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78-455: "Against Interpretation" is Sontag's influential essay in Against Interpretation and Other Essays, which discusses the divisions between two different kinds of art criticism and theory: formalist interpretation and content-based interpretation. Sontag is strongly averse to what she considers to be contemporary interpretation, that is, an overabundance of importance placed upon the content or meaning of an artwork rather than being keenly alert to

156-400: A central focus of cultural studies. Jeff Lewis summarized much of the work on textuality and textual analysis in his cultural studies textbook and a post-9/11 monograph on media and terrorism. According to Lewis, textual studies use complex and difficult heuristic methods and require both powerful interpretive skills and a subtle conception of politics and contexts. The task of

234-433: A form of production (of meanings, of identities, etc.) in its own right. Stuart Hall , John Fiske , and others have been influential in these developments. A special 2008 issue of the field's flagship journal, Cultural Studies , examined " anti-consumerism " from a variety of cultural studies angles. Jeremy Gilbert noted in the issue, cultural studies must grapple with the fact that "we now live in an era when, throughout

312-463: A key site of political and social struggle. In his view, capitalists used not only brute force ( police , prisons , repression , military ) to maintain control , but also penetrated the everyday culture of working people in a variety of ways in their efforts to win popular "consent." It is important to recognize that for Gramsci, historical leadership, or hegemony , involves the formation of alliances between class factions, and struggles within

390-617: A kind of empty version of " postmodern " analysis, others hold that at its core, cultural studies provides a significant conceptual and methodological framework for cultural , social , and economic critique. This critique is designed to " deconstruct " the meanings and assumptions that are inscribed in the institutions, texts, and practices that work with and through, and produce and re-present, culture. Thus, while some scholars and disciplines have dismissed cultural studies for its methodological rejection of disciplinarity, its core strategies of critique and analysis have influenced areas of

468-431: A kind of radical interdisciplinarity as the basis for cultural studies. One sociologist whose work has had a major influence on cultural studies is Pierre Bourdieu , whose work makes innovative use of statistics and in-depth interviews. However, although Bourdieu's work has been highly influential within cultural studies, and although Bourdieu regarded his work as a form of science , cultural studies has never embraced

546-411: A piece of art. Sontag asserts that the modern style is quite harmful to art and to audiences alike; enforcing hermeneutics – fallacious, complicated "readings" that seem to engulf an artwork, to the extent that analysis of content begins to degrade, to destroy. Reverting to a more primitive and sensual, almost magical experience of art is what Sontag desires; even though that is quite impossible due to

624-409: A piece. Though she claims that interpretation can be "stifling", making art comfortable and "manageable" and thus degrading the artist's original intention, Sontag equally presents a solution to the dilemma she sees as an abundance of interpretation on content. That is, to approach art works with a strong emphasis on form, to "reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it." The essay

702-530: A prestigious chair in sociology at the Open University , and Richard Johnson took over the directorship of the centre. In the late 1990s, "restructuring" at the University of Birmingham led to the elimination of CCCS and the creation of a new Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology (CSS) in 1999. Then, in 2002, the university's senior administration abruptly announced the disestablishment of CSS, provoking

780-501: A question of class alliance . The rise of cultural studies itself was based on the decline of the prominence of fundamental class-versus-class politics. Edgar and Sedgwick write: The theory of hegemony was of central importance to the development of British cultural studies [particularly The Birmingham School . It facilitated the analysis of the ways subordinate groups actively resist and respond to political and economic domination. The subordinate groups needed not to be seen merely as

858-677: A range of studies on media policy , democracy , design , leisure , tourism , warfare , and development. While certain key concepts such as ideology or discourse , class, hegemony, identity, and gender remain significant, cultural studies has long engaged with and integrated new concepts and approaches. The field thus continues to pursue political critique through its engagements with the forces of culture and politics. Many cultural studies practitioners work in departments of English or comparative literature . Nevertheless, some traditional literary scholars such as Yale professor Harold Bloom have been outspoken critics of cultural studies. On

