ThAct : Cultural Study Unit- 1

Hello, I am Bhavna Sosa, student of  MK Bhavnagar University. This is blog assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I am discuss about power and media in cultural studies  and what is  truly  educated.

Definition of Cultural Studies :- 

"The critical analysis of the texts and practices of everyday life in contemporary society. an interdisciplinary enterprise involving both the humanities and the social sciences."

                                                                      - Oxford Dictionary 

 cultural studies were originated and developed by british marxist academics in late 1950s,1960s,1970s.and later on developed by many scholars all around the world. The core idea of cultural studies is to look into social organization and to study that as well as construction of there everyday lives. Cultural studies is related to many other fields like, Marxism, Feminist theory, ethnography, Post-Structuralism,Postcolonialism,Social.

1)Your understanding of power in cultural studies 

There are six sources of power:-

1. Physical forces
2. Wealth
3. State action
4. Social norms
5. Ideas
6. Number 

Michel Foucault, the French postmodernist, has been hugely influential in shaping understandings of power, leading away from the analysis of actors who use power as an instrument of coercion, and even away from the discreet structures in which those actors operate, toward the idea that ‘power is everywhere’, diffused and embodied in discourse, knowledge and ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault 1991; Rabinow 1991). Power for Foucault is what makes us what we are, operating on a quite different level from other theories:

‘His work marks a radical departure from previous modes of conceiving power and cannot be easily integrated with previous ideas, as power is diffuse rather than concentrated, embodied and enacted rather than possessed, discursive rather than purely coercive, and constitutes agents rather than being deployed by them’ 

Foucault challenges the idea that power is wielded by people or groups by way of ‘episodic’ or ‘sovereign’ acts of domination or coercion, seeing it instead as dispersed and pervasive. ‘Power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’ so in this sense is neither an agency nor a structure (Foucault 1998: 63). Instead it is a kind of ‘metapower’ or ‘regime of truth’ that pervades society, and which is in constant flux and negotiation. Foucault uses the term ‘power/knowledge’ to signify that power is constituted through accepted forms of knowledge, scientific understanding and ‘truth’.

Foucault is one of the few writers on power who recognise that power is not just a negative, coercive or repressive thing that forces us to do things against our wishes, but can also be a necessary, productive and positive force in society.

‘We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production’.

Power is also a major source of social discipline and conformity. In shifting attention away from the ‘sovereign’ and ‘episodic’ exercise of power, traditionally centred in feudal states to coerce their subjects, Foucault pointed to a new kind of ‘disciplinary power’ that could be observed in the administrative systems and social services that were created in 18th century Europe, such as prisons, schools and mental hospitals. Their systems of surveillance and assessment no longer required force or violence, as people learned to discipline themselves and behave in expected ways.

Why media studies is so important in our digital culture?

"To manufacture consent, you need an enemy, a target: Communism, terrorists, immigrants… a boogeyman to fear helps corral public opinion."

Noam Chomsky gives five types of filters about mass media:

1)   

                                                 2)

                                                  3)

4)

5)

Who can be considered as 'truly educated person'?

Chomsky, whose thoughts on education we’ve featured before,  he defines what it means to be truly educated. And to do so, he reaches back to a philosopher whose views you won’t hear referenced often, Wilhelm von Humboldt, German humanist, friend of Goethe and Schiller, and “founder of the modern higher education system.” Humboldt, Chomsky says, “argued, I think, very plausibly, that the core principle and requirement of a fulfilled human being is the ability to inquire and create constructively, independently, without external controls.” A true education, Chomsky suggests, opens a door to human intellectual freedom and creative autonomy.

To clarify, Chomsky paraphrases a “leading physicist”  who would tell his students, “it’s not important what we cover in the class; it’s important what you discover.” On this point of view, to be truly educated means to be resourceful, to be able to “formulate serious questions” and “question standard doctrine, if that’s appropriate”…. It means to “find your own way.” This definition sounds similar to Nietzsche’s views on the subject, though Nietzsche had little hope in very many people attaining a true education. Chomsky, as you might expect, proceeds in a much more democratic spirit.

Thank you for visit.