EN416 Cultural Studies Lecture 1 PDF

Hi everyone and welcome to your course EN416 Cultural Studies. Before we begin I'd like to make a cautionary note about this course. This course is within the field of English Literature Studies and other fields as well as you shall see. This course is based on the idea of questioning everything and a...

Hi everyone and welcome to your course EN416 Cultural Studies. Before we begin I'd like to make a cautionary note about this course. This course is within the field of English Literature Studies and other fields as well as you shall see. This course is based on the idea of questioning everything and as you shall shortly see at the heart of this course or this field of study is the western idea that there is a stuG of law no absolute truth. Of course there is at least one absolute truth which is the existence of God. So you should be careful while we go through this course or if you do your own readings not to fall into the trap of questioning your values or your heritage or your faith. You should learn with awareness. You should always be wary of what you read about and compare it to your beliefs and to your culture to your identity. Do not allow anything to change that. That's my note of caution for you. Otherwise in the course description you'll find that it is written that the course concentrates on the readings of one's own culture compared to the culture of the other and the aim is to help you the students to build a good and comprehensive knowledge of the self and the other through focus on selected texts. So what we're going to do is that we're going to introduce what cultural studies are, what are the major ideas or concepts that you might encounter while doing this and then the second part of the course we're going to do an analytical comparative study of selected texts that are from our own culture, they are Egyptian as well as from other cultures as well. And as for the course evaluation structure as usual the term work is out of 30 and the final is out of 70 but the diGerence this term is because of recent regulations by the administration. I had to include tasks for you to carry out on LMS or the Learning Management System Moodle, the electronic website for Minowi University where you find the course material. You'll also find tasks after each of the theoretical chapters we're having within the course and you are required to respond to those tasks and you will be getting marks for those tasks just by responding to them. The tasks will be out of 10 and as usual there will be an online quiz in time out of 20 plus of course the 70 marks for the final. So let us begin introducing cultural studies. At the core of the field of cultural studies is the western idea that there is no absolute truth. That is every thought, belief, system or tradition can be questioned, scrutinized, studied and analyzed in order to either achieve a better understanding of it or find a better, more inclusive alternative. In other words from a western perspective the goal of cultural studies is the study, analysis, understanding, processing and creation of cultural change. What does this mean? It means that with cultural studies those who are doing it they are questioning everything, every system, every idea, every thought, every tradition in order to see within a specific culture did this tradition exist for a long time? Why is it continuing? Has it developed or has it changed? And what has caused the development and what has caused the change? And is the change a positive matter or is it a negative one? And if it has not changed what can be done to make it better, to make it more inclusive? For example, we shall see examples of what is meant by inclusive or better understanding or a better culture would be like. But the idea is that at the heart of cultural studies is the study, analysis, understanding, processing and creation of cultural change. The end goal of cultural studies is cultural change to eGect, to create cultural change for a better human life. To that eGect cultural studies is concerned with the dynamics of power and politics within a given social context. For example, a cultural study of a certain African American literary work would look into how the text reflects the social practices of the subculture of African American working class men against the social practices of the dominant culture of white men who control the policies aGecting the livelihood of these black men. Such study would have to draw on the literary concepts of characterization, setting, narrative structure and plot alongside historical, political and ethnic concepts that relate to the history and culture of blacks in the US. In many aspects of cultural studies that we are going to look into, you'll find that the issue of power and the dynamics of power and politics are very much involved, are very important. They explain a lot. And by power I don't mean strength, I mean the ability to have an authority over someone and power here does not always mean that the authority is legal. For example, as I told you in class, I as a teacher have a legal authority over you as students. But what if the person holding power over someone else does not have an authority or a legal authority? For example, in a situation where there is a country colonizing another country, the colonizer in this case has the power and the colonized is not having the power, but the power that the colonizer has in this case is not legitimate, is not legal because it is a power by force, by suppression. So you see the dynamics of power is something that is very important in every