This blog is for use with my courses so that you might receive responses to general questions and updates on the course.
It often happens that I think of something I should have said at about the time I get on the subway, so I will also post here
any additional comments or clarifications to the class-room discussion.
B. Ricardo Brown, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Cultural Studies
Department of Social Science & Cultural Studies
Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York
Descriptions of Fall 2008 Courses
__________
Cultural Studies
SS.330.01 & .02
Cultural Studies emerged from the attempts to understand the social complexity and political uses of “culture.”
From the existence of the “underclass” to debates over “high & low” art, the value of the artifacts
of popular culture (television, music, etc.), or the investigation of authority and power in the social relations of everyday
life, Cultural Studies examined and intervened in some of the most pressing issues of its day. The class will explore how
Cultural Studies contributed to these debates. We will further examine how Cultural Studies offered a critical understanding
of what Max Horkheimer termed “life as it is lived.” Finally, attention will be paid to what some have called
the fate of Cultural Studies as it became accepted and co-opted by various academic disciplines.
__________
Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud
SS.490
We will examine the production of value, its transvaluation, and its relation to society, power, and desire through the works
of Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud. It is important to remember that this course is only a single semester, it can only
serve as an introduction to some aspects of what is an extensive and varied body of work. So the primary purpose here is
to begin an engagement with these works that has, for many, lasted a lifetime.
What is value? Is it imposed or does it arise naturally? If it is natural, should we transform it. If it is imposed, how
do we transform it, i.e., how do we achieve the transvaluation of value? The problem of value is as old as those of morality
and society. Often we see them as being different, but in fact, they are inseparable. For this reason, the critique of each
goes hand in hand with the critique of all. This course will introduce students to these various critiques through the examination
of some important attempts to transform our understanding of the production of social value and the transformation of value
or transvaluation. The notion of transvaluation is deployed in the foundational works of our era. It unites what might seem
at first glance or to the uninitiated eye very different texts: Darwin's Descent of Man, Marx's sections of The
Holy Family, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and the Genealogy of Morals, and Freud's Civilization and
its Discontents. It is not difficult to find the concern for value in the pages and between the lines of these works.
In fact, the notion of transvaluation is central to the work of all of these authors. This is perhaps one source of the
continued interest in their work, for they consistently remind us of the possibilities which could arise from experiencing
our world in new ways.
Wrightman in his Growth of Scientific Ideas says that "Darwin gave us nothing less that the transformation of all
possible biological values," the goal of his work being that many of the scientific values of his day, chiefly defined by
the question of human classification, would "die a silent and obscure death" (Descent of Man). Karl Marx exposed the
mystifications of the moral values of the bourgeoisie when in Capital he describes "....valorization as a process,
labor in the act of realizing itself consistently as value, but also flowing beyond already existing values to work new ones...capital
is...value valorizing itself, value that gives birth to value” (Capital, I). Nietzsche summed up his project
as "the transvaluation of all values” (The Antichrist). Freud took this idea seriously and invested the psyche
with an economy while splintering the individual into value producing and transforming processes: "One function of mental
activity during dream construction, the transformation of the unconscious thoughts into the content of the dream, is peculiar
to dream-life and characteristic of it. This dream-work proper...is exhaustively described by an enumeration of the conditions
which it has to satisfy in producing its result. That product, the dream, has above all to evade censorship, and with that
end in view the dream-work makes use of a displacement of psychical intensities to the point of a transvaluation of all psychical
values (Interpretation of Dreams)."
So we will examine the production of value, its transvaluation, and its relation to society, power, and desire through the
works of Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud.
For Spring 2009
Cultural Studies
Foucault and Critical Theory
Go to my course materials page to get the pdf of Eco's Casablanca.
Cultural Studies-- Short "interview" with Umberto Eco in New York TImes Magazine
In the New York Times Magazine today is a short "interview" with Eco. "Interview" because reporter writer
has been known to violate Times policy and condense or alter or take out of context what was said. The NYTimes own Public
Editor did a couple of pieces recently on the issue. Nevertheless, it is worth reading if only because of Eco's views on media,
politics, and his "invention" of Dan Brown.
You have to register with the Times (it is free) to view the article.
Questions for Umberto Eco
Media Studies
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: November 25, 2007
Q: Although you’re known best as the author of the highbrow murder mystery “The Name of the Rose,” you’re also a prolific
political commentator whose essays have now been collected in a book, “Turning Back the Clock,” in which you warn against
the dangers of “media populism.” How would you define that term?
A: Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political
affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.
Q: Much of your book is an assault on Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who used his media empire to assist
his political ends.
A: From ’94 to ’95, and from 2001 to 2006, Berlusconi was the richest man in Italy, the prime minister, the owner of three
TV channels and controller of the three state channels. He is a phenomenon that could happen and is maybe happening in other
countries. And the mechanism will be the same.
But here we have the F.C.C. and other federal agencies to prevent the sort of monopolies that would allow a politician to
control the country’s newspapers and TV stations. In the States, there is still a great separation between the media and political
power, at least in principle.
Q: So why would any country besides Italy be at risk of having the media takeover you describe?
A: One of the reasons why foreigners are so interested in the Italian case is that Italy was in the last century a laboratory.
It started with the Futurists. Their manifesto was in 1909. Then fascism — it was tested in the Italian laboratory and then
it migrated to Spain, to the Balkans, to Germany.
