ENGL 275 midterm quiz

"In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real

foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general"

Karl Marx + Engels -- the communist manifesto, preface

"At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. "

Karl Marx + Engels -- the communist manifesto, preface

"In considering such [social] transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out."

Marx + Engels, communist manifesto preface

"[We set] out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-processes demonstrating the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the brains of men are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology as well as the forms of consciousness corresponding to these, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence."

Marx + Engels, The german ideology

"In considering such [social] transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men

become conscious of this conflict and fight it out."

Marx + Engels, communist manifesto, preface

"latent elements which have something in

common ... combined and fused into a single

unity in the manifest dream"

Freud, condensation, "the dream work"

"a latent element is replaced ... by something

more remote ... an allusion," or "the psychical

accent is shifted from an important element

on to another which is unimportant"

Freud, displacement, "the dream work"

"to make something whole and more or less

coherent out of the first products of the

dream-work"

Freud, secondary revision, "the dream work"

"It [homosexuality] was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature."

Foucault, the repressive hypothesis

"As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood... The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now

a species."

Foucault, the repressive hypothesis

"The assembly-line character of the culture industry, the synthetic, planned method of turning out its products (factory-like not only in the [film] studio but, more or less, in the compilation of cheap biographies, pseudodocumentary novels, and hit songs)..."

Adorno and Horkhiemer, "the culture industry"

"Mechanization has such power over a man's leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture of amusement goods, that his experiences are inevitably after-images of the work process itself"

Adorno and Horkhiemer, "the culture industry"

Mass-produced culture "occup[ies] men's senses from the time they leave the factory in the evening to the time they clock in again the next morning with matter that bears the impress of the labor process they themselves have to sustain throughout the day"

Adorno and Horkhiemer, "the culture industry"

"The National Socialists [Nazis] knew that the wireless [radio] gave shape to their cause just as the printing press did to the Reformation. The metaphysical charisma of the Fürher ... finally turned out to be no more than the omnipresence of his speeches on the radio... The gigantic fact that the speech penetrates everywhere replaces its

content. ... The inherent tendency of radio is to make the speaker's word, the false commandment, absolute"

Adorno and Horkhiemer, "the culture industry"

"I do not think of my relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues, acquaintances, as masses; we none of us can or do. The masses are always the others, whom we don't know, and can't know. ... To other people, we also are masses. Masses are other people. There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses"

Raymond Williams, conclusion from culture&society

"The old rural culture, which is so widely (and sometimes

sentimentally) admired, rested on generations of experience within a general continuity of common condition. The speed and magnitude of the changes which broke up this settlement were never fully realized..."

Raymond Williams, conclusion from culture&society

The answer to the dilemmas of mass communication "lies in conceding the practice of democracy ... in adopting a different attitude toward [cultural] transmission, one which will ensure that its origins are genuinely multiple, that all the sources have access to the common channels"

Raymond Williams, conclusion from culture&society

Hegemony "refers to 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.'"

(Other subordinate groups are convinced that they should align themselves with the dominant class / bourgeoisie and capitalism because it seems natural, permanent, outside history & not aligned with particular interests)

Dick Hebdige, From Culture to Hegemony

Signifiers can also be symbolically repossessed in everyday life with opposite meanings by the groups who originally produced them

Resistance to the dominant group can not always be lightly dismissed or automatically incorporated

Subcultures indirectly challenge hegemony through style (@ the level of signs — interrupt process of normalization, discover the myth, & reveal + re-present its contradictions (that myth was designed to conceal))

[Class] struggle for who gets possession of the sign (signs can be stolen by subordinate groups & have second 'secret' meaning that expresses form of resistance against dominant order)

dick hebdige, from culture to hegemony

Ideology is most effective when its ideological nature is concealed (when ideology is seen as natural & unconscious)

Ideology saturates everyday discourse in the form of

common sense

Ideology is unconscious & is the structures (family, culture, education, etc.) imposed on people

E.g. even the architecture of educational buildings like lecture halls (designs flow of information to natural professional authority → unconsciously determines what is possible & how / frames our thinking)

dick hebdige, from culture to hegemony

Everything in culture can be seen as a sign & there is an ideological dimension to every signification

To find sign's ideological dimension: look @ how meaning is organized (connotative codes & maps of meaning — which meanings are seen as possible or not → makes particular sets of social relations & ways of organizing the world appear to us as universal & timeless)

Social groups/classes that have more power → define/order the social world more than other groups/classes → they impose their dominant ideology & their interests

dick hebdige, from culture to hegemony (gramsci's hegemony)

Problem with the word masses: masses = as a mob (as threat to culture + democracy)