aspect of cultural studies. In the example we're having here, if you're doing cultural studies looking at a literary work, a novel for example, written about African Americans and it's reflecting the social conditions of African American working class men. So it's focusing on a specific sub-cultural group, the African American working class men. In this case, the African American working class men are being empowered upon, they are being subjected to power by the white American men who put down the laws, who put down the rules that control the livelihood, the way of life for these African American working class men. For example, it's the white American man who puts down the laws about what kind of salary the African American working class men would get, what are the working hours, what are the jobs that would be allowed for African American working class men and what not to be allowed. You see the white man who puts down the rules controls the way of life for the African American working class men and this is how politics and dynamics of power are involved. So if you're doing a cultural study on such a literary work, as usual, you will be looking into the characterization, the setting, the narrative structure, the plot, etc. But also you will have to look into the history, the politics and the ethnic referring to the specific race of African American or Americans who are from an African origin and also to the history and culture of blacks in the United States in order to understand that specific literary text from all its possible aspects. That's how you do cultural studies in this case and that's how you would need to consider the dynamics of powers of power and politics within such a text. Hence, the field of cultural studies often includes various concepts and perspectives from diGerent critical approaches and theories from multiple disciplines, including but not limited to, Marxism, feminism, history, politics, structuralism, post colonialism, literary theory, film studies, art and communication studies. As you have seen in the example we've just mentioned, in order to study that literary text about the African American working class men, you had to go to the fields of history, to the fields of sociology, maybe even to the field of art, you'll have to go to anthropology together with literary criticism theory. So you'll be applying and using perspectives and concepts from diGerent critical approaches and theories. Those who are doing cultural studies not necessarily on a literary text might also need to resort to theories like from Marxism. Marxism is the movement inspired by the ideas of Karl Marx about politics and economy and shared ownership within a certain country or community. Feminism, it's the movement that and the belief in equal rights between men and women. It started in the late 19th century but was actually recognized in the 1960s and 1970s. Structuralism is a movement that tries to find the underlying structure in lots of fields, including for example psychology and language. Post colonialism is the movement that started or appeared after the end of the colonization period to counter, to reverse the ideas that the colonialists and the imperialists had about the other showing other cultures and nations as primitive. So post colonialism tried to reverse those ideas and to fight back against the previous colonial ideas. You will notice here that some of the terms I've just explained are marked in red because in your course book in the e-booklet on LMS on the Moodle, you'll find also within the text some terms are marked in red because if you click on them it will lead you to the glossary of terms at the end of the book and it oGers explanations and definitions of these terms. When you do study for the exam please leave nothing out. Sometimes the terms are explained within the chapter, within the book and also within the glossary so you will need to leave nothing out to read both definitions or whatever is included in the book. Anyway, back to the course as we have seen the point here is that if you're doing cultural studies you will have to use concepts and approaches or perspectives from diGerent critical approaches and theories depending on the text you are looking at. Historically, cultural studies is a term that was coined by the author of the book and the author of the book. The book is called the book of the book of the book of the book. During the 1970s many of the early works within the field looked into the relationships between Marxism and the politics of British economy as well as the interactions between members of diGerent social classes within the British society. As you can see cultural studies as a field of study was created in the United Kingdom to deal with and tackle issues that are specifically British. It tried to look into the eGect of Marxism and its ideas on the politics and the economy of Britain as well as to look into the relationships between members of diGerent social classes because social class distinctions and racism in Britain were and still are a great issue. So basically cultural studies as a field was created in the late 1960s and 1970s in Great Britain to deal with and tackle problems and issues that are specifically British. Thank you. 1 [BLANK_AUDIO] By the late 1980s and 1990s and onwards, cultural studies as a scholarly field spread out globally. And as it did so, its scopes of interest widened more and more to include, as we mentioned above, diverse fields of knowledge and intellectual inquiry. As we have mentioned earlier today, the field of cultural studies would, if you're doing cultural