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    Working With Ideology and Alterity

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    Bianca Darie
    New Historicism, Cultural Studies, and Postcolonialism deal with literature in the context of broader culture. They draw from theorists like Barthes, Foucault, Greenblatt, Althusser, and Gramsci. Key concepts include culture as constructed and multifaceted, ideology as limiting and normalizing, hegemony as dominant ideologies, and discourse as power shaping knowledge. New Historicism differs from old by reading history and literature together and seeing facts as subjective interpretations within plural histories. Cultural Studies analyzes popular culture and marginalized groups, while Postcolonial Studies examines the colonized other and concepts like hybridity and subaltern identity.

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    Working With Ideology and Alterity

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    Bianca Darie
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    New Historicism, Cultural Studies, and Postcolonialism deal with literature in the context of broader culture. They draw from theorists like Barthes, Foucault, Greenblatt, Althusser, and Gramsci. Key concepts include culture as constructed and multifaceted, ideology as limiting and normalizing, hegemony as dominant ideologies, and discourse as power shaping knowledge. New Historicism differs from old by reading history and literature together and seeing facts as subjective interpretations within plural histories. Cultural Studies analyzes popular culture and marginalized groups, while Postcolonial Studies examines the colonized other and concepts like hybridity and subaltern identity.

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    New Historicism, Cultural Studies, and Postcolonialism deal with literature in the context of broader culture. They draw from theorists like Barthes, Foucault, Greenblatt, Althusser, and Gramsci. Key concepts include culture as constructed and multifaceted, ideology as limiting and normalizing, hegemony as dominant ideologies, and discourse as power shaping knowledge. New Historicism differs from old by reading history and literature together and seeing facts as subjective interpretations within plural histories. Cultural Studies analyzes popular culture and marginalized groups, while Postcolonial Studies examines the colonized other and concepts like hybridity and subaltern identity.

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    14 views2 pages

    Working With Ideology and Alterity

    Uploaded by

    Bianca Darie
    New Historicism, Cultural Studies, and Postcolonialism deal with literature in the context of broader culture. They draw from theorists like Barthes, Foucault, Greenblatt, Althusser, and Gramsci. Key concepts include culture as constructed and multifaceted, ideology as limiting and normalizing, hegemony as dominant ideologies, and discourse as power shaping knowledge. New Historicism differs from old by reading history and literature together and seeing facts as subjective interpretations within plural histories. Cultural Studies analyzes popular culture and marginalized groups, while Postcolonial Studies examines the colonized other and concepts like hybridity and subaltern identity.

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    HAND-OUT 6: NEW HISTORICISM, CULTURAL STUDIES, POSTCOLONIALISM

    Working with Ideology and Alterity

    AUTHOR --> WORK --> LANGUAGE --> READER -->CONTEXT

    All three (N.H, C.S and PostC.) exist in a continuum and deal with literature in the larger
    context of CULTURE. Sometimes they are considered separate, other times New Historicism and Postcolonial
    Studies are considered part of Cultural Studies.
    Big Theorists
    Roland Barthes (yet again!), Michel Foucault (poststructuralist, but influenced the movement a lot), Stephen
    Greenblatt (esp. for New Historicism), Louis Althusser (actually Marxist), Antonio Gramsci (also Marxist),
    Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams (founders of Cultural Studies).
    Big Concepts
     CULTURE
    What is culture?
    Michael Richardson: “Culture is simply what human beings produce and the means by which we
    preserve what we have produced.” -->it is “constructed, multifaceted and uniquely human.”
    (Ott& Mack, 135)
    Forms of culture
    Physical(artifacts: books, textbooks, clothing), Social(traditions, habits, customs), Attitudinal
    (ways of understanding, attitudes towards religion, sexuality, gender).
    Qualities of culture
    Collective (one individual cannot make a culture); Rhetorical (functions through symbols),
    Historical(fluctuates according to history), Ideological (we see the world in some ways and not
    in others);
     IDEOLOGY
    Functions of Ideology
    - it limits (the blinding function);
    - it normalizes;
    - it privileges;
    - it interpellates (Althusser’s term): it hails us as subjects;

     HEGEMONY (Antonio Gramsci)


    While ideologies change over time, some remain dominant, almost impossible to change. Dominant
    ideologies are called hegemonical (they incorporate subcultures and subvert them); Ex; punk subculture,
    torn jeans.

     DISCOURSE (Michel Foucault)


    Knowledge does not create power, but the other way round. Ex: the discourse of gender.
    Old vs. New Historicism
    OLD HISTORICISM NEW HISTORICISM (influenced by
    Deconstruction)
    Reading history as background of literature Reading history and literature together

    History is objective History is subjective

    Facts Interpretations

    Linear, progressive Complex, not progressive


    History Histories
    Monolithic (single, universal accessible truth) Plural, multiple, fluid
    History vs. literature, Fact vs. Fiction Literature & History, Facts of history are
    nothing but stories, narratives.

    Cultural Studies
    As a Discipline
    1964: Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, Raymond Williams, Stuart
    Hall.
    What Cultural Studies does:
    Analyzes literature, but also pop culture (distinctions between high and low brow culture are erased)
    see Barthes’ analysis of striptease, for instance;
    Looks at marginalized groups (interactions between The One and the Other): racial and ethnic others,
    but more recently also Trauma Studies, Disability Studies.
    Postcolonial Studies
    Interested in the colonized “other”.
    Hybridity: mixture between cultures, esp. that of the colonizer and that of the colonized producing
    mixed identities.
    Subaltern (& Subaltern Studies), GayatriSpivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

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