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Lecture

1/24/2013
Office Hours:
Wednesdays from 2-4
216 Barrows

What does culture mean?


o There is a way culture links to our perceptions of ethnicity and ethnic
identity
Food, rituals, clothing, speech, religion
o National culture
Hegemonic forms and dominance
Not always recognized that that is the case, but there are ways that
culture transcends what it means to be Americanprescribes what
an American should be
Shapes the ways we should be thinking, if subconsciously
(normalizes behavior and thoughts)
Particular norms within smaller institutions (i.e. Berkeley culture)
o Anything outside of nature
One of the things that culture doesheld up against nature as its
opposite (nature is not culture, culture is not nature)
Contrastant to nature
o Sense of belongingculture references the ways that you belong
Who are your people, how do you know?
o Class connotation of culture
Being cultured in arts and literature (high culture)
o Popular culture
The culture of that which is hip right now
~Subculture: counter the dominant trends in popular culture
o Culture as a form of classification
Who a person is, how to relate to a person
We associate with culture in that we expect people who belong to a
certain culture to hold particular ways of viewing the world
Culture thus shapes interaction
As a means of constituting difference, the other
They eat xxx, and are thus definitively different than me
= Culture as a weapon
o Political views have come to be understood as bearing their own cultural
implications
Recent polarization = culture wars between liberal and
conservative ideologies
o Culture of consumption
Linking of consumption to identity

That which you buy, what you wear on your bodysevere


implications of who you are, who you want to be, or who you want
others to think you are
o Culture of poverty vs. structural implications of poverty
Culture justifies structural inequality
o Cultural toolkit
Values of development, worldviews that are the product of the
environment which you grew up in
*These different ways that we define culture are often in tension with each other
o Ethnic culture in tension with national, class, popular culture, culture as a
classification
Stuart Hall
o The ability to be critical of and understand culture is anything but
frivolous
Spieback
o Trying to tell us that the study of culture is oddbecause culture is such a
slippery concept
o Were all already immersed in the culture that we come from, and from the
minute we start to describe any kind of culture, were always doing it from
the assumptions that we take for granted within our own culture
o Cant get out of thatbut we can try and at least overcome it a bit
o Second paragraph culture is a package of largely unacknowledged
assumptions: loosely held by a loosely outlined group of people; mapping
the relationship between the sacred and the profane, and the relationship
between the sexes
Even the moment that we begin to analyze culture, we end up
doing so from our own cultural assumptions
Even if you recognize the assumptions youre coming fromthat
itself is flawed
--Your assumptions today might differ than your
assumptions tomorrow, your assumptions are ever in flux
o Points out that cultural studies began in the 1960s1960s witnessed a
really quick process of decolonization around the world
1960s: more of a sense that cultural generalizations were BS
Exoticizing people, making more of cultural
generalizations than they should
Cultural studies started by generally marginalized people
Literature, high culture is not who we are
We must look at multiple parts of lifeculture as multiple
ways of life in order to understand what it does, what it
means
Developed on the margins of English universities, for
political goals
Started in 1960s, but solidified in the 1970s

England: economy falling apart during this period


Nation had made promises about English privileges
working class employees denied these promised privileges
Political, economic upheaval, decolonizationpeople from
colonies moving into metropolis and causing racial tensions
within England
HALL: cultural studies started with, but also against Marxism
People pulling together in the beginning were Marxists
But also struggling with Marx
Feminism then came in
POINT IS: cultural studies has never been a field that is dogmatic
about what it is/does
Always a site of struggle and change, dialogicabout
dialogue, critical discussion, looking at culture as products
of ongoing historic conversations in which no one has a
first word, nor a last word
o Looking at the past and the ways they pervade the
world of the present
o See traces of the past in current representations, on
TV, in videosdialogic process, collective history

January 29, 2013

Culture is everywhere, all around us; does not necessarily imply that culture is
everything
Raymond Williams: page 90
o Summary: independent or abstract noun
o Noun that describes a process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic
development
o It can be understood as a particular way of life (a people, period, humanity
in general)
o Describes the works and practices of intellectualbut especiallyartistic
ability
o Multiple ways that culture is way, and thus multiple ways that it derives
its meaning
Culture Alive (Spivak)
o People who define culture, are doing so from their own culture
o Culture is something we cant look at/explain, but something that were
always existing with in, coming frommultidimensional, layered
o Culture is always moving; never static
When speaking from a certain place, explaining something: your
ground is always shifting, as is the very thing you are trying to
explain

o Culture is a package of largely unacknowledged assumptions, loosely held


by a loosely outlined group of people, and mapping negotiations between
sacred and profane and the relationship between the sexes
Boundaries around group of people are in constant fluxnever
definitively able to tell whether or not one is part of a particular
group
Shifts in cultural associations by the individual; individual agency
in bouncing from one group to another
The way that culture maps that which a person/group holds
sacrosanct, and that which the regard as profane or dirty
That which we hold dear, value, perpetuate vs. that which is
mundane, worldly
*Always a loosely held group of people, always negotiating that
which is sacred and that which is profane
Subjects can be socially discussed/joked about one day, and
taboo the next
Culture in constant flux
o Interesting dynamic: ways that Euro-Americans consider their culture to
be a site of constant change, in constant flux, and that of Native Americans
to be traditionally stagnant
Threads of meaning that persist, indeed, but contemporary rituals
where they take place, what they do, etc. are not the same as
they once were
o Ends her piece by telling us that culture is a place where different
explanations always collide. Culture is its own explanations [sic]not a
central truth, but a millennial increment of a need to explain
Culture is an ever-shifting, ever-changing thing, though we may
falsely believe we belong to one particular group
At the same time, maybe the sense that we need to explain
anything is part of culture, toosomething that is changing, only
important to certain groups, at this moment, etc.
Time Passages (Lipsitz)
o Culture is dialogical
An ongoing historical conversation in which no one has the first
or last word. The traces of the past that pervade the popular
cultural products of the present amount to more than mere chance:
they are not simply juxtapositions of incompatible realities. They
reflect a dialogic process, one embedded in collective history and
nurtured by the ingenuity of artists [who sometimes are] interested
in fashioning icons of opposition

Popular music [and all popular cultural forms] arbitrates tensions


between opposition and cooptation at any historical moment
History as an ongoing conversation in which no one has the first word,
and no one has the last word

Tension about the purpose of cultural studiesto demonstrate


intellect, to have political impact, etc.
o Hall believes there is no answer to such, it is an ongoing and
productive tension
Believes that tension between theory and worldliness, between academia and
community struggle is a productive one
o Cultural studies isnt and shouldnt be about talking about ourselves
o 272: Against the urgency of people dying in the streets, what in Gods
name is the point of cultural studies?
Any world crisis (AIDS, etc.) is about who is represented, and how
cultural studies is about paying attention to that
Who gets represented, and how isin so many waysabout who
lives and who dies
Representation at the center of cultural studies
o Something that stands for something else
o Language/signs stand for meaning (images, words that signify some
particular meaning)
What/who is being represented in a particular visual/literary image
o Representation is the production of meaning of concepts through
language
Link between language, concepts, and meaning
Multi-layered representation that is producing meaning of concepts
through language (words as well as visual language, images,
sounds, anything through which we can communicate the meaning
of concepts)

Lecture
1/31
No Class Next Thursday (see assignment on bSpace)
Thursday: Watch Beyond Beats and Rhymes (Byron Hurt) on your own (streaming
through oskicat or in the MRC in Moffitt
Representation

