studies:-
1. Diversity
of approach and subject matter:-
The weakness of cultural
studies lies in its strengths, particularly its emphasis upon diversity of
approach and subject matter cultural studies can at times seen merely an
intellectual smorgasbordin which the critic a lithely combines artful helping
of texts and objects and then 'finds' deep connections between them without
adequately researching what a culture means or how cultures have interacted.
2. Not fueled by hard research:-
Cultural studies are not always filed
by hard researcher i.e. historians have traditionally practiced to analyse
‘culture ‘which includes scientifically collected data
3.
lack of knowledge:-
Cultural study practitioners often
know a lot of interesting things and possess the intellectual ability to play
them off interestingly against each other but they sometime lack adequate
knowledge of 'deep play' of meaning
or 'thick description' of a culture that
ethnographer Clifford Geertz identified in has studies of the Balinese.
In the essay of Geertz uses
'deep play' word for the cockfight which is illegal is his society. He explains
as a context of British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1948-1832),Who defines
'deep play' as a game with risks high that no rational person would engage in
it. The amounts of money involved in the cockfight makes Balinese cockfight
'deep play'.
And another words 'thick
description' is used in the field of anthropology, sociology religious studies
and human and organizational
development. The 'thick description, of culture means it’s not just
explaining what culture is about also refers that in which contex the meaning
is developed.
4. Necessity or reading the
classics:-
Sometimes students complain that
professors who overemphasize cultural studies tend to Downplay the necessity of
reading the classes and that they sometimes coerce students into 'politically
correct' views.
5. Whatever is happening at the moment:-
David Richter describes culture as
'-about whatever is happening at the moment' rather than about post body of
texts crated in the past.
'Happening' topics, generally
speaking, are the mass media themselves, which, in a postmodern culture,
dominate the culture lives on its inhabitants, or topics that have been
valorises by the mass media.
But he goes to observe that if this seems trival, the
strength of cultural studies its “relentlessly critical altitude toward
journalism, publishing, cinema, television, and other forms of mass media,
whose seemingly transparent windows through which we view 'reality' probably
constitute the most blatant and pervasive made of false consciousness the most blatant and pervasive mode of false
consciousness of our era”.
6.
Tempted to dismiss popular culture:-
If we are tempted to dismiss popular
culture, it is also worth remembering
that when then works like Hamlet or Huckleberry Finn were written, they were
not intended for elite discussions in English classrooms but exactly for
popular consumption.
7. 'Culture
Wars' of academia:-
Defenders of tradition and
advocates of cultural studies are waging what is sometimes called the 'culture
wars' of academia.
On the one hand, as Marxist
theorist terry Eagleton has written, the current 'crises' in the humanities can
be seen as failure of the humanities can be seen as failure the humanities this
'body of discourses' about imperishable values has demonstrably negated those
very values in its practices.
On the other hand are offered
impassioned defences of humanism as the foundation, since the time of the
ancient Greeks of western civilization and modern democracy.
Conclusion:-
Whatever the emphasis, cultural
studies makes available one more approach –and several methodologies to address
these questions.
Source: Net and Text
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