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936-472: A range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinct from the discipline of cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies , cultural studies draws upon and has contributed to each of these fields. Cultural studies was initially developed by British Marxist academics in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and has been subsequently taken up and transformed by scholars from many different disciplines around

1014-424: A reform in the education system (if one changes the education system, then one can change the culture). Hall viewed culture as something that is institutionalized, which could only be studied through the interactional patterns that people within a culture exhibit and experience. Culture is something that makes up society, is a learned trait, and is influenced by various forms of media that help to establish it. Power

1092-405: A standpoint of radical contextualism . In other words, cultural studies rejects universal accounts of cultural practices , meanings, and identities. Judith Butler , an American feminist theorist whose work is often associated with cultural studies, wrote that: the move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to

1170-520: A substantial impact on sociology . For example, when Stuart Hall left CCCS at Birmingham, it was to accept a prestigious professorship in Sociology at the Open University in Britain. The subfield of cultural sociology , in particular, is disciplinary home to many cultural studies practitioners. Nevertheless, there are some differences between sociology as a discipline and the field of cultural studies as

1248-553: A substantial international outcry. The immediate reason for disestablishment of the new department was an unexpectedly low result in the UK's Research Assessment Exercise of 2001, though a dean from the university attributed the decision to "inexperienced 'macho management'." The RAE, a holdover initiative of the Margaret Thatcher-led British government of 1986, determines research funding for university programs. To trace

1326-420: A view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure. It has marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with

1404-421: A whole. While sociology was founded upon various historic works purposefully distinguishing the subject from philosophy or psychology , cultural studies have explicitly interrogated and criticized traditional understandings and practices of disciplinarity. Most CS practitioners think it is best that cultural studies neither emulate disciplines nor aspire to disciplinarity for cultural studies. Rather, they promote

1482-404: A work is purely formal if all its aesthetic properties are formal aesthetic properties," then he defines anti-formalist thinkers as those who "think that no works of art have formal aesthetic properties." The third type which Zangwill identifies as representing the transition of the philosophy of aesthetics into the 21st century is that of moderate formalism , where its principal exponents defend

1560-751: Is a politically engaged postdisciplinary academic field that explores the dynamics of especially contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture ) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology , class structures , national formations , ethnicity , sexual orientation , gender , and generation. Employing cultural analysis , cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes. The field of cultural studies encompasses

1638-460: Is a symbolic formalism based on philosophical aestheticism. The artwork is defined by her as deep form: "a form steeped in content that cannot be extracted from it. Artistic content, since it has no existence or sense apart from the form, cannot actually be referred to, other than speculatively. The content seals the form in an opaque, non-reflective, productive symbol." Here she introduces a broad concept of symbol, an opaque-productive symbol: one that

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1716-459: Is called cultural studies in all of the universities and colleges in the English-speaking world, and everyone knows what that phenomenon is. I mean, the...now-weary phrase 'political correctness' remains a perfectly good descriptive phrase for what has gone on and is, alas, still going on almost everywhere and which dominates, I would say, rather more than three-fifths of the tenured faculties in

1794-442: Is consumed, mediated and negotiated, etc. Hall has also been accredited with the expansion of cultural studies through “the primacy of culture’s role as an educational site where identities are being continually transformed, power is enacted, and learning assumes a political dynamic.” He viewed politics as being used mainly for power instead of the betterment of society. This led to the belief that political dynamics could change with

1872-399: Is generated, disseminated, contested, bound up with systems of power and control, and produced from the social, political and economic spheres within a particular social formation or conjuncture. The movement has generated important theories of cultural hegemony and agency . Its practitioners attempt to explain and analyze the cultural forces related and processes of globalization . During

1950-556: Is not transparent to preconceived or predetermined referents and meanings, but rather produces new ones. A formal analysis is an academic method in art history and criticism for analyzing works of art : "In order to perceive style, and understand it, art historians use 'formal analysis'. This means they describe things very carefully. These descriptions, which may include subjective vocabulary, are always accompanied by illustrations, so that there can be no doubt about what exists objectively". Cultural studies Cultural studies