Representation is the production of the meaning of the concepts in our minds


through language. It is the link between concepts and language which enables us
to refer to either the real world of objects, people, or events, o indeed to
imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people and events (Hall 17)
o Often though about as the relationship between language (words) and
things
o Hall notes that there are two systems of representation:
Classification: concepts are classified in various ways
One system of representation is about classifying certain
concepts

Signs/language: establish the relationship between words and


things
Link descriptive words/language with specific objects
conceptualize things (i.e. cellphone classified, indicates a
particular/specific object
Layers and layers of meaning behind any object
Visual cue: rectangular, fiber glass object assembled by
Apple
o Visual image which communicates the concept
o Any image, any word, any sentence, has to be
interpreted
Nicki Minaj image

o Almost an inhuman flawlessness to her skinwhat does this


communicate?
o Element of inauthenticity
o Leather jacketlayers of meaning, and particular connotations as it is
o Different signs, different layers, different implicationsof sex, race,
history
Semiotics (Barthes and Saussure)
o Any language, any type of language has various meanings
o Images and words can have multiple meanings
o Signs (or languages) and their meanings are, in fact, constructed
They are an element of their moment in time and the society which
infuses them with meaning
o Signifier= Image/sound/word

o Signified= Mental concept


o Sign= Signifier + signified
Signifier, and that concept that it indicates
o Sign has to have both a signifier and a signified
There has to be a meaning/mental concept linked with the image,
word, or sound in order for that sign to do any work within that
culture
Cant have a meaningless signifier (i.e. a word that means nothing)
Nor a formless signifier (some abstract/invisible object
with no boundaries)
o I.e.: the word open
Can stand with a variety of signifieds
Signifier open (word/sound) can stand for different
signifieds/concepts
Signified: door, open-mindedness, emotionally transparent,
hours of operation
Slew of different signifieds that can go along with one
signifier
Conversely, many different signifiers that can provide the same
signified
Many different images, words, etc. that can signify open
o I.e.: bandana (mundane object) as a signifier
Signified: Rugged Americanness, Los Angeles (Crips and Bloods),
Western cowboy culture, country music, Hanky Code (gay mens
subculturedifferent colors of bandanas in different pockets
signifysuggestwhat kind of sex an individual is looking for:
oral, anal, etc.)
*Shows the ways that words, images, soundsand the concepts
that go along with itare fluid (not inherently linked)
Signs take on different meanings in different contexts
The ways different signifieds are associated with different
upbringings, cultures, environments
One signifier can have multiple signifiedsshift as one
moves in the world
Ceci nest pas une pipe, Magritte

Three different understandings/critical dimensions and commentary within this


piece:
o This is not a pipethis is an image of a pipe
Images are signifiers of that which they aim to signify, not the
signified themselves
o This picture/artwork as a whole (image of the pipe and words) itself is not
a physical pipe
Artwork is not that which it aims to represent
o This (the word, Ceci/pipe) is not a pipe
Words themselves, linguistics are mere signifierssignify and
indicate certain concepts, though they themselves are not
manifestations of the things they signify
Words are constructedcultures, people arbitrarily attach
linguistic meaning/words to certain concepts
The Face of Garbo (Barthes)
o Prompting us to think about the meanings, the signifieds of certain images
What are the specific concept(s) (signifieds) which are most
intentionally disseminated?
o Garbos face as a signifierdelves into that which it communicates
o Stands for Woman
Culturally ordained archetype of woman, sexuality, etc.
Communicates the plutonic ideal of womanpre-modern,
sculpted, manipulate archetype of female perfection
Antagonized by advent of photoshop and high-tech visual
manipulation
*We have certain words, images, sounds, that are linked to the concept of woman and
womanhood (i.e. the word woman, itself)
The real question: is woman anything, does it exist? What is the
relationship of these words/images/sounds to things in the world, what is
the fluidity?

The ways these concepts pertain not only to sex and gender, but to race,
culture, and ethnicity
Images, words that are attached to concepts, but what are these concepts to
begin with?

Lecture: 2/5
Film: Color Adjustment (Marlon Riggs)
In Color Adjustment, Marlon Riggs (the filmmaker) repeatedly asks us to question
the very idea of a "positive" or a "negative" image, and this is an important
question for Cultural Studies. Many Cultural Studies scholars argue that to label
any representation "good" or "bad" is beside the point; rather, the analysis must
consider the social/historical conditions under which it was produced, what kinds of
audiences it is meant for, and the conventions of representation that enable the
representation to "make sense."

Integration of African Americans into television culture


Amos and Andy show: indescribably popular, as well as indescribably primitive in
its overuse of stereotypes and clichs
o 1951: 12% of US homes have a TV
o Clichs about lazy and opportunistic black men as audience-pleasing
mechanism
o Many African Americans refused to watch due to blatant racist undertones
o Fully autonomous, separate black community
o Played on familiar theme: blacks might aspire to American Dream of
success, but will be entirely unable to achieve it
o NAACP lawsuit against show: Every character is either a clown or a
crook. Millions of Americans see it and think the entire race is the same
o Cancelled 2 seasons after debut, amidst advent of new era of integration
In cultural landscape of primetime American television, African Americans
remained in their placepositions of servitude or subjugation
Beulah popular: Female African American character popular because she
epitomized the ideal housekeeper

o So unaware of her own children, and so aware of someone elses


children
Dream of freedom and climate of race relations in television remained in tension
Good, wholesome, trouble-free portrayals of white culture
o 1955: 67% of US households have televisions
o Explosion of new baby boom families packaging what ideal American
family should be/have
o Big, sensationalized deal if black person was on televisionsuch a rare
phenomenon to see African Americans depicted anywhere
Adjustments: minorities involved in television industry had to make constant
adjustments to stay away from anger
o Nat King Cole the model of assimilation
At same time, de-segregation tensions at a peak
Aggravated racial tensions of the timeassimilation in schools,
and now into the homes of millions of Americans
Unable to find a national sponsorended after one season
Footage of civil rights movement littered the newsuncertainty
about how to represent African Americans in a TV show
1963: 90% of US homes have television
o Primetime faced with addressing the ongoing Civil Rights struggle
o Motion into more benevolent portrayals of African Americans in television
working to override barbaric precious images/stereotypes
1968: Presenting white negro-nesswith very little negro
o This is what it took to integrate African Americans into television
o Controversy and outrage amongst black Americans
Often came under attack for what they failed to depict
Black families severed from African American culture and society
o Created two categories of the black American
Those in the news who took racial hostility head on
Those on prime-time: no signs of any struggle or segregation,
images perfection and integration
Inaccurate depictions of the realities of struggle and ghettos
o Legitimating and normalizing that image of rosy perfection amidst
incredible social turmoil and revolutionary upheaval
1978: 95% of American homes have televisions
Cosby Show: portrayal perfectly attuned to post-integrated America
o Nuclear African American family in a time when black Americans are
born in poverty
o Mythic sanctuary: shield against social crisis that was the real reality
(polarization of wealthy and poor amidst trickle-down Reaganomics)
o Reaffirm the American dream and hardcore American values (work hard
and rewarded with perfect life)
Anything that digresses from this norm is suspect, and will likely
not be granted tenure on prime-time (i.e. Franks Place)

Franks Placeshowed broadest and most diverse spectrum of the African


American experiencefloundered

Lecture: 2/12
Representation is the production of meaning through language (Hall, The Work
of Representation, 28).