Therefore, associate mass democracy with mob rule BUT masses=majority [of people] so mass democracy = just democracy, (we accept the principle of democracy but it's real/active presence is feared)

raymond williams, conclusion

Advocates for anthropological approach of looking at how culture functions in everyday life (how people respond to culture & are affected by it), engage with the people who consume culture

raymond williams, conclusion

TECHNIQUES OF MASS COMMUNICATION ARE AT WORST NEUTRAL (they are just relatively more impersonal than older communication techniques (e.g. theater vs cinema))

raymond williams, conclusion

THE RISE OF POPULAR CULTURE IS JUST THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF CULTURE TO ORDINARY PEOPLE (because audience has expanded due to technical advances + growth of education & literacy) — so its judged to be bad

Because popular culture is for the working people/majority (because audiences expanding), popular culture is judged to be bad by the producers of it (the elite)'s view, but it's not necessarily all bad, some small proportion is good

raymond williams, conclusion

The idea of 'the masses' + seeing things as 'mass behavior' instead of as for a community formed an ideology (of seeing people as masses) for those who want to control+profit off of this new system (by controlling/owning mass communication)

Mass communication (addresses people as the masses) depends on the minority exploiting the majority

We need to reject this dominant attitude and come up with a new definition of communication

Communication needs to be for a community (not communication as addressing people as 'masses' and as conditioning people's minds, which is the dominant norm for understanding communication)

raymond williams, conclusion

Problem with the word masses: masses = as a mob (as threat to culture + democracy)

Therefore, associate mass democracy with mob rule BUT masses=majority [of people] so mass democracy = just democracy, (we accept the principle of democracy but it's real/active presence is feared)

Dominant attitude of communication (addressing people as masses) is paramount in 'democratic' societies - leaders are afraid of actual rule by the majority (actual democracy)

raymond williams conclusion

communication: transmission + reception/response

For communication to be effective, it needs to resonate with people's lived experience and have equality of being (this is reception & response, which is key, not just transmission)

raymond williams, conclusion

Hegemony sees relations of dominance and subordination as a saturation of the whole process of living (it operates within everyday life)

Hegemony's forms are not upper level forms of indoctrination/manipulation (imposed on people from above) but the whole body of living / our perceptions of ourselves and the world (our sense of reality)

Hegemony's forms of domination and subordination operate through culture and civil society / processes of social organizations in advanced capitalist societies (where people are convinced to maintain the social order status quo - not the way things could be)

raymond williams, hegemony

Cultural hegemony is more than superstructure expressions — it is the lived experience of dominance and subordination of particular classes that forms our reality

Culture as a whole way of life

Culture as an active, productive force in social, political, and economic struggle and the crucial role of civil society and its cultural institution is to constantly reinforce the dominant ideology

raymond williams, hegemony

Lived hegemony is a process — it does not passively exist as a form of dominance but must be continually renewed, recreated, defended, and modified

Hegemony is continually resisted, limited, altered, and challenged by pressures that aren't its own (not part of the dominant class)

Counter/alternative hegemony (alternative political and cultural ways of life that can lead to revolutionary activity) indicate what the hegemonic process has in practice had to work to control

The hegemonic process must be responsive to counter/alternative hegemony in order to maintain dominance

In popular culture, the dominant ways of seeing the world become reformulated and dominant ways of seeing the world come into contact with non-dominant ways

raymond williams, hegemony (gramsci)

Categories of utopian sensibilities as temporary solutions to what's missing in our lives (the inadequacies of our society)

While entertainment is responding to needs that are real, it is also defining & limiting what the legitimate needs of people in this society to the dominant ideology of the society (it denies the legitimacy of other needs that people in this society also have that aren't aligned with this dominant ideology)

The ideals of entertainment (its utopian solutions) point to inadequacies in capitalism that capitalism itself promises to meet (E.g. abundance → consumerism, energy + intensity → personal freedom & individualism, transparency → free speech)

BUT drawing attention to these inadequacies of capitalism is ideologically playing with fire (can speak to wanting to change the world)

richard dyer, entertainment and utopia

Utopianism = sense that things could be "something better" than how they are

Mass culture dramatizes the disparity between what is (no one is singing and dancing) and what ought to be (musical number, reality is suspended)

In mass culture / entertainment, central thrust is the sense of "what would utopia FEEL like" (not how it would be organized)

Representational and Non-representation/formal elements of mass culture/entertainment (e.g. lighting, sound, colors, mis en scene) are attached to signified human feeling/emotion → utopian feeling of what world could be

richard dyer, entertainment and utopia

Critics (like Adorno and Horkheimer) love modernism because they hate mass culture because mass culture is gendered as a woman

Critics use misogynistic logic & feminize mass culture (this is less prevalent now because of rise of postmodernism which encourages the mixing of high & mass culture)

Mass culture seen as a threat because it causes people to be like a woman (castration anxiety → impotence, passive, emasculated, easily convinced)