2028-672: Is one of the distinctive Australian contributions to the field, though it is not the only one. Australia also gave birth to the world's first professional cultural studies association (now known as the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia) in 1990. Cultural studies journals based in Australia include International Journal of Cultural Studies , Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , and Cultural Studies Review . In Canada , cultural studies has sometimes focused on issues of technology and society , continuing

2106-659: Is relatively undeveloped in Germany , probably due to the continued influence of the Frankfurt School , which is now often said to be in its third generation, which includes notable figures such as Axel Honneth . Cultural studies journals based in continental Europe include the European Journal of Cultural Studies , the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies , French Cultural Studies , and Portuguese Cultural Studies . In Germany,

2184-872: Is the underlying tone of Hall’s cultural studies. Hall believed that culture has some power, but the media's use of it is what sways and dictates culture itself. In the US, prior to the emergence of British Cultural Studies, several versions of cultural analysis had emerged largely from pragmatic and liberal-pluralist philosophical traditions. However, in the late 1970s and 1980s, when British Cultural Studies began to spread internationally, and to engage with feminism , poststructuralism , postmodernism , and race, critical cultural studies (i.e., Marxist , feminist, poststructuralist, etc.) expanded tremendously in American universities in fields such as communication studies , education , sociology , and literature . Cultural Studies ,

2262-569: The Journal of African Cultural Studies . In Latin America , cultural studies have drawn on thinkers such as José Martí , Ángel Rama , and other Latin-American figures, in addition to the Western theoretical sources associated with cultural studies in other parts of the world. Leading Latin American cultural studies scholars include Néstor García Canclini , Jésus Martín-Barbero , and Beatriz Sarlo . Among

2340-621: The Labour Party to the Conservative Party had to be explained in terms of cultural politics, which they had been tracking even before Thatcher's first victory. Some of this work was presented in the cultural studies classic, Policing the Crisis , and in other later texts such as Hall's The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left , and New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in

2418-586: The social sciences and humanities ; for example, cultural studies work on forms of social differentiation , control and inequality , identity , community-building , media, and knowledge production has had a substantial impact. Moreover, the influence of cultural studies has become increasingly evident in areas as diverse as translation studies , health studies, international relations , development studies , computer studies , economics , archaeology , and neurobiology . Cultural studies has also diversified its own interests and methodologies, incorporating

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2496-504: The structuralism of Louis Althusser , and later in the 1970s turned decisively toward Antonio Gramsci . Cultural studies has also embraced the examination of race, gender, and other aspects of identity, as is illustrated, for example, by a number of key books published collectively under the name of CCCS in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Women Take Issue: Aspects of Women's Subordination (1978), and The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (1982). To understand

2574-489: The " Birmingham School " of cultural studies, thus becoming the world's first institutional home of cultural studies. Hoggart appointed as his assistant Stuart Hall , who would effectively be directing CCCS by 1968. Hall formally assumed the directorship of CCCS in 1971, when Hoggart left Birmingham to become Assistant Director-General of UNESCO . Thereafter, the field of cultural studies became closely associated with Hall's work. In 1979, Hall left Birmingham to accept

2652-514: The "fundamental questions" in life, but theorists have rarely realized this potential. English departments also host cultural rhetorics scholars. This academic field defines cultural rhetorics as "the study and practice of making meaning and knowledge with the belief that all cultures are rhetorical and all rhetorics are cultural." Cultural rhetorics scholars are interested in investigating topics like climate change , autism , Asian American rhetoric , and more. Cultural studies have also had

2730-405: The 1990s . In 2016, Duke University Press launched a new series of Stuart Hall's collected writings, many of which detail his major and decisive contributions toward the establishment of the field of cultural studies. In 2023, a new Stuart Hall Archive Project was launched at the University of Birmingham to commemorate Hall's contributions in pioneering the field of cultural studies at CCCS. By