Semiotics (Barthes and Saussure):


o Sign= signifier + signified
Signifier: Image/sound/word
Signified: Mental Concept
o *Exploring how meanings are (constantly) being negotiated and renegotiated in time and place
Relationship between signifier and signified is fluid: a signifier
can, indeed be linked with multiple signifieds (whilst implicated
signifieds are also subject to change, themselves)
Multiple implications/meanings behind any one particular
concept, word, sound, concept
Relationship between words and their meanings is fluid, while
also arbitrary
No particular reason a red bandana is associated with gang
violence, homosexual community, etc.
Nothing absolute in actual objectlarbre and tree
implying the same concept, though nothing inherent in
each word/sound that implies tree
Arbitrary relationship
Images, words do not function like a mirror:
meaning/signifieds are produced in the practice/work of
representation
Subject to change: can and does change over time (added
signified, replaced signified, etc.)
Black: trouble, ominous, etc. re-signified through black
power movement to indicate beauty, positivity, strength
o Added meaning: didnt lose old meaning, new
layer of signified
o Practice of representation is socially and historically specific
Meanings created through unique social/historical circumstances
Argument of contingency
o Understanding meaning of one thing grounded in knowing what it is not
Key is binary opposition: understanding woman contingent
upon knowing the meaning of a man, its binary opposite
She is a woman specifically by virtue of the fact that she is
not a man

She is XX additionally infers that which she is not


What kind of work is sexist/racist image doing? (post)

Herman Gray: Politics of Representation in Network Television


TV has always been a medium that has had to appeal to a mass audience
changed in recent years due to cable/satellite
o No longer need to appeal as broadly to a mass audience
Who is doing the representing (who is in charge of representations on television)?
What are they showing us? Who are they imagining their audience to be?
o Historically an imagined mass audience that has certain characteristics:
middle-class, hetero-normative white people
Ways that different shows opened up space for different kinds of representations
of African Americans
o I.e. Roots: opened up space for more representations of blackness in
America
o Momentarily interrupted the gaze of televisions idealized white viewers
(189)

The Cosby Show


o Hailed as a ground-breaking television show; lauded for new, seemingly
positive representation of African Americans in television (achievement of
the American Dream)
Made people feel calm about the racial situation in the 1980s:
paradoxical because the racial situation in the 1980s US was
anything but calm
Stark contrasts between idealized images of the Cosby Show an the
news broadcasts/racial climates of the time
o BUT, problematic in itself: idealized visions which generate a false sense
of comfort/obscure the racial realities of the time
LA Riots following the beating of Rodney King (and subsequent
acquittal of involved officers)
Cosby Shows final episode overlapping with the tense moments of
the LA Riots
No matter how much television attempts to obscure the
picture, tense racial relations are still an integral component
of Americas racial/social landscape
o ~Representations in Django Unchained
o

From Visual Comm. 101:

Signs
o Signifier: a material form (ex. A sound or a visual mark)
o Signified: the meaning of the signifier which exists in your mind, the
concept which it refers to, but also another signifier
o Road sign: actual signifier
o Thought this road sign constructs, its conceptual meaning: signified
Representation which elicits specific mental meaning or
interpretation
o Signifier + signified = sign
Marlboro + images of rough and tough cowboy masculinity =
Marlboro masculinity
2 fuse as one: moment you see Marlboro, you think
masculinity
Signifieds link to other signifiers
o Backpack as a signifier
o What signified does it refer to
Web of meanings activated
Other signifiers which come to mind: school, students, homework,
books, backpacker
System of associations primed when you mention signifier,
based upon developed cultural meanings (formed from
personal memories, histories, experiences)
Pasta in Net picture
Net: tradition, sea, authenticity, fishing, market
Red, white, green: Italian flag
Signifying: Market, freshness, Italian, authentic Italian
culture (signified signifier elements in picturenet,
tomato, etc)
Different ideas and associations formed based upon
individual viewer experiences with Italian food, market,
etc
Khalua Signifiers: How do the signs (signifiers and signifieds)
come together to create a meaning?
Snow, fairies, goggles, gear, alcohol, night, recipe, tongue,
hat
Signs with individual meanings congregated in one place,
in one specific combination
o Conceptual meanings: fantasy, Russia, night
Fantasy experience, magical through
Khalua; associating alcohol with pleasure

Lecture: 2/14

Signs: words
o Literal meaning: what the word references
o Always attached to this are connotations
o I.e. Rose:
Literal meaning: particular species of flower
Layers of other meanings associated with that particular kind of
flower: love, romance, affections, passion
*Use of this flower to communicate meaning that is
beyond the meaning itself
*Use of different color roses to culturally connote different
things
o Signs can have multiple meanings
Bell Hooks: as a viewer, we have a lot of power to engage critically and
oppositionally with images/cultural products
o Explains the experience of what its like to be a black woman watching
films where youre constantly and consistently demeaned (according to
Hollywood tropes, the ideal female figure is the white woman)
Black women, historically in Hollywood film, have actually
supported the narrative of white men and women
o The Help: whose story was it really?
Problematic in that the person writing the stories was a white
journalisther narrative
o The oppositional gaze lets the spectator have a certain amount of agency
The meaning of any sign, regardless of how complicated it is, is
ultimately made in its viewing/interpretation
The meaning products have is not created by its producers, but by
those who digest and interpret it (regardless of the meaning
intended by the producers)
Reading against the grain: depends upon being cognizant of what
is behind any particular sign
Cosby Show was problematic BUT nonetheless, opened up the
space for different kinds of representations of African Americans
Imani Perry: prompts readers to take a critical/oppositional stance with regards
to pervasive sexism in Hip Hop culture
o Hip Hop is blatantly sexist: repetitive images of African American and
Latina females bodies as scantily-clad, lacking agency, existing solely for
male pleasure/gaze

o Argues that there are deeper ways to look at what goes on in Hip Hop
culture (similar to Byron Hurt)what is it saying about black masculinity,
racism, gendered racism in the United States, now
o Focusing on the ways that visual images in video and lyrics are sometimes
contradictory
Relationship between images and words in these cultural forms
What kinds of gender and race politics are going on here
o Lady Marmalade video: telling the story of the prostitute whilst also
becoming the prostitute
Much more female subjectivity in the traditional LaBelle version,
than is even possible in the recent version
Language of sexiness is also the language of sexism in our
culture
Intersection of sexism with race in video renders it all the more
complicated
What kinds of cultural work is being done in this video?
o Also arguing that there is a double jeopardy for black women
Dualism of racism and sexism: heightened effects
Particularly hard for women of color to perform/be in public in
ways that doesnt suggest overt sexual availability
Images that we see now are drawing on a long history of images:
what you see on TV is drawing on what has beenthere are
representational conventions
o Can we separate sexual liberation from sexism at all, ever, in any kind of
representation?
Can and will artists express sexuality in a way that pushes back
against racism and sexismis it possible? (especially if the way
youre shown on screen shows a lot of skin?)
Is it possible for people to read/perform Lady Marmalade
against the grain?
o Pays attention to the ways the music industry, itself, is exerting the
greatest force of power over what we see
Notes that, overall, the music industry is dominated by a small
group of white [rich] men making decisions
o Perry argues for getting more female producers
Hooks also follows this path of argument
Should there be more female producers, perhaps the situation
would be different
But, are not women themselves still working under the
same capitalistic constraints as other producers?
Nonetheless, perhaps the possibility of exerting more
authorial power over cultural images and products