studies, you would include many fields of study like psychology, like postcolonialism, like art, like film, like communication theories, etc., depending on the text that you are dealing with. So, historically speaking, we already mentioned that cultural studies was created in Britain to deal with specifically British issues, but in the late 1980s and 1990s, it developed, spread out globally worldwide. And as it did so, it included more and more, as we mentioned before, more and more fields of interest and fields of intellectual questioning or inquiry. [BLANK_AUDIO] Before attempting to delve deeper into the concepts and approaches to cultural studies, a few crucial notes have to be made. First and foremost, any study of cultural studies cannot possibly cover all angles and scopes of the field. Moreover, the current cultural studies concepts are based on works within Western countries and cultures, basically, Britain, the United States, and Australia. However, it is possible that other countries or cultures may endorse or practice the same concepts due to cyber and global influences. What does this mean? It means that before we go deeper into cultural studies and its concepts and approaches, we need to make a few notes. The first thing is no book, no study, no course that would attempt to describe what cultural studies are and what they include. Nothing can possibly include everything about cultural studies simply because, as we have just explained, to do cultural studies, you would be involved into too many fields of study, too many sciences, too many approaches, and it's almost impossible to include all of this into one course or into one book or into one study of cultural studies. And the second point to be made is that many of the actually most of the ideas and concepts that we are looking into in this course are belonging to or are based on the cultures of the West, the culture of countries like Britain, the United States, and Australia. However, because we live in an international village, as people say, because of the internet, because of globalization, you might find that the concepts and the ideas that come from Western cultural studies are being practiced elsewhere in the world because of the internet and global influence. Still, within Western cultures, cultural studies concepts might undergo diGerences in application since the field is and always will be a multidisciplinary field of inquiry, blurring boundaries between itself and other subjects or fields. We have just pointed out that the concepts and approaches of cultural studies are basically Western. They come from Western countries, yet within those Western countries themselves, the ideas and the concepts of cultural studies are always changing and might be applied diGerently from one Western country to another because by its nature, cultural studies is a multidisciplinary field. It includes and it involves the use and the approaches and the concepts of diGerent fields or disciplines. And because it does so, sometimes it even blurs the boundaries between what cultural studies are and other fields of study. For example, it is often an issue, a problem between sociologists and anthropologists and those doing cultural studies because the line separating cultural study and psychology or cultural study and sociology would often be blurred, become not very clear-cut because as we have said, cultural studies involves employing concepts from diGerent fields of study. Last but not least, cultural studies oGers various concepts and theories that might be useful for thinking about or aGecting cultural change, but the doors possible changes are always left open. The last point we need to make here, which is not least important, it's also important, is that we have said that cultural studies aims to eGect or create cultural change, but once that cultural change happens, it is always not static, it's not fixed, the doors to further possible change are always left open. So what is culture and how can it be studied? To begin with, a culture covers all possible human activities and interactions carried out by individuals, singularly or collectively, within a certain community or society, be that literary or artworks, sports activities, city laws, domestic arrangements, local shops or international trade, etc. Culture includes all possible activities that human beings can do and the interactions between themselves, whether the activity or the interaction is done by one person, alone or in a group and whether that group is a small group or a whole society and whether the product of that activity is a literary work, an artwork, a sport activity, the laws that govern life within a specific city and so on. Let's watch the following video. What is culture? Of course, it involves national, regional, provincial and community identities. It creates artifacts we can experience like language, art, fashion, food, stories and literature, but it is much more than that. Culture gives us our framing for the way we see and experience the world. It dictates meaning into things like our gestures, facial expressions, body language and personal space. It creates a connotation behind tones of voice, volumes of speech and our experience and emotion of colors. But yet it is also deeper than that. It defines our concepts like what does it look like to be respectful or polite? How to be a good friend, a good student or how a teacher should teach? What form of leader would I follow? And for that matter, what kind of follower should I be or should I follow at all? Culture defines how late is too late and what reasons are good