An Overview about Cultural Studies, literary and English studies. Including concepts such as Marxism, Hegemony and Subalternity.

1. C U L T U R A L
I N T R O T O
S T U D I E S
Presented by: Wise Notion

2. OUTLINE
I. What is Culture?
II. Cultural Studies
IV. Ideology: Marxism
III. Origins of Cultural
Studies
V. Hegemony
VI. Subalternity

3. Culture refers to a way
of life – a particular way
of life – whether of a
people, a period or a
group,
or humanity in general.
Culture includes the
organization of production,
the structure of the family,
the structure of institutions
which express or govern
social relationships, the
characteristic forms through
which
members of the society
communicate.
WHAT IS CULTURE :
“Raymond Henry
Williams”

4. WHAT IS CULTURAL STUDIES
• Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the
political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture)
and its historical foundations. It views cultures not as fixed, bounded,
stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and
changing sets of practices and processes.
• Cultural Studies is the relationship between culture and meaning,
beginning with the premise that culture is neither neutral nor natural.

5. Characteristics of Cultural Studies
• It aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and
their relation to power.
• Its objective is to understand culture in all its complex forms and to
analyses the social and political context within which it manifest itself.
• It aims to understand and change the structures of dominance
everywhere but in industrial capitalist societies in particular.

6. How does it function:
• Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to
wider systems of power associated with or operating through social phenomena,
such as ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual
orientation, gender, and generation.
• Cultural studies combines a variety of politically engaged critical approaches drawn
including semiotics, Marxism, feminist theory, critical race theory, 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.

7. I N 1 9 3 0 s
ORIGIN OF CULTURE STUDIES:
FRANKFURT SCHOOL
MAX
HORKHEIMER
HERBERT
MARCUSE
THEODOR
- It worked on basic Marxist concepts to analyze the
social relations within capitalist economics systems.
- Dominants groups used media and technology to
reproduce the ideas and cultures of the masses in a way
that serves their interests.

8. I N 1 9 5 0 s
BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL
RAYMOND
WILLIAMS
RICHARD
HOGGART
E.P THOMPSON
- It Looked at possibilities of resistance
especially in the interpretation of
media texts.
- They were trying to go beyond the
division between high culture and
low culture.

9. - It insisted on making
distinction between encoding
and decoding, which helps
the viewer to go beyond the
understanding of the
producers
1 9 6 4 - 2 0 0 2
- The CCCS widened the scope of C.S, it saw how texts
of media represented class, gender and race.
- It tried to explore the
influence of media on the
audience and how the
audience can resist by giving his
own readings.
Centre For Contemporary Cultural Studies
(CCCS)
STUART
RICHARD
HOGGART

10. IDEOLOGY
• Ideology is a systematic body
of ideas
articulated by a particular group of
people.
It is a certain masking, distortion,
or
Concealment that produces ‘false
consciousness.
• Ideology is a way of making other
people believe what you believe
and see things the way you see
them.

11. XISM
MAR

12. MARXISM
• Marxism is a social, economic and political
philosophy that analyses the impact of the ruling
class on the laborers, leading to uneven
distribution of wealth and privileges in the
society.
• The theory was formulated by Karl Marx and Fredrich
Engels in their work, ‘The Communist Manifesto’.
• The Bourgeoisie enjoyed the power to control the
toiling masses’ wages and work, leaving them
vulnerable to even replacements in the future. The
former had access to modern equipment and tools to
make work easier and quicker, leaving the laborer
with low wages and adding more profits to
themselves.
• The never-ending heavy labor left the workforce with
a feeling of alienation from the task (Estranged
Labor) and even humanity, focusing only on the
yields.

13. HIGH CULTUTE
R ef ers t o t he cult ural
aspect s ( mat erial and
nonmat erial) considered
superior and held in t he
highest esteem by a society.
It is t ypically associat ed
w ith int ellect ualism,
polit ical pow er, and
prest ige. It encompasses a
collection of beliefs,
t hought s, pract ices and
w orks t hat are not
necessarily int ended f or
ordinary people, but f or t he
distinguished elite of
societ y.

14. Classical music is not popular
with the masses, but retains
popularity among the elites and
people trained in music theory.
Classical music is performed
by orchestras and appreciated
for the depth and detail of the
themes.

15. LOW CULTUTE
• is the complete anti-thesis
of high culture. It is the
culture of the common
people and the mass; the
philistines, not the
aristocrats, to use olden
times’ terms. (The masses:
mostly non-elites like
laborers, small-scale
businessmen, peasants,
barbers, truck-drivers …)

16. • Like country music, pop
music is celebrated by the
working and lower-middle
classes but not the elite.
Pop music stands for
“popular music” and is, by
definition, the music
enjoyed by the masses.

17. HEGEMON
Y • Hegemony is the dominance of one group over another,
often supported by legitimating norms and ideas.
• This broader meaning was coined in the 1930s by the
Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci.
It Requires consent of the majority to keep the
dominant group in power.
• Hegemony is the power of the ruling class to
convince other classes that their interests are the
interests of all. They use ideas and cultural forms
that induce consent to their rule, a subtle and
inclusive power over the economy, and over state
apparatuses (civile society) such as the church,
school, and the media by which their interest is
presented as the common interest and thus comes to
be taking for granted.
ANTONIO

18. American Culture
Time Period: 20th century
Location: Global
The United States became the global hegemon after
WW2 thanks to its economic and military power. The
United States promoted neoliberalism as the only
acceptable way to think about economics, and its cultural
exports (such as Hollywood movies and rock music)
became dominant around the world thanks to cultural
globalization.

19. PRISON Notebooks
Gramsci’s reflections on hegemony
develop along the concept of
subalternity. He coined the
term subaltern to identify
the cultural hegemony that excludes
and displaces specific people and
social groups from the socio-
economic institutions of society, in
order to deny their agency and
voices in colonial politics.

20. SUBALTERNITY
• In postcolonial studies and in critical theory, the
term subaltern designates and identifies the
colonial populations who are socially, politically,
and geographically excluded from the hierarchy of
power of an imperial colony and from the
metropolitan homeland of an empire.
• A subaltern is someone with a low ranking in a
social, political or other hierarchy. It can also
mean who has been marginalized or oppressed.
• The question of subalternity emerges in relation to
subordinate social groups and individuals whose
historical activity is repressed, neglected,
misinterpreted or at “ the margins” of hegemonic
histories, discours and social formations.
gayatri spivak

21. • During the 1980s, the Subaltern Studies project
developed and adapted Gramsci’s research
programm on subalternity to the situation of
(post)colonial India. The main aim of this project
was to re-write Indian history between
colonialism and decolonization from the
perspective of the rural subaltern masses.
• More recently, Spivak’s work has focused on
subalterns as subjects of relations, rather
than as objects of study. Inspired by Gramsci
and by her political-pedagogical activity with
Adivasi tribes, Spivak asks not only whether
and how subalterns can be represented by
intellectuals, but also what the intellectual
can learn from them.