Lecture: 2/19

Queen Latifah got to where she did without showing her skin or monopolizing off
of her sexualitybut different reality once she got there
o Explicitly political representation in her music video protesting the
Apartheid
o *The artists dont have any say: questions of selling out and of
authenticity complicated by these techniques
o Where the forms/styles of artistic expression cross the line from subculture
into something which is hegemonic (repeating the power relations they
once had the ability to contest)
Deindustrialization: Kelley (Looking to Get Paid) talks about the deindustrialized
city
o Shift in the patterns of employmentmanufacturing and manual labor
jobs move out of city centers to suburbs
Large-scale exodus out of urban centers, and thus little access to
decently-paid, unionized jobs requiring little education
Deterioration of the inner-cities (ghettoization), as moderately
well-off made mass exodus out (concentration of poverty in new
poverty-tracts)
Individuals seek to interact within this space and create counterculture to engage that environment and express life in such
circumstances
o Question of authenticity: graffiti artists
Incredible skill to paint such artwork on moving target without
getting caught
Idea of selling out in distributing work to display in public
arenas, selling it, etc.
What is ideology?
o Set of agreed upon values and principles, not necessarily conscious
o Lens through which one sees the world
o Reinforces power relations and myths
o Set of values and ideas propagated by overall consent, as garnered through
a process of naturalization
o Inversion of central reality that inhibits revolution
o *A shared set of values and beliefs that exist within a given
society/culture, through which people live out their relations to social
institutions and structures

o *Ideology refers to the ways that certain concepts and values are made
to seem like natural, inevitable aspects of everyday life (operate upon a
level of common sense)
Ideologies are culturally and historically specific
o *Dominant ideologies reproduce social relationships and inequalities
o Ideologies are often naturalized and understood as truth
so social inequalities often come to seem natural
o Workers are enmeshed in the dominant organizations and ideologies of
society, as reigned over by the ruling class
False consciousness: you think you know what is best for you
and your family, that you understand your existenceif such
understandings are not constructed in conjunction with class
struggle, then it is a false consciousness
Our perceptions of who we are, who we want to be, are the product
of ideology
Gramsci: ideology in terms of hegemony
o Dominant ideologies are not actually set in stone
o There are dominant, powerful ideologies, but they are always in flux
(always under some kind of contestation by other ideas and values)
o Hegemony depends upon consent of governed or ruled (not a coercive
type of power)
o Maintains the status quoruling class is invested in producing what is
o Way of packaging and disseminating ideology in a way which prompts the
governed to permissively accept and act upon thempackaged under the
pretense of being in governed individuals best interest, when it is, in
reality, only in the best interests of the governing elite
o The power and dominance that one social group holds over others[it] is
more than social power itself; it is a method of gaining and maintaining
power (James Lull, 61)
o A situation in which a provisional alliance of certain social groups can
exert total social authority; over other subordinate groups, not simply by
coercion or by the direct imposition of ruling ideas, but by winning and
shaping consent so that the power of the dominant classes appears both
legitimate and natural (Hebidge, 15-16)
Hebdige: study of the working class in 1970s England struggling with the values
and ideologies of their parents generation; huge economic downturn; immigration
from former colonies (i.e. Jamaica)
o Youth subcultures (like punk in the 1970s) challenge hegemonic power by
resisting the dominant values that are being taught
o Resisting the injustices built into working class life in 1970s England

o Not really challenging hegemonic values directly, but challenging them


obliquely through styleusing that which they have access to (their own
bodies) to make a counter-hegemonic statement
Rework your signs/symbols and put them in your face
Style itself is a powerful way of resisting hegemonic ideologies
o Using semiotics and a critique of style (style as a critique)
Using style as a form of refusal
I.e. Tube of Vaseline: signifies his homosexuality (sign of revolt:
recreating meaning, outlined use of the product, and displaying its
anti-hegemonic use to nearby police officers)
Safety pin: comes to signify DIY clothing, unconventional
piercings, etc.)means of pushing values back in everybodys face
by using a cultural product in non-conventional, counterhegemonic ways
Clothes are rags because society has not given me what it promised
take the rags, transform it into public style as a means of
shoving it back into peoples faces
Use everyday, mundane objectsthat already had meaningsand
twist the meanings (put it in the wrong place, wear it in the wrong
location): safety pins, garbage bags, rags push resistance back
into the faces of the elites
o Bricolage: piecing together various elements of a culture and bringing
them together in ways they are not supposed toreappropriation of
objects, and thus of signs and symbols (in piecing them together in
unconventional ways, one is restructuring their meanings, their
signifieds)
Aim of making people feel uncomfortable

Lecture: 2/21

*Assignment due on March 5*


Dominant ideologies operate at the level of common sense
o Dominant ideologies are always in tension with other forcesviews and
experiences that dont match the dominant ideology (dominant ideologies
are always in flux
o Term hegemony indicates that ideological meaning is always an object of
strugglenot fixed (vs. oppressive force that dominates subjects)
o People are much more in relationship with/interacting with ideologies to
Gramsci than to Marx
o Resistance to hegemony happens on a number of levels

Much room in mass media representations for resistance


Ideology, as it structures society and presents itself as common
sense to the way the world is organizedare repeated over and
over again in the mass media
Images in mass media can sometimes be cracks in hegemonic
meanings
o Does benefit dominant groups, but doesnt do so through coercion (rather,
though consent)
Convince subversive public that ideologies are in their best interest
suppress class consciousness
Hegemonic domination not impenetrable, though
Hegemony is always an incomplete process
Subculture: purpose is to communicate nonconformity to the values of a particular
society, whilst also indicating a shared group identity
o Style a mechanism of semantic disorder
o Meant to create a double taketo push back and to make the common
sense (or what functions as common sense) less invisible

Michel Foucault

Disagrees with Marx on notion of ideology


o Does not believe in particular set of values propagated by ruling class, nor
underlying truth (class consciousness) which will prompt revolution
o Does not believe in underlying truth, nor overlying ideologies aimed at
obscuring it
o For Foucault, power operates in a very circulatory fashionpower is
everywhere
No singular person has a grasp on power, imposing it on other
peopleno ruling class disseminating a ruling ideology
At certain times and places, there are sets of rules that govern what
can be said/what is representable
o Discourse governs what is sayable/representable at any time and place
o Discourse has specific meaning for Foucault
Discourse can be understood as a group of statements that provides
a means for talking about and a way of representing knowledge
about a particular topic at a particular historical moment
Refers to specific bodies of knowledge that themselves define and
limit what can be said about something in a given time and place
o New regimes in discourse and forms of knowledge
How is it that at certain moments/points of knowledge
Modification in the rules that govern the kinds of things that can be
truenot a change of content or a recovery of old truths: it is a

question of what governs statements, and the ways they govern


each other so as to constitute a set of propositions that are
scientifically acceptable and able to be validated or falsified
What effects of power circulate around scientific statements
Whatever makes sense to represent certain times/places is
only possible because of certain historical contexts
I.e. Cosby Show
Question not: is this accurate portrayal of African
Americans in 1980s
Question: what are the conditions of possibility that make
this representation possible and meaningful at this
moment? (Whats going on socially, economically, and
politically?)
We have to get rid of the idea that there is a knower doing the work here
o Knowledge is enabled by a whole set of conditions of possibility that
builds off of what has been possible in the past (and continues to move on
that)