BUT If you gender mass culture & its effects, you can't understand how mass culture actually functions in our lives

andreas huyssen, mass culture as woman: modernism's other

Mass culture seen as inferior & associated with women, while "real + authentic" culture associated with men (modernism, which has undercurrent of contempt & misogyny towards women)

Modernist [male] writer seen as an artist, as a 'real' man who resists mass culture & its womanly appeals

Consumer of modernism: seen as critical-thinking & sophisticated man, unafraid of shock

Consumer of mass culture: as a passive woman, a consumer who is manipulated & emasculated

E.g. of gendered effect of consuming mass culture: Madame Bovary the character is so enthralled in consuming mass culture that she can't see the reality of what is happening in her life BUT the novel (written by a man) is seen as modernist masterpiece

andreas huyssen, mass culture as woman: modernism's other

The culture industry functions to induce false consciousness in the masses (top down, convinces the masses to go along with the status quo of the current regime in power even though they are being exploited)

adorno and horkheimer

Mass culture is produced like any commodity under capitalism to generate profit — in the "culture industry" (industrial & standardized methods / assembly line style of production & distribution)

This production in the culture industry results in the similarity of all mass culture (uses same repetitive formula with only surface/aesthetic differences)

The experience of consuming mass culture is the prolongation of work because it mimics the repetition & similarity of industrial labor / assembly line (it is only a break from thinking)

adorno and horkheimer

Mass culture/communication makes everyone into an undifferentiated mass because are addressed as a mass and can't respond back (passive receiver)

The massifying effects of mass culture/communication (presupposes an undifferentiated mass audience) prepare you for being a subject of facism

E.g. mass communication via wireless radio in Germany → Nazi/fascist Germany

adorno and horkheimer

Like modernism because it registers obliqueness of life under capitalism in a way that resists capitalist commodification & is hard to be produced & sold to mass audiences

adorno & horkheimer

After enlightenment (coincides w/ rise of capitalism), proliferation on discourses to talk about sex (but not sex itself)

Sex itself is constrained by the state to live in discursive existence so that sex can be managed/regulated by the state for the 'greater good' of society (to keep the economy running / to maximize productivity (population growth) + utility in capitalist society)

foucault, repressive hypothesis

Sex constrained to discourses so that the state can keep power over people's lives (how power works for this author)

Speaking about sexual desires plays into power because society/the state can use them (through discourses) to increase productivity / be helpful to society

foucault, repressive hypothesis

Sexual acts now (post enlightenment) constitute your sexual identity, not seen as just an act as they were before (e.g. now: homosexual acts → you are a homosexual)

Sexual identities invented from discourses about sex & sexualities seen as deviant were named first (e.g. homosexuality)

Our sense of identity is invented by the world we live in (e.g. our sexual identities)

foucault, repressive hypothesis

Zone of materials we are not even aware of because it would be too hard/threatening for us to handle thinking it (we can't even think it - we aren't even aware of our repression of certain desires/wishes)

What's repressed in one context may find a way to be expressed in a disguised way / elsewhere (e.g. freudian slips & in dreams)

freud on the unconscious & repression

infant sexuality/behavior → chooses first love-object as his mother & resents his father for being with his mother → this is forgotten → comes back @ puberty (w/ libidio)

@ puberty, the child can't transfer his libidio from his mother to an outside sexual object - relates to universal incest taboo in our society (repressed)

Critics say oedipal narrative is more about how we experience/submit to power/authority than our father

freud, on the oepidus complex

Misleading beliefs that obscure how things really are and serve the material interests of the dominant class

marx & engels, false consciousness

Ideology is conditioned by the economic base that we live in & creates false consciousness but is also terrain of struggle/conflict (where people try to understand our society)

marx & engels on ideology as false consciousness & terrain of struggle

determined/conditioned by the economic base

Legal and Political Superstructures

E.g. property relations, system of governance,

Have religious, aesthetic, or philosophical elements (ideological forms)

marx & engels on superstructure

The relations of production (lord-serf; bourgeoisie-proletariat; etc.) are conditioned/determined by the stage of development of the material productive forces (agricultural, industrial, etc.)

marx & engels on the economic base

how a society organizes its economy, comprising the "forces of production" (labor and means of production) and "relations of production" (class structure and ownership). E.g. capitalism, feudalism

marx & engels, on the mode of production

Signifier - linguistic, 1st system, "acoustic image" / sound of the word

Signified - linguistic, 1st system, the concept of the word

The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary (not natural)

Sign - signifier + signified, (also is meaning)

roland barthes, 1st semiological system (based on saussure's linguistic system)

Form - mythological signifier (the sign / meaning in the linguistic order)

Concept - mythological signified

Signification - the myth (unnatural attachment of form to concept)

Attachment between form and concept is contingent + imposed (due to the context of the thing) but made to seem natural (even though its not)

Myth is depoliticized speech

Myth alludes to the history of the signifier, even as it distorts or occludes this history

barthes, mythologies