representation Stuart Hall

What is a pervasive, all-encompassing power that is cultural, coercive and economic? Foucault Representation Stereotypes Hegemony

Hegemony

"particular social groups struggle in many different ways, including ideologically, to win the contest of other groups and achieve a kind of ascendancy in both thought and practice over them" (p.33)

Hegemony full deff

The advertisement for Panzani represents_______________.. Frenchness Capitalism Germanness Italianness

Italianness

How does language construct meanings?

Language is able to do this because it operates as a representational system.

What is the role of language in cultural representation? -Cultural representations have universal meanings in language. -Language is the privileged media that allows us to give meaning. -Language does not play a role in cultural representation. -Semiotics is the study of___________.

Language is the privileged media that allows us to give meaning.

What is a "social constructionist approach" to culture? Meaning is found. Meaning is closed. Meaning is transparent. Meaning is produced.

Meaning is produced.

What is discourse? The production of knowledge through language. The connotations assigned to particular objects. A course on which you play Frisbee golf None of the above.

The production of knowledge through language.

Traditional Approach

-Sum of great works -classic works

Modern Approach

-Widely distributed Cultural artifacts -Used by ordinary people in everyday life .

•"the process of connecting disparate elements together to form a temporary unity" (p.xxx). •collection of "distinct process whose interaction can and does lead to variable and contingent outcomes" (p.xxx). •brings together the distinct parts of the cultural circuit •avoids privileging one phenomenon over the others

Articulation

If I say that blue jeans represent a particular casualness, is that connotation or denotation? Connotation Denotation

Connotation

The way students sit in a classroom is an example of:

Dispersed power

What is the major argument of this book?

Popular culture is produced, consumed , and experienced within a context of overlapping sets of social relationships.

The circuit of culture involves

Representation Identity Production Consumption regulation

A science that studies the life of signs within society

Semiology from the Greek semeion "signs"

•Discourse produces knowledge - not the _____________

Subject

Which of the following is not part of the circuit of culture? Synthetization Representation Identity Production

Synthetization

Knowledge and power are always linked in the regulation of social conduct. True False

True

Language

is the privileged media that allows us to give meaning •Not necessarily verbal , it can be any way that we communicate meaning

Hall's Preferred Definition of Culture

it is argued, is not so much a set of things - novels and paintings or TV programs and comics - as a set of practices. Primarily, culture is concerned with the production and the exchange of meanings - the 'giving and taking of meaning' - between the members of a society or group

Power is exercised through

knowledge

Saussure and Barthes were concerned with the science of _____________. choices stereotypes meaning the body motion

meaning

The study of signs in culture, and of culture as a sort of 'language', which Saussure foreshadowed, is now generally known by the term

semiotics.

Semiotics is the study of___________. stereotypes racism signs in culture Parole

signs in culture

Signs

stand for or represent our concepts, ideas and feelings in such a way as to enable others to 'read', decode or interpret their meaning in roughly the same way that we do

Hall

symbolic meaning process

social ideology

the general beliefs, conceptual frameworks and value systems of society.

Denotation is__________________________________. -the semantic or subjective meaning of a sign. -the literal or objective meaning of a sign. -unrelated to signification. -None of the above.

the literal or objective meaning of a sign.

Representation means all of the following except: -connects meaning and language to culture -stands in the place of -the production of meaning through language -to remember where you came from

to remember where you came from

Meaning

• is produced • is not found • is primary - constitutive process

Stuart Hall

•Cultural Theorist •Leading scholar of Cultural Studies •Birmingham School - Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

Why is High and Low culture distinction problematic?

•Distinction is arbitrary •Reifies the culture of the upper class (to treat it as concrete even though it is a product of social relations)

High Culture

•Great Ideas •Traditional Culture •Elite •Need an education

For Foucault the subject ?

•Not active •has things done to it •Not at the center - is not the author of representation •subjects may speak, but they are operating within a "regime of truth" •"'subject' is produced within discourse" •subjected to discourse

Low Culture

•Ordinary •Folk •Of the people •Uneducated

Discursive Approach

•Study of Discourse •Discourse is the way we use language to construct knowledge about thing •More concerned with the effects and consequences 'politics'

Semiotic Approach

•Study of Signs and symbols •The role of how these signs carry meaning 'poetics'

Class definition of Culture

•The process through which we make meaning out of things •Or, the process through which we make symbolic meaning out of everyday things

Making meaning by forging links between three different things (constructionist approach)

•Things •Concepts •Signs

Representation (dictionary)

•a person or group that speaks or acts for or in support of another person or group •something (such as a picture or symbol) that stands for something else

Representation

•how we use things to think, speak and feel - we give them meanings "In part, we give things meaning by how we represent them - the words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, the values we place on them

Social Constructionist Approach

•meaning is thought to be produced - constructed - rather than simply 'found' . . .representation is conceived as entering into the very constitution of things; and thus culture is conceptualized as a primary or 'constitutive' process, as important as the economic or material 'base' in shaping social subjects and historical events - not merely a reflection of the world after the event" (p.xxi)

power circulates

•not emanating from one source

Traditional concept - individual fully endowed with consciousness

•subject is the source of meaning

Codes

•tells us what word to use for a concept •Allows us to translate meaning •Encoding - putting things into code •Decoding - interpreting meaning from code

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

•we consent to the ruling class •we accept their ideology •It seems natural or 'common sense' •Hegemony •Italian Communist jailed by Fascists (Benito Mussolini) •Important to Birmingham School