Lecture 2/26
Ideas to be addressed today: Ideas of subject, discourse, and truth

Foucault theorized on modern power in modern societies


o Societies in which people learn to discipline themselvesability in
modern societies to watch, to surveil, to pay attention to everything
everyone is doing
o Panopticonmetaphor to explain all-encompassing model of surveillance:
this is what modern societies are built upon
Theorizing idea of modern societies (modern NOT with
connotation of advanced, moving forward in time, but as a
particular society with particular characteristics, through which
society is managed)
Doesnt think we are advancing (theory of linear progress
is not accurately describing history)
Were not as free as we think we arewere constantly
watching and disciplining ourselves
You are always being produced as subjects through
discourse
Some characteristics of modernity
o A break having to do with controlling nature: science, medicine,
technology, industry
o The development of capitalism and technologies of representation

o Deepened anxieties about the relationship between real world and


representation
o But modernityand claims of the modernwere always made as a
comparison: Look how modern we are in comparison to
Counters the idea of progressusually modernity is descriptive of
some comparative time (were modern because were not
primitve)
Modern societies have these kinds of characteristics, relationships
to technology and knowledge
o *Whats important to Foucault is the way power operates in modern
societies
Along with the idea that modern societies can control nature is the
idea that such happens because were advancing scientifically
(whats science but a way to understand and explain the natural
world)
Advancements in science=ability to better understand and
eventually control the modern world
I.e. modern technology to counter the effects of weather
o Self-surveillance according to certain discourses (medical discourse,
psychological discourse)
Discourse not necessarily the truthFoucault not even sure if the
truth is possible
Scientific discourse as embodiment of power
The way discourse operatesnever separated from power: it is
part of the process of circulating power

March 5, 2013
Lecture

Binary differences: concepts, words, etc. come to mean something through their
opposition with the other
o Definitional significance by that which something is not
o I.e. Difference between black and white
No inherit meaning in the concept/word black
Gains meaning by being different than whiteto be black
is not to be white, etc.
o Meaning made by contrasting it against something else that is its opposite
basic meanings are made in this contrast
o Binary configurations common ways of understanding and classifying the
worldbut still very reductionist
What if you cant be seen as clearly classifiable on one side or the
other?not an accurate categorization/way of looking at the
world: world is much more complicated than these neat categories

Concept of the other


o European concept as developed during the rise of Orientalism
o Sports Illustrated 2013 Swimsuit edition: using ethnic otherness as props
Why are visual representations of otherness so compelling?
o Truth and power: how do you know what is in different parts of the
world?whats going on, how people live in other parts of the world?
We live in a world in which these kinds of representations live
the representation of others through an anthropological
othering
This is how other people live, how they are
Anthropological categorizations/conventions of trying to
disseminate to a public that which they are not
I.e. National Geographic: travel around the world with the
worlds best photographers to show you what its like in
other parts of the worldso you know
o But what do you thus know?
o Foucault (Truth and Power): The important thing
here, I believe, is that
each society has its regime of truth, its
general politics of truththat is, the types
of discourse it accepts and makes function
as true; the mechanisms and instances that
enable one to distinguish true and false
statements; the means by which each is
sanctioned; the techniques and procedures
accorded value in the acquisition of truth;
the status of those who are charged with
saying what counts as true
Instance in which public is usedshort paragraph
explaining the use of the term in this instance

Lecture
3/7/2013

Couple in the Cage


o Otherness continues to be a valuable form of representationhow can
other bodies/manifestations of the other be pitted against us to help us
gain meaning of ourselves
o Discourse creates guidelines for what we can/cant see, and what makes
sense across time and place
o Sports Illustrated: why this image now?
o Coco Fusko: supposed to be a cultural critique of notions of the exotic,
and the ways notions of otherness have been formed through a
European-centric gaze

o Draws on process of exhibiting others (colonizing practice)take


natives back to metropole to show other people/place them on display
Historical practice of exhibiting people supposed to provide
opportunities for colonizing Europeans to contemplate the
aesthetic differences, to provide opportunities for scientific
analysis, and to entertain
Theories of the gaze and spectatorship
o Are theories of address, rather than theories of reception
o The gaze is not an individuals act of looking; rather, it situates the viewer
in a field of meaning production (organized around looking practices) that
involves recognition of oneself as a member of that world of meaning
o Useful because they provide us with a way to think about and talk about
looking practices, and the relationships of power that are built into looking
practices
o Inspecting gaze: Inspecting the lesbian body, women of colorhave
created typologies, and classifications of people based upon physical
features
o Interrelation of power and the gaze: power of the looker over the lookee,
who is looking at whom?
The Public Sphere: Habermas
o Historically (Enlightenment era Europe, especially England), defined as a
domain of public conversation and cultural expression; locus of
discussions of common good; independent of commercial interests;
contrasted to private sphere (home, private property)
o Linked with idea of the commonsspaces open to freedom of
assembly, speech, etc.
o Habermas concerned that rise of industrial and consumer capitalism
brought on decline of pubic sphere through the commercialization (i.e.
privatization) of almost everything, including space
Participation in public conversations mediated by consumption;
tension between consumer and citizen
o One public sphere or many?
Access to participation structured by gender, race, and class,
o Utopian concept
o Warner: looks at the ways any public might be created through text (public
representations: words, images, etc.)
o How publics are produced through culture (mass popular culture
primarily)how are particular kinds of public made when the audience is
intended to be very broad

Lecture
3/12/2013
Publics and Counterpublics, Michael Warner

For Warner, publics have to be spontaneousthey have to be self-organizing,


produced through discourse in some way through the address of
representations
o Theories of address: talking about ways of describing who or what is
addressed in representation
o specific spectators being addressed instead, referencing a field of
address
Addressed, to varying degrees, in a field of meaning
Chick Flicks: Mean Girls, Nicholas Sparks, Sex & the City
o Particular categorization of film (particular representation)not
addressing specific girls and women, specific chicks
Instead: putting out representations/communicating discourse into
a field of femininity
Hailing folks who can see themselves being addressed in that field
of femininity
Specific kind of femininityparticular age constraint,
certain form of normativity (normative femininity)
[though people who identify within this field of femininity
dont necessarily need to have a female bodyand many
dont]
o Chick flicks produce a particular kind of publicparticular kind of
spectatorship
Grouping a public of individuals who see such films as speaking
to them
Men might be included in public of individuals who enjoy the
filmssense of inclusion in this field of femininity
For Michael Warner, the public is organized through discoursethrough some
kind of discourse as its published/put out into the world
Public a slippery termmany meanings, which are sometimes
conflicting/contradictory
o Public eye, public transportation/school/library/parks, public displays of
affection, public restrooms, not private, public policy, public opinion (as
measured in polls, for instance)
o *So many ways that public can be defined: attention (public eye=public
attention, exposure; points of access; sense of sharedness; imbued in
people)
o Within publics, there are assumptions about who is includedparticular
kinds of people, bodies, ideological dispositions, that are imagined in
these publics
BUT NOT EVERYBODY: in none of the aforementioned publics
is everybody included
For Warner, citizenship doesnt necessarily indicate a public
THE public: usually considered to refer to everybody (public opinion: THE public
thinks this, etc.)

o BUT, is it really addressed to everybody?