2808-433: The English-speaking world, who really do represent treason of the intellectuals, I think, a 'betrayal of the clerks'." Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton is not wholly opposed to cultural studies, but has criticised aspects of it and highlighted what he sees as its strengths and weaknesses in books such as After Theory (2003). For Eagleton, literary and cultural theory have the potential to say important things about

2886-449: The aesthetic qualities of works of visual art derive from the visual and spatial properties." According to the observation that works of art can in general contain formal properties and nonformal properties, the philosopher Nick Zangwill has delineated three types of formalism as they are encountered at the turn of the 21st century. First, Zangwill identifies extreme formalists who think "that all works of art are purely formal works—where

2964-410: The agency of subordinated people run counter to the work of traditional structuralists . Some analysts have however been critical of some work in cultural studies that they feel overstates the significance of or even romanticizes some forms of popular cultural agency. Cultural studies often concerns itself with the agency at the level of the practices of everyday life, and approaches such research from

3042-670: The beginning of the 1990s. Cultural studies journals based in Asia include Inter-Asia Cultural Studies . In India, the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore and the Department of Cultural Studies at The English and Foreign Languages and the University of Hyderabad are two major institutional spaces for Cultural Studies. Marxism has been an important influence upon cultural studies. Those associated with CCCS initially engaged deeply with

3120-451: The capitalist world, the overriding aim of government economic policy is to maintain consumer spending levels. This is an era when 'consumer confidence' is treated as the key indicator and cause of economic effectiveness." Cultural studies, drawing upon and developing semiotics , uses the concept of text to designate not only written language, but also television programs , films , photographs , fashion , hairstyles , and so forth;

3198-579: The changing political circumstances of class , politics , and culture in the United Kingdom, scholars at The Birmingham School turned to the work of Antonio Gramsci , an Italian thinker, writer, and Communist Party leader. Gramsci had been concerned with similar issues: why would Italian laborers and peasants vote for fascists ? What strategic approach is necessary to mobilize popular support in more progressive directions? Gramsci modified classical Marxism , and argued that culture must be understood as

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3276-421: The contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. In recent decades, as capitalism has spread throughout the world via contemporary forms of globalization , cultural studies has generated important analyses of local sites and practices of negotiation with and resistance to Western hegemony . Cultural studies criticizes the traditional view of the passive consumer, particularly by underlining

3354-677: The cultural analyst, for Lewis, is to engage with both knowledge systems and texts and observe and analyze the ways the two interact with one another. This engagement represents the critical dimensions of the analysis, its capacity to illuminate the hierarchies within and surrounding the given text and its discourse . Cultural studies has evolved through its uptake across a variety of different disciplines— anthropology , media studies , communication studies , literary studies , education , geography , philosophy , sociology , politics , and others. While some have accused certain areas of cultural studies of meandering into political relativism and

3432-401: The cultural realm of everyday common sense. Hegemony was always, for Gramsci, an interminable, unstable and contested process. Scott Lash writes: In the work of Hall, Hebdige and McRobbie, popular culture came to the fore... What Gramsci gave to this was the importance of consent and culture. If the fundamental Marxists saw the power in terms of class-versus-class, then Gramsci gave to us

3510-515: The development of British Cultural Studies, see, for example, the work of Richard Hoggart , E. P. Thompson , Raymond Williams , Stuart Hall, Paul Willis , Angela McRobbie , Paul Gilroy , David Morley, Charlotte Brunsdon , Richard Dyer , and others. There are also many published overviews of the historical development of cultural studies, including Graeme Turner's British Cultural Studies: An Introduction , 3rd Ed. and John Hartley's A Short History of Cultural Studies Beginning in 1964, after

3588-462: The different ways people read , receive and interpret cultural texts, or appropriate other kinds of cultural products, or otherwise participate in the production and circulation of meanings. On this view, a consumer can appropriate , actively rework, or challenge the meanings circulated through cultural texts. In some of its variants, cultural studies has shifted the analytical focus from traditional understandings of production to consumption – viewed as

