English 216: notes for Chapter 3 and 4

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
- the working class created itself as a reaction to its context
- an example of culturalism: shift towards agency rather than determinism

Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy
- working-class culture is realistic/active; mass culture is fanciful/passive
- looks at history from working-class point of view, inverts class perspective\

Raymond Williams, “The Analysis of Culture”
- pop culture works out problems in culture
  - i.e., “magical” solutions to real problems
- structures of feeling: what it would be like to be in a time/place
  - doesn’t define people by just documents or just consumption patterns
- selective tradition: representing a time/place via our preferred examples

base: material surroundings and ability to work with them
- creates the terrain for the superstructure to happen
superstructure: politics, economy, society that results from activity at the base
- not determined by the base, contains lots of internal activity
class: a group’s social position relative to activity at the base
popular culture is a product of base and of interactions w/in superstructure

expands Marxist idea of alienation:
- i.e., if you only ever sell your labour for money,
- you’ll never develop a relationship with that labour
creative labour: when labour and art are same thing (i.e., making something)
- class distinctions would collapse into each other

culture industry: for-profit entertainment (capitalist); i.e., popular culture
conforms to industry needs and also promotes conformity
mass culture: standardized content, pseudo-individualizes audience
- claims we’re in the ideal world, thus negates need for rebellion
art: by definition, resists or critiques the culture industry (i.e., capitalism)
problem: the culture industry not this effective or monolithic

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
- aura: the specific, contextualized meaning of a signifying object
- mechanical reproduction obliterates the aura: new contexts, new meanings
- so meaning is made in the act of consumption, not determined by production
Althusser
- ideology: practiced; reality is what you do, ideology is how you represent it
  - these representations perpetuate class domination
  - dominant classes are also convinced; they see their domination as natural
- ISA (ideological state apparatus): institutions that perpetuate ideology
- RSA (repressive state apparatus): institutions that enforce ideology
- problematic: when ideology tries to represent something outside of itself
- symptomatic: looking for the traces that (futile) effort leaves behind
- interpellation: when you subject yourself to ideology via discourse
  - problem: it’s presumed to always be successful & never conflict
Antonio Gramsci
- hegemony: dominant group tries to naturalize its own ideology
- compromise equilibrium: subordinated groups agree with hegemonic values (against their interests)
  - RSAs held in reserve in case of actual rebellion
- organic intellectuals: represent hegemonic values; can be ISAs
- bricolage: youths use hegemonic culture for resistance,
  - but resistance gets incorporated into the power structure

articulation: making meaning in the contextual connection of text & reader1
culture: is when groups of people tend to articulate in the same ways
- culture defines what is “common sense” or “natural”
- i.e., what the physical world is made to mean by ideology
mass culture: not always convincing, the people are not always duped

NB: these notes are compiled from John Storey’s Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, 7th Edition. They are for studying purposes only.