A public: often suggests that theres a more specific, concrete
group/audience/crowd at an event
o But, A public also considers itself a totality: taking up space at a particular
time
o *What are the ways that the term public comes into being only in relation
to texts and/or circulation (like the public of this essay) (66)
Warner really writing about the kind of public that comes into being in relation to
texts and their circulation
o Texts that circulate and produce publics in their circulation, fields of
address; produce publics in ways that individuals interact with the text
o Seven rules that manage publics:
Public is self-organized, relation amongst strangers, addressed in
both personal and impersonal ways, constituted through mere
interaction, social spaces that are created by the reflexive
circulation of discourse, act historically relative to the temporality
of their situation, are poetic/world-making
o Self-organized
Agency: coalition of individuals convened by virtue of their own
agency/consent
Recognizing yourself as a target of address
Public, as self-organized, has to come together through some
means other than the state
The public must be sovereign with respects to the state
If a public is self-organized, it doesnt come together through state
means (laws, bureaucratic institutions) public comes to reflect a
pure sense of civil society
~Public sphere in which people convenein ways not
mandated by the stateto talk/discuss with one another
We imagine ourselves as being to come together on our own
regard, by our own motivation
Totalitarian regimes: publics convened by the statesno way for
individuals to come together on their own motivation
Situation which also haunts modern capitalism
Merely paying attention can be enough to make you a member
o Exist by virtue of being addressed
Public is also the very reason text is produced: why else would
books, films, blogs be created?
There is a public that is being called into existence every
time something is published and disseminated to the world
Does a public existtexts made to address public OR are texts
madeand then address publics?
BOTH, both are mutually occurring, mutually reinforcing
forces

o Public is notional as much as it is empirical


o Whenever we have a public, it always has to exceed those we know to
belonghas to be bigger than that
Public has to be bigger than a list of ones friends

Lecture
3/14/2013

Idea of publics is very slipperydifferent kinds of meanings in different settings


Habermas and the public sphere
o Historically (Enlightenment era Europe, especially England) defined as a
domain of public conversation and cultural expression: locus of
discussions of common good; independent of commercial interests;
contrasted to private sphere (home, private property)
o Linked with idea of the commonsspaces open to freedom of assembly,
speech, etc.
o Habermas concerned that rise of industrial and consumer capitalism
brought on decline of public sphere through the commercialization (i.e.
privatization) of almost everything, including space
Participation in public conversations mediated by consumption;
tension between consumer and citizen
o One public sphere or many?
Access to participation structured by gender, race, and class
o Utopian concept
o Public sphere NEEDS mass media to distribute information
(newspapers, television, etc.)cant have robust idea of democracy if
only a few people can participate in discussions via face-to-face
discussion
But at the same time such is corrupted by capitalistic interests,
and the ways mass media constrains the terms of discussion
o Main goal of public sphere: convene personal interests and needs, and
transform them into an idea of whats best for all
Specific needs of each individual sifted through to create some
compromised system that is best for allwhat is best for all of us?
~Social contract theory

o Limited participation as democracy was emergingvery limited slice of


people creating democracy (white men with money)colonized, enslaved
men/women could not participate in these public sphere discussions
o What are the ways we can understand the workings of the public sphere,
as it operates now?
o More channels of involvement in conversations due to mass media,
BUT these conversations are quite influenced by corporate interests
Public produce and produce themselves through circulated texts (tv shows,
advertisements, websites, radio shows, book)
Public is self-organized, exists by virtue of being addressed (67)
o Exists by virtue of being addressed
o Constituted by mere attention

Lecture: 3/18/2013

Michael Warners 7 characteristics of public


o A public is self-organized
o A public is a relation among strangers
o The address of public speech is both personal and impersonal
o A public is constituted through mere attention
o A public is the social space created by the reflexive circulation of
discourse
Not just a speaker and listener/sender and receiver
Not just one text that creates a public
Has to be circulation going on: text has to circulate to somewhere
else
Cant be institutionally constrainedwould go against (public is
self organized)
Reflexive: conscious of itself, references itself
Publics are a social space in which we know not everybody
created in the way texts/discourses circulate (keep coming back to
themselves)
o Publics act historically according to the temporality of their circulation
Publics time-sensitivematters when and where these texts are
being circulated
Time-sensitive: publics are produced through whatever is being
paid attention to
It matters what time and place texts/discourses are circulating in
the rhythm of the temporality matters
96: A public can only act in the temporality of a circulation which
gives it existence

The faster a text is published (the closer it occurs with


something in the world), the more enabled is the public to
act in the world, to be political, to do something in the
world
Publics produced through academic textsdont feel
immediately addressed, no compulsions/ability to
immediately act (versus just to reflect)
Vs. daily newspaper: provides events of the now (election,
Occupy)create publics with more potential to do
something, act
Websites: instantaneousno sense that theyre in
conversation with what keeps happening; feels like youre
part of a public which is being made and remade by the
second
Publics act in particular times and places according to the rhythms
of their circulationwith the rhythms with which you can engage,
with the circulation of texts
New Yorker: comes out once a weekits own temporality
and its own type of public (upper class, elite)
Not just the content, but how frequent is its rhythm
Alsohow are the rhythms themselves creating situations
in which they can be reflexive (conditions of reflexivity)
The Spectator: first publication published in 18th century England
Aim to enliven with wit and temper with reality; elicit
philosophy, dwell at assemblies, tea tables, and coffee
houses
*Very conscious of the ways it want to produce public
discourseaddresses its readers as an active public
Claims to be addressing a general public
Spectator becomes an interesting example: claiming to be a
common man addressing everyone, but admits to needing a
female point of view every now and then
o Gets female presence when Kitty Termagint writes
in about her own club
o Mr. Spectator has his club (white, bourgeois
Englishman)
o Kitty has her own clubused letters from the SheRomps to contrast his typical bourgeois society, and
highlight the constraint of his public
Establishing and identifying his public
through process of othering: we are this by
virtue of our difference from the She Romp
public of females
o Are the She Romps a counter-hegemonic public?

o A public is poetic world making


Particular kind of public making going on in representationparticularly in
printed/visual representationshow are publics made in images?
o No single text can create a public, nor a single voice or text: all are
insufficient

Donna Haraway

Explicitly trying to interrupt easy interpretation so that those semiotic systems


(symbolic systems by which we think we already know the world) become
conscious to us
Drawing our attention to the ways our national publics get made through
representation
Process of taxidermy, of making living animal into a representation for a spectator
exhibit
o In so doing, she tells narrative about those producing the stories, and the
stories the representation thus tells to those coming to view it
What it means to be a member of the national public is produced through texts
(stories, images, films, TV shows) that are circulated
Lecture
3/21/2013
Where Weve Been
Discussions about cultural studies as a field discussions of:
Representation (simplest subset of cultural studies)
o The production of meaning through language (Hall, 28)
o All representation, whether created for science or for entertainment, is
produced within and through relations of power at work in specific
historical moments (time/place)
o All representation is enmeshed in power relationsspeaks to issues and
questions of semiotics
o Whether created for science, entertainment, etc.must always make sense
in their time and place
Can only make sense if it fits within a given sign system
Sign systems themselves are shaped by ideologyways of
thinking, beliefs and values that come to seem natural
Representations need to make sense within a sign systemin order
to have meaning at all, it is already all enmeshed in power
relationships
Semiotics
o Symbols work together as language within sign system
o Draw on systems/rules/codes for meaning
Importance of history in creating codes that are culturally legible