3666-649: The emphasis in the work of Marshall McLuhan , Harold Innis , and others. Cultural studies journals based in Canada include Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies . In Africa, human rights and Third-World issues are among the central topics treated. There is a thriving cultural and media studies scholarship in Southern Africa, with its locus in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Cultural Studies journals based in Africa include

3744-463: The extent that appreciation of the form of art has been lost. To Sontag, modernity means a loss of sensory experience and she believes (in corroboration with her theory of the damaging nature of criticism) that the pleasure of art is diminished by such overload of the senses. In this way, Sontag asserts that inevitably, the modern style of interpretation separates form and content in a manner that damages an artwork and one's own sensorial appreciation of

3822-517: The flagship journal of the field, has been based in the US since its founding editor, John Fiske , brought it there from Australia in 1987. A thriving cultural studies scene has existed in Australia since the late 1970s, when several key CS practitioners emigrated there from the UK, bringing British Cultural Studies with them, after Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK in 1979. A school of cultural studies known as cultural policy studies

3900-416: The flavor championed by Stuart Hall, lacks a stable research agenda, and privileges the contemporary reading of texts, thus producing an ahistorical theoretical focus. Many, however, would argue, following Hall, that cultural studies have always sought to avoid the establishment of a fixed research agenda; this follows from its critique of disciplinarity. Moreover, Hall and many others have long argued against

3978-480: The following five main characteristics of cultural studies: Dennis Dworkin writes that "a critical moment" in the beginning of cultural studies as a field was when Richard Hoggart used the term in 1964 in founding the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham . The centre would become home to the development of the intellectual orientation that has become known internationally as

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4056-433: The idea that it should aspire toward "scientificity," and has marshalled a wide range of theoretical and methodological arguments against the fetishization of "scientificity" as a basis for cultural studies. Two sociologists who have been critical of cultural studies, Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner , argue in their article, "Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn," that cultural studies, particularly

4134-658: The initial appearance of the founding works of British Cultural Studies in the late 1950s, Stuart Hall 's pioneering work at CCCS , along with that of his colleagues and postgraduate students, gave shape and substance to the field of cultural studies. This would include such people as Paul Willis , Dick Hebdige , David Morley, Charlotte Brunsdon , John Clarke, Richard Dyer , Judith Williamson, Richard Johnson, Iain Chambers , Dorothy Hobson, Chris Weedon , Tony Jefferson, Michael Green and Angela McRobbie . Many cultural studies scholars employed Marxist methods of analysis , exploring

4212-431: The invaluable cultural chronicles of these years." He concluded, "Miss Sontag has written a ponderable, vivacious, beautifully living and quite astonishingly American book." Brandon Robshaw of The Independent later observed, "This classic collection of essays and criticism from the 1960s flatters the reader's intelligence without being intimidating." He added, "...the essays are unfailingly stimulating. Though they bear

4290-516: The key issues addressed by Latin American cultural studies scholars are decoloniality , urban cultures , and postdevelopment theory . Latin American cultural studies journals include the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies . Even though cultural studies developed much more rapidly in the UK than in continental Europe , there is significant cultural studies presence in countries such as France , Spain , and Portugal . The field

4368-614: The late 1970s, scholars associated with The Birmingham School had firmly placed questions of gender and race on the cultural studies agenda, where they have remained ever since. Also by the late 1970s, cultural studies had begun to attract a great deal of international attention. It spread globally throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As it did so, it both encountered new conditions of knowledge production, and engaged with other major international intellectual currents such as poststructuralism , postmodernism , and postcolonialism . The wide range of cultural studies journals now located throughout

4446-437: The level of methodology , these scholars dispute the theoretical underpinning of the movement's critical framework. Bloom stated his position during the 3 September 2000 episode of C-SPAN 's Booknotes , while discussing his book How to Read and Why : [T]here are two enemies of reading now in the world, not just in the English-speaking world. One [is] the lunatic destruction of literary studies...and its replacement by what