enough reasons. How do you build trust? What roles in life do parents and their children play? And at what age does what sort of responsibility set in? And yet culture goes deeper. It helps us to shape our versions of right and wrong. It creates our biases for and against. It builds our expectations around what should and shouldn't happen in any given context. It is often the answer to many of the human conditions why questions. In short, culture underpins everything we experience in life. No two people experience culture in exactly the same way their whole life. Culture is fluid. The more we interact with people from other cultural settings, the more our own fluid definition of our culture shifts, hardens, adopts and or rejects. Traditionally, culture with a big C or a capital C concerned only the study of works of literature, art, music and film. That is all human intellectual and artistic production. But from the perspective of human sciences, culture would be the study of the symbols that create meaning or meanings for the members of a certain community or society. This means that when we look into cultural studies, part of what we would be looking for is how meaning is created and does one thing or how is a symbol formed and what kinds of meanings would be associated or linked with that symbol and how one symbol or one thing could be symbolic and meaningful of something in one culture and mean and having diGerent symbols and meanings in another culture. Look at the following example. In Egyptian culture, the donkey has always been the sign of stupidity, the object of ridicule or laughter, disdain. People would look down upon a donkey and if someone is called a donkey, then that would be a great insult because the donkey is seen as stupid. The donkey was also seen as the friend of the farmer and the friend of the poor because for a farmer, the donkey is a very, very precious possession. The donkey helps in the fields, the donkey helps in travel and so on. So the donkey is capable of hard work but it's not the kind of work that a donkey would do willingly. The donkey does the hard work submissively with submission, with a kind of powerlessness as if the donkey has a weak personality. So if someone is called a donkey, then this is an insult, meaning that he is stupid, that he is submissive, that he is weak in personality. And also you can see here before you two titles of books written by Egyptian author Tawfiq al-Hakim. One is titled "Hemari Ka-Lali" "My Donkey Told Me" and the other "Hemari Wa-Saya Wa-Aharon" "My Donkey, My StaG" and the others. In both books, Tawfiq al-Hakim is providing social criticism using the donkey as a tool of sarcasm. The donkey here is presented as a wise person or as a source of wisdom which is contrary to or opposite to the public belief that donkeys are stupid and this creates a kind of sarcasm and causes the reader to laugh while Tawfiq al-Hakim is criticizing or directing social criticism. So this is the Egyptian idea of the donkey. This is the donkey here represents not only a symbol but the way of living for the Egyptian. For the Egyptian, the donkey is stupid, capable of hard work but it's not as a matter or as a sign of strength but actually as a sign of weakness. Look at the following picture. Here you can see a donkey walking alone, its head bent down in submission and is carrying a very very very heavy load of bricks and it's not complaining and it's walking alone with knowing its direction. So this is the image of the donkey in Egyptian culture, the one that you would expect to see on any road in rural Egypt. So as we've said before, for the Egyptians, the donkey is a sign of stupidity and submission. Yes, it is indispensable in rural Egypt for the farmer but for in urban cities, it is the intellectuals like Tawfiq al-Hakim would use it as a sign of or a symbol of ridicule especially if talking about social issues or directing social criticism. Let's see now another diGerent meaning and another diGerent way of life in a diGerent culture where the donkey would mean a diGerent thing. Look at the following picture. You can see here an image of the icon of the American Democratic Party. In the United States of America, there are only two competing parties, political parties that compete for electing a president who would rule the United States of America. The Democratic Party has the symbol of the donkey and the Republican Party has the symbol of the elephant. So in the United States of America, the donkey is a symbol of the Democratic Party, political party. But where does this come from? How did this happen? Originally, the donkey as a symbol for the Democratic Party was first used by Andrew Jackson, the person from or the nominee for the Democratic Party who was running for president in 1828. That's early 19th century. What happened was that he was running his campaign for presidency and one of his Republican opponents tried to insult him by calling him a jackass, which is the slang word for donkey. Since the man's name was Andrew Jackson, he called him jackass as an insult. So Andrew Jackson, instead of taking the insult of being called a donkey and getting angry about it, instead he turned it into his trend by endorsing the ID symbol of or the donkey as a symbol for the Democratic Party. So this is the American way of life all the way back to the 19th century. American people would take an insult and turn it into a trend, which some might say is a good thing because you are turning something negative into something positive. But on the other hand, this would provide a very, very insecure social environment