Nearly all representation (written visual, aural) draws on


existing signs for coherence
o Sign systemsthe ways that signs, symbols work together like a language
Always draw on rules and codes for meaning
o Think about the ways that representations are enmeshed in relations
of powerhow does an understanding of semiotics help us to make
this connection?
o
Ideology
o Specific beliefs and values that seem like natural, inevitable aspects of
everyday life
o Shape the meaning-making abilities of signsideologies shape sign
systems
o Sign systems, by and large, perpetuate hegemony
o Work in the favor of those who are the best off
o The ways that sign systems are cunningly utilized to disseminate and
further solidify particular ideologies in some hegemonic system
Hegemony
o Like ideology, but also requires consent of the governed
o Hegemonic notions/representations/language must appeal to the governed,
and this opens up cracks in systems of dominance
Hegemonic, counter-hegemonic, and disruptive representations and
readings
o Representations always need to throw a bone out to the governedyou
will like this, speaking to you, moments of pandering to the individual
segments of the public
In doing so, they reproduce hegemony, but open up little cracks
where counter-hegemonic discourses can infiltrate
o Punk rock: example of possible counter-hegemonic discourse
Tiny window in London in which counter-hegemonic ideologies
could infiltrate
Didnt lastultimately swept up by commercial interestspunk
rock being sold back to us, with corporate chain stores specializing
in this punk rock style
Open up those cracks
Graffiti: counter-hegemonic, disruptive representations
Open up cracks (take advantage of openings)
But, in a lot of places, swept up in hegemonic ways of
making meaning
Foucault, Truth, and the Gaze
o Looking relations and power
o Oppositional gaze
o *They ways subjects are made through looking relationslooking itself
can be a resistant act

Orientalism
o Through gaze and institutionalization of the gaze, some people have been
relegated to the lower ranks of the other, inferior to a superior us
Publics/Public Sphere
o For Habermas:
Bourgeois public sphere transformed (threatened) by private
interests, especially corporations (able to manipulate media and
state)
Citizens become consumers, less concerned with public
good (?)
Public sphere has become threatened by private interests
(especially media and corporations)
This thus means that those private citizens who convene in
public sphere to discuss ideas/concerns become less
citizens as much as consumers
o For Warner:
A space of discourse
Counterpublic: conflictual with dominant discourse
Less concerned about deteriorated quality of the public sphere; for
him public is merely formed upon the circulation of discourse
Particularly interested in the ways that particular kinds of publics
become organized (self-organized) and why
Organize to coagulate into the public
Mr. Spectator: aiming to form the public
o Representing himself as every mannormal
spectator walking around London seeing what I/you
see, judging itas all would based upon similar
systems of morality, comportment, behavior,
ideology
o Tries to show himself as the public
Public are self-organized, but Warner interested in the ways
certain kinds of discourse get to circulate as representative
of the public
o Whereas, other forms of discourse seem so far off,
so beyond the pail (i.e. She Romps) that they
actually embody that which we dont want in our
public
o Placed in the behavior as form of public shame
invites readers to regard disgraceful behavior
Warner trying to show us that there are ways in which some
discourses are so subconsciously counter to the dominant
discourses/ideas of publics, that they can only really be
understood as counter-publics

o Counter publics maintains at some level an


awareness of its subordinate statusregards itself
in relation to its difference from a dominant public
Some ways of engaging in expression that are public
making, but which are so aware of their counter-hegemonic
discourses, that they actually function as counter publics
o I.e. queer publics: engaging in acts which are
public-making but which are so counter, they are
often believed to be better performed in private
o Publics self-organizing and independent of the state
but in order to be recognizable, they must be
recognized by the state
o Counter-publics: want to perform in public and
want you (the state) to legitimate it
o XX is too intimate for you to bring into the public;
seems a private matter rather than for public
expression

Where Were Going


o Making national publics through visual representation (museums,
scientific representation, photographs, fairs, magazines, television)
How are national publics made through representation or
circulation of discourse?
Feelings of connectedness forged through media
representation and viewing
o Belonging in nation grounded in much more than logistical stipulations of
citizenship, but also in emotions: feelings of belonging, inclusion (i.e. in
Life magazines photographic representations of the nationfeelings of
being represented or excluded?)

The Public (Michael Warner)


Can be defined as a space of discourse, which involves a relation among strangers, in
which public speech is both personal and impersonal, a social space constituted through
the reflexive circulation of discourse, that is, the circulation and exchange of ideas
Imagined Community (Benedict Anderson)
The nation is an imagined political community. It is imagined because the members of
even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or
even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion (pg.
6)

Nations dont exist naturallyyour own belonging in a nation is not just


something which simply happens

How is it that when we live in a nation, we have little connection to the people of
the nationmillions of people we will never have contact withbut are still so
attached to it? And so much so that many of us are willing to kill and die for it.
o How did this happen, how is this the case?
o Nation is like a community (in which members have deep kin and
connections with others in the community)and imagined community
because we dont actually have deep kin and connections with the
majority of our nation
o In our minds lives a sentiment that we are all linked/share an investment in
shaping the future, formed from the same past and history
o All happens through shared culture

Lecture
4/2/2013

Habermas contribution: public sphere is intergral component of democracy


Democracy itselfwhat is democracy?
o Electionsfree and fair
o Rights and civil liberties
o Participation in decisions that affect you
o People
o Pinnacle of civilization
Warners discussion of publics: complicated discussion might be boiled down to:
o Public as a space of discourse, which involves a relation amongst
strangers, in which public speech is both personal and impersonal, a social
space constituted through the reflexive circulation of discourse, that is,
the circulation and exchange of ideas
o Public which exist not just for elections, but for all kinds of reasons, made
by all kinds of discourses and texts as they circulate
o Counter-public: maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of
its subordinate status
Marks itself off not just from a wider status, but a more dominant
one
Sturken, Haraway, Kozol: all asking us to look at the nationhow is the imagined
community of the nation produced?
o Must think of the nation as a type of public that is produced and
reproduced through discourse
o About producing a sense of belongingelement of belonging in a nation
Benedict Anderson: imagined community
o Anderson views nations as imagined communities in the sense that they
are systems of cultural representation whereby people come to imagine
a shared experience of identification with an extended community (Anne
McClintock)

o Specifics: when, where, and under what conditions is this public


made/does it exist?
Harraway: deep analysis of natural history museum and its various elements
layers of connotations and myths behind each diorama
o All signs have literal meaningsgorilla in jungle
o But all signs also have connotative values, layers of meanings and
connotations that exist to give the sign much deeper meaning than a mere
gorilla in the jungle
o What does statue of Roosevelt in this setting, at this time, suggestwhat
are the meanings that are suggested by its physical, cultural, and social
contextwhat meanings have been layered in since the time it was
rectified?
What kinds of publics do you think we can imagine as being produced through
this museum and its displays?
o Public that imagines itself to be strong, modern, masters over nature
o All of these images have a history/genealogyalways inevitable
interpreted through lens of previous experiences/images
o Taxidermy supposed to give image of reality
But not realitya representation of reality that is filtered through
webs of connotations, myths, meanings

Lecture
4/5/2013
PAPER PROMPT: Explore how, under what conditions a public you feel you are a
part of, is madewho is the public?
Find text and identify public, or vice versa
Easier to work with something visual, than that is written (MWexemplary of
analysis of written texts
Draw on Michael Warner to define why, under what conditions something is
public, how you see yourself as part of public
Dates: between original syllabus dates and one extraneous from syllabus
Explore publics and the way it is made through (popular) culture
Specific argument about publiceffects, who are members, counterpublic? (to
what?), when/where does it have meaning?
Nation: broad public, but produced and reproduced all the time (i.e. through
photographs)

o Broadness has effectslets people know when theyre not members of


such
o How broadness or narrowness of public has its own effects
Situate public in specific time and place

Museum picture: who is the public?