4524-420: The meanings and practices that arise from the constant power dynamics that comprise culture. Hall viewed culture as a "critical site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled." He perceived culture as a power dynamic, in which the media unintentionally possesses more control over ideology than the public. Hall viewed the media as a source of preserving

4602-442: The objects of sense is either figure ( Gestalt ) or play ( Spiel ). In the latter case it is either play of figures or the mere play of sensations. The charm ( Reiz ) of colors... may be added, but the delineations ( Zeichnung ) in the... composition ( Komposition )... constitute the proper object of the pure judgment of taste." The philosopher Donald Crawford has summarized Kant's position stating: "Thus, for Kant, form consists of

4680-556: The passive dupes of the dominant class and its ideology. The development of hegemony theory in cultural studies was in some ways consonant with work in other fields exploring agency , a theoretical concept that insists on the active, critical capacities of subordinated people (e.g. the working classes , colonized peoples, women). As Stuart Hall famously argued in his 1981 essay, "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular ' ": "ordinary people are not cultural dopes." Insistence on accounting for

4758-451: The post-WWII period. Also during the 1970s, the politically formidable British working classes were in decline. Britain's manufacturing industries while continuing to grow in output and value, were decreasing in share of GDP and numbers employed, and union rolls were shrinking. Millions of working-class Britons backed the rise of Margaret Thatcher , through the labour losses. For Stuart Hall and his colleagues, this shift in loyalty from

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4836-437: The previous classical style of interpretation that sought to "bring artworks up to date", to meet modern interests and apply allegorical readings. Where this type of interpretation was seen to resolve conflict between past and present by revamping an art work and maintaining a certain level of respect and honour, Sontag believes that the modern style of interpretation has lost sensitivity and rather strives to "excavate...destroy"

4914-399: The principle "that all the aesthetic properties of works of art in a select class are formal, and second, that although many works of art outside that class have nonformal aesthetic properties, many of those works also have important formal aesthetic properties that must not be ignored." The philosopher Michalle Gal has offered a moderate version of formalism, entitled "Deep Formalism", which

4992-504: The relationships between cultural forms (i.e., the superstructure ) and that of the political economy (i.e., the base ). By the 1970s, the work of Louis Althusser radically rethought the Marxist account of base and superstructure in ways that had a significant influence on the "Birmingham School." Much of the work done at CCCS studied youth-subcultural expressions of antagonism toward "respectable" middle-class British culture in

5070-654: The rise of neoliberalism in Britain and the US, cultural studies both became a global movement, and attracted the attention of many conservative opponents both within and beyond universities for a variety of reasons. A worldwide movement of students and practitioners with a raft of scholarly associations and programs, annual international conferences and publications carry on work in this field today. Distinct approaches to cultural studies have emerged in different national and regional contexts. In his 1994 book, Introducing Cultural Studies , orientalist scholar Ziauddin Sardar lists

5148-407: The sensuous aspects of a given work and developing a descriptive vocabulary for how it appears and how it does whatever it does. She believes that interpretation of the modern style has a particular "taming" effect: reducing the freedom of a subjective response and placing limitations or certain rules upon a responder. The modern style of interpretation is particularly despised by Sontag in relation to

5226-654: The spatial... organization of elements: figure, shape, or delineation... In the parts of the Critique of Judgment in which form is emphasized as the essential aspect of beauty, Kant is consistently a pure formalist." Nick Zangwill has defined formalism in art as referring to those properties "that are determined solely by sensory or physical properties—so long as the physical properties in question are not relations to other things and other times." The philosopher and architect Branko Mitrovic (philosopher) has defined formalism in art and architecture as "the doctrine that states that

