Popular culture and power

Last week we read about widespread fragmentation of cultural interests, activities, and audiences (what some would call the postmodern condition). Knowing audiences have only grown more fragmented since Hall's time of writing, how would we define "popular" culture today? What metrics are available to us (in terms of entertainment, measurements of audiences are being increasingly hard to ascertain)? If "popular culture" can be defined as a terrain of struggle, are the publics engaged in these struggles getting smaller and smaller?

On a related note, Hall argues that "popular" culture is defined in opposition to "dominant" culture. In a situation such as cultural debates over CRT, is there a "dominant" culture? Is classroom history a "popular" culture terrain? Are conservatives railing against supposed CRT "dominant" or is there room for growth in this theorization?

Apologies that this ended up being five questions, not two.

-Shannon

Comments

On Journals and Prose

My two questions from this week have emerged from the Judith Butler piece, A 'Bad Writer' Bites Back , both centered around the journal, Philosophy and Literature —which Butler describes as the self-proclaimed “arbiter of good prose.” I agree with Butler’s staunch defense of questioning common sense and provoking “new ways of looking at a familiar world”, and was reminded of David Harvey’s quote in the introduction to his Companion to Marx’s Capital : “Real learning always entails a struggle to understand the unknown.” Butler describes Philosophy and Literature as a “culturally conservative academic journal” which naturally led me down a longer-than-anticipated visit to the journal's website . I was greeted with a video presented by the Philosophy and Literature’s editor Garry L. Hagberg, who rails against the “jargon infested” work that litters the journal’s field, locating Philosophy and Literature in clear opposition to such bothersome clutter. However, Hagberg...

1/26 Discussion Questions

I am interested in whether we think Giroux et al.'s call for a cultural studies that questions the cultural norms that are "so often unconsciously absorbed" (9) have been answered. In addition, I am intrigued that this piece mentions the public sphere but centers most of the discussion around "resisting intellectuals" as they operate within their classrooms. What parallels can we draw between the "New Times" of which Hall writes and the politics, forms of capitalism, subject formation, (etc.) of today? What does this say about any "deeper [cultural] tendencies" (231) that may exist? - Shannon

Addressing the Crisis: Your Collective Digital Stories

https://www.wevideo.com/view/2668669034 https://www.wevideo.com/view/2665696438 https://vimeo.com/695272441 https://www.youtube.com/embed/BN2wDbBLMWo https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pggTZblBzhQ5Nd6d8MU7jg28kBV0WixT https://www.wevideo.com/view/2648072657 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tUBup-RbbiCCl9-pWoOCvs2JFbUJYvhC/ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Eed6_fpya8WOfEb0Hjhd4jySuMgi8fI0/

Stuart Hall 2022 Seminar

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