because you would have nothing that is solid, that is stable, that is constant that you can rely on. No concept remains the same. No symbol remains the same. No idea remains the same. Everything is shifting all the time depending on the circumstances. So something that would be considered an insult today could be a sign of strength tomorrow and vice versa. To understand this further, look at the following image. During the 19th century, there was a cartoonist who would draw images, caricatures of politicians in newspapers. His name was Thomas Nast. Some people even called him nasty because he was always making fun of both Democratic and Republican parties. And he was also using the donkey as a symbol for the Democratic Party and the elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party. Either way, in both cases, Nast was always objecting to both parties and presenting them in a negative light, not positively. As you can see in the image here, which is taken from a newspaper in the second half of the 19th century, as you can see, one donkey is panicking and it's 1873. The idea is that Nast here is presenting the donkey as the general image taken about the donkey, that the donkey is a sign of stupidity. Although the Democratic Party would say that they have the symbol of the donkey as a sign of strength, as a sign of stubbornness, the donkey is stubborn. It would be very diGicult to move it from one place to another, unless you're holding a carrot in front of it. But the thing is, it's the American way of life. Nothing is stable. Nothing is fixed. One symbol can mean something and it can easily be turned into something else and everybody is free to believe what they want. Although this might be seen as the ultimate freedom of living, on the other hand, it provides social insecurity, social instability, because nothing is fixed. Nothing is stable. Not one thing would mean the same thing for everyone at the same time. This is the American way of life. As you can see, we've seen now how one thing, the animal, the donkey, can mean diGerent things, can represent diGerent ways of life in two diGerent or more diGerent cultures. But history has proven that humans often change their belief systems or ways of living. Hence, culture can be the study of whether that process of change is considered merely a process or a development. We've seen the example of the meaning, the symbolism of the donkey in Egyptian culture in the 20th century and in American culture from the 19th century onward. And like anything in culture, symbols and their meanings often change. They don't stay static. They don't stay fixed. And therefore, one important part of studying culture is to see whether that change is considered merely a process. It's natural. It has been forced. It has been, it happened suddenly, or was it a natural development of a certain community? For example, traditionally, a play by William Shakespeare would be studied by literary scholars as a work of British brilliant intellectual and artistic expression, or by anthropologists as a documentation of British ways of living in the 16th century, or by historians as one stage in the development of British culture. So traditionally, if you consider a play written by Shakespeare, literary scholars would study it as an example of someone who was very intellectual, very smart, brilliant, and very artistic, uniquely artistic actually. On the other hand, anthropologists would study the play itself as a documentation of British ways of living, how life was like in Britain in the 16th century, what people wore, what they did, what kinds of professions they had, how they interacted with one another. This is a documentation of a way of life in the 16th century, and anthropologists would be interested in that. Historians, on the other hand, would study all the political and historical events that are in the background or in the context of the play. So you can see these are the ways that a play written by Shakespeare would be studied traditionally. Yet, cultural studies would consider a Shakespearean play in more complicated ways. Questions would consider the conditions of theatrical production in Elizabethan times, whether other playwrights collaborated with Shakespeare, whether the texts we have today have undergone changes, and what that would implicate about the taken-for-granted genius of the now world-famous playwright. Cultural studies would ask diGerent questions about a play written by Shakespeare. Cultural studies would consider the condition of theatrical production, what kind of theaters were available, what were the stage props, the stage preparations, how were they manufactured, by whom were they manufactured, who were the playwrights, who were the actors, how were actors hired, and how did they perform. Also, into consideration would be the question of whether other playwrights collaborated or worked with Shakespeare in writing these plays. Is it really Shakespeare the only one, the only genius, who was able to write all those plays by himself? And did Shakespeare write each play once and for all, or did he make any kinds of revisions and additions or changes to the play, the same play over time? And if that so, does the text that we have today of a Shakespearean play, is it the final one with all the changes, or is it one of the many versions of the play that Shakespeare produced? All of these questions and the answers to them might change how we view or our point of view regarding Shakespeare, who is now world famous and considered a taken for granted genius. This is how cultural studies work. [BLANK_AUDIO]