Tourists, those detached from nature, accustomed to privilege as gaze givers
Public is imagined (might not necessarily exist in the field of address, public
space, image)
o National subject, citizen of particular kind being imagined
o Harraway: museum a particular take on the world, produced in particular
time and place, under particular ideologies/values, with particular
audience in mind (educated in particular ways of relating to nature)
Berlant: ways that individuals were excluded from national public, mechanisms of
exclusion
o National monuments addressing them as members of the public, but active
exclusions from the public
o I.e. Prop 8 announcementexclusionary advertisement; excludes gay
people from national public discourse
o I.e. Prop S: attempting to exclude homeless people from the public
Galton composite photograph: The Jewish Type (1883)

W.E. Dubois exhibit at Paris Exposition: attempts to stretch the limits of the
nationwho is allowed to participate
o Called attention to tension persisting between African American identity
and inclusion in the American public
o Images/representations always drawing on former representations
particular ways of representing people, taking photographs, grounded in
history
Dubois: utilizes historical photographic method of eugenics
portraitsphotographic method of physically categorizing
individuals by recorded physical difference (visible, codified
scientific evidence of difference)

Lecture: 4/9
Paper:
Define and engage with near-indefinable concept of publics
Self-forming, but also depends upon something that already exists
Explore concept of public, publics, public sphere
o Come up with sense of what it means, in conversation with the
readings
o How you see publics taking shape in your example, in this time/place,
what is its relevance

o Write without knowing what youre going to say


Counterpublics: show engagement with idea of public

Smith, Kozol, Sturken: how do camera images capture the perfect essence of events, as
they happened
Photograph: implies that event occurred exactly as it is represented
o Myth of photographic truth: camera images assumedvery broadlyto
present some definitive truth of an event
o Mode of capture matters: graininess of Zapruder film implies truth, and an
upmost accuracy of the event
Cameras bear incredible nation-making ability/quality
o Ability to evoke memory, to create historythis is what happened to us
o Images of national tragedies become emblems of ones past and what it
means to be part of that nation; markers of what we shared
If community/nation is imaginednation/communities are created
by these moments of catastrophe: they become markers of what we
share, our common history
Take on layers of national meaningimage represents something
that is shared in the national community
o Images of plane crashing into Towers: interpreted as image of something
that happened to us as a nation
o Many of our memories as a nation (our national memory), we often
imagine as occurring in camera images
Action actually occurred for us on television or in photographs
o Individuals start to replace memory of them being there with something
they see on television (such is the image that is repeated over and over and
over again)
Sturken: cultural memory
o The nation remembers through culture: these images are how we tell
stories about our past
o Images contain very specific elements/implications of what happened
o Sturken: screen memories in Freudian sensememory that gets
substituted for something that you dont want to recall/subconsciously
cannot deal with
Screen both blocks something out as you project something onto it
Camera images act as national screen memories because they tend
to blur the distinction between what is occurring in culture and
what actually took place/who was involved blur line between
cultural memory and history
Blur the line between your own personal memories/experiences
and cultural memories of the nation
o Ginsberg: screen memories (countered to Sturkens interpretation of the
concept)

o Zapruder film: and the ways it came to be an element of cultural memory


for the nation
Lecture: 4/16
Specific instance of public-makinghow is it formed, what kind of conversations do
they generate?
Public good: way that both private and public pursuits are secured
Enlightenment: shift away from absolute monarchies and notions of divine
right notion of sovereignty
o People are capable ofand should thus have the freedom toact as their
own entities, sovereign from a ruler
o Requires a space where conglomeration of people can act towards their
own governance (public sphere)
o Public sphere rests on the idea that there is sovereignty for the people, as
well as a right to free expression, voice, and vote
Must be some kind of public spacepublic space for texts to circulate
o Historically associated with what has been called a commons

Lecture: 4/18
Berlant:
Power of narrative/story
Terms of citizenshiphow are these laid out to us in popular culture?
Symbols of what it means to be Americanoften represented as child (why are
these the most hopeful symbols of national life circulating the public sphere?)
Infantile citizen:
o Naivet, hopeful idealism
o Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington: displacement of infantile patriotism
Lecture: 4/24

Fantasy of unity: imagined community

o Oversimplified imagery to soften the edges of national historyerases the


complexities of national memory
o Replaces rough edges with magical, collective way of thinking permitting
everyone to join in in the conversation
o Easily manipulated like a fetish: something imbued with magical
meaning
o Substituting allegories/narratives for what is hard to deal with/come to
terms with/discuss publicly
Infantile citizen the perfect citizen in contemporary political discourse
assuages any complication of the memory of who we are

Faye Ginsburg
Use of aboriginal representations to indicate backwardness
Nannuck of the North: ethnographic film on aboriginal culture
Long history of production of these groups as others to be exoticized and placed
on display (~Coco Fuscko)
Historical trajectory of power through representation/the power to represent
44: Fact of their appearance on TV in Inuit terms challenges the traditional
hierarchy of image-making
o Native engagements with broadcasting technology ability to tell their
own stories on their own terms
o Allows public space for the formation of counter-public/counter-discourse
to counter the narratives of Canada/Australia which dont include Inuit
subjects as important components of the nation
Naomi Klein: No Logo
Lecture 4/25
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is an economic, political, and cultural philosophyor ideology
that privileges free market principles and individualism
According to Aiha Ong: the main elements of neoliberalism as a political
philosophy are a.) the claim that the market is better than the state at distributing
public resources and b.) a return to aform of individualismwhich is
competitive, possessive, and constructed often in terms of the doctrine of
consumer sovereignty (Neoliberalism as Exception, 11)
Some elements:
o Privatization (of public services and institutions)
o Individualism and personal responsibility: individuals expected to take
personal responsibility for their own success. People displaced though
neoliberal policies dealt with through law and order, or not at all
o Freedom and market fundamentalism (free market equated to individual
freedom and choice)
o Extremely limited state

Kleins critique based upon graph demonstrating that US corporations have begun
to make drastically higher profits despite paying lower taxes
o Tax base has been eroding people want the state out
o Demonstrated need to bring corporate influencessuch as channel1into
domains that should traditionally be funded by public funds
o Services/elements of society whichat one moment were seen as publicly
fundedin jeopardy as tax base has become eroded
i.e. public education: cost of tax base being taken away pushed
onto students though tuition hikes and fees
Vs. once-persisting notions of public education as a public
good, to be shared and subsidized by all for mutual good
(degradation of social contract mentality)
o Disruption of the kinds of discussions we can have in public spaces
Over the decades, the public sphere has been eroded by
privatization
o Everything comes to be mediated trough private institutions/brands
relationships/perceptions of the states, of others
Public space so deeply brandedshapes our relationship with each
other, our sense of the public/commons how does it shape not
just what can be though/said and what relationships we can
imagine, but also who can circulate in the public/move around?

Claire Sears and Jack Ha

Vice Laws of mid-19th century: prevented dressing in clothing non-reflective of


ones gender (aka anti-cross-dressing laws) [SF Vice Laws]
o Addressed anxieties about belongingwho belonged, who didnt
o Racial anxieties (over Chinese) intertwined with gender anxieties: laws
passed to separate people and manage people (Chinese in SF, and gender)
o Way of regulating peoplekeeping something that was non-normative
in private segregate and discipline people
o Issues of private/publicwhat should remain private, what should public
boundary be built around

Lecture 5/2

Hegemonic practice of self-branding


What is hegemony?
o The power and dominance that one social group hold over others[it] is
more than social power itself; it is a method of gaining and maintaining
power (James Lull, 61)

o A situation in which a provisional alliance of certain social groups can


exert total social authority over other subordinate groups, not simply by
coercion or by the direct imposition of ruling ideas, but by winning and
shaping consent so that the power of the dominant classes appears both
legitimate and natural (Hebidge, 15-16)
Ad is never just an ad, an image is never just an imageall based within (and
haunted with) histories of representation

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