5304-504: The stamp of their time, Sontag was remarkably prescient; her project of analysing popular culture as well as high culture, the Doors as well as Dostoevsky, is now common practice throughout the educated world. And the artists and intellectuals she discusses—Nietzsche, Camus, Godard, Barthes etc—demonstrate that she knew which horses to back." In their introduction to Critique and Postcritique (2017), Rita Felski and Elizabeth S. Anker argue that

5382-469: The status quo of a reflection that already exists in society. The media hegemony in question, he emphasized, "is not a conscious plot or conspiracy, it’s not overtly coercive, and its effects are not total." Compared to other thinkers on this subject, he studied and analyzed symbols, ideologies, signs, and other representations within cultural studies. Most of his contributions occurred in the 1980s, where he looked at how media cultivates cultural power, how it

5460-591: The term cultural studies specifically refers to the field in the Anglosphere , especially British Cultural Studies, to differentiate it from the German Kulturwissenschaft which developed along different lines and is characterized by its distance from political science. However, Kulturwissenschaft and cultural studies are often used interchangeably, particularly by lay people. Throughout Asia, cultural studies have boomed and thrived since at least

5538-605: The texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. This conception of textuality derives especially from the work of the pioneering and influential semiotician, Roland Barthes , but also owes debts to other sources, such as Juri Lotman and his colleagues from Tartu–Moscow School . Similarly, the field widens the concept of culture . Cultural studies approach the sites and spaces of everyday life, such as pubs, living rooms, gardens, and beaches, as "texts." Culture , in this context, includes not only high culture , but also everyday meanings and practices,

5616-439: The thickened layers of hermeneutics that surround interpretation of art and that have grown to be recognised and respected. Sontag daringly challenges Marxian and Freudian theories, claiming they are "aggressive and impious". Sontag also refers to the contemporary world as one of " overproduction ... material plentitude" where one's physical senses have been dulled and annihilated by mass production and complex interpretation to

5694-467: The title essay from Sontag's collection has played an important role in the field of postcritique , a movement within literary criticism and cultural studies that attempts to find new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique , critical theory , and ideological criticism . Formalism (art) In art history , formalism is the study of art by analyzing and comparing form and style . Its discussion also includes

5772-419: The way objects are made and their purely visual or material aspects. In painting, formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape, texture, and other perceptual aspects rather than content, meaning, or the historical and social context. At its extreme, formalism in art history posits that everything necessary to comprehending a work of art is contained within the work of art. The context of

5850-425: The work, including the reason for its creation, the historical background, and the life of the artist, that is, its conceptual aspect is considered to be external to the artistic medium itself, and therefore of secondary importance. The historical origin of the modern form of the question of aesthetic formalism is usually dated to Immanuel Kant and the writing of his third Critique where Kant states: "Every form of

5928-502: The world, as shown below, is one indication of the globalization of the field. For overviews of and commentaries on developments in cultural studies during the twenty-first century, see Lawrence Grossberg's Cultural Studies in the Future Tense , Gilbert Rodman's Why Cultural Studies? and Graeme Turner's What's Become of Cultural Studies? Hall's cultural studies explores culture as a system that affects individuals' identities through

6006-878: The world. Cultural studies is avowedly and even radically interdisciplinary and can sometimes be seen as anti-disciplinary. A key concern for cultural studies practitioners is the examination of the forces within and through which socially organized people conduct and participate in the construction of their everyday lives. Cultural studies combines a variety of politically engaged critical approaches drawn including semiotics , Marxism , feminist theory , ethnography , post-structuralism , postcolonialism , social theory , political theory , history , philosophy , literary theory , media theory , film/video studies , communication studies , political economy , translation studies , museum studies and art history /criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies and historical periods. Cultural studies seeks to understand how meaning

6084-622: Was first published in Volume 8, number 34 of Evergreen Review in December 1964. The 26 pieces in Against Interpretation are divided into five sections. I. II. III. IV. V. In a contemporary review of the book, Benjamin DeMott of The New York Times praised Against Interpretation as "a vivid bit of living history here and now, and at the end of the sixties it may well rank among

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