Q: Are you saying that Germany got the idea of fascism from Italy?
A: Oh, certainly. According to what the historians say, it is so.
Maybe just the Italian historians. If you don’t like it, don’t tell it. I am indifferent.
Q: You’re saying that Italy was a trendsetter in both fashion — or art — and fascism?
A: Yes, O.K., why not?
Q: What do you make of Berlusconi’s successor, Romano Prodi, who was elected last year and has shifted the government leftward?
A: He is a friend. I like him, but I think he has been overwhelmed by the infighting after the election within his own majority.
Berlusconi has the advantage of being a big actor. Prodi is not an actor, which is not a crime, but it is a weakness.
Prodi is an intellectual as opposed to a businessman? Yes, he was a professor of economics. In the early ’90s, Prodi was also
a teacher in one of my programs. Suddenly he went into politics.
Q: You’re referring to the department of communications at the University of Bologna, where you’re a professor of semiotics.
A: I retired this month. I am 75.
Q: Have you ever wanted to go into politics?
A: No, because I think everybody must do his job.
Q: Do you see yourself mainly as a novelist?
A: I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.
Q: I am wondering if you read Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code,” which some critics see as the pop version of your “Name of the
Rose.”
A: I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters
in my novel, “Foucault’s Pendulum,” which is about people who start believing in occult stuff.
Q: But you yourself seem interested in the kabbalah, alchemy and other occult practices explored in the novel.
A: No, in “Foucault’s Pendulum” I wrote the grotesque representation of these kind of people. So Dan Brown is one of my creatures.
Q: Do you care if people read your novels 100 years from now?
A: If somebody writes a book and doesn’t care for the survival of that book, he’s an imbecile.
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY DEBORAH SOLOMON
How High Up?
Philippe Sands, international lawyer, professor of law at University College London and author of Torture Team: Rumsfeld's
Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, discusses his Vanity Fair article on the Bush Administration and torture and whether
any individuals might be in legal jeopardy.
Link to a 2003 memo from the Department of Justice saying torture of foreign nationals is lawful (pdf)
Audubon exhibit at the New York Historical Society
There is an exhibit of Audubon painting at the New York Historical
Society right now until March 26th. Audubon's friendship and
scientific partnership with John and Maria Bachman is discussed in the
readings. The link below is to the exhibit.
The New York Historical Society has the collection of
Audubon's work for Bird's
of America.
Science and the Origins of Race, SS. 490: Science News Sites
The question came up where to find accessible science news. Here are a few. Remember that
some of
these may be available via the Pratt's online
services. Make sure to check with them or to ask a reference
librarian
about their databases.
Perhaps the most
respected, though not so accessible both in terms of the
publication and because of its cost, is Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
Compare the analyzes of repetition, style, commodity, and fetish as found in the readings by Eco and Horkheimer and Adorno.
How does Hall make use of, or critique, these views in his encoding-decoding essay?
This essay should be five pages, rather than the 10 pages noted in the syllabus, and is due on March 12.
You may submit your essay via email.
Compare the analyzes of repetition, style, commodity, and fetish as found in the readings by Eco and Horkheimer and Adorno.
How does Hall make use of, or critique, these views in his encoding-decoding essay?
This essay should be five pages, rather than the 10 pages noted in the syllabus, and is due on March 12.
You may submit your essay via email.
A pdf of the slides from today are on available on my site, as well.
Online Exhibition of Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature
Online Exhibition of Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature
Check out this site, especially the bio and the plates available here:
http://www.mblwhoilibrary.org/haeckel/
Haeckel's illustration of the developing embryos are still standard in many text books, though the accuracy of some of the
features has been called into question. Next to Huxley, Haeckel was Darwin's most important popularizer, though Haeckel's
views would have been more aligned in general with Spencer than Darwin. Haeckel's Monists had connections with the German
Thule Society, which will be mentioned later in the readings.
His illustrations are discussed in the evolution debate that we will be reviewing as well.
I have made some changes for the last meeting, so read Stuart Hall in During and this short piece by Deleuze
http://www.n5m.org/n5m2/media/texts/deleuze.htm
The assignment for your midterm essay was to critique (as in analyze) some of what you find connecting Horkheimer and Adorno's
Culture Industry chapter, Eco's essay on Casablanca, and Borges' Pierre Menard.
Keeping in mind what you found in answering this question, discuss them in the context of Stuart Hall's article "Cultural
Studies and its Theoretical Legacies" from the During reader.
Hall lays out a genealogy of Cultural Studies that addresses some of the political commitments involved in this work. His
implicit argument is that the era when work in Cultural Studies maintained its coherence through these shared objects of study,
interventions, commitments, and ideologies has come to an end. Paradoxically, this end comes precisely when Cultural Studies
becomes institutionalized in the universities in the United States. This may be, as Marx would have had it, either tragic
or farcical. But the question to consider is less whether Cultural Studies is viable as an academic field, than it is to
consider whether or not the work that you have encountered is still of use, or if its theoretical legacies render it only
of historical interest. What do you think can be salvaged from the wreckage?
______
Your essay should be concise, and should not exceed 8-12 typed pages.
Cultural Studies-- Short "interview" with Umberto Eco in New York TImes Magazine
In the New York Times Magazine today is a short "interview" with Eco. "Interview" because reporter writer
has been known to violate Times policy and condense or alter or take out of context what was said. The NYTimes own Public
Editor did a couple of pieces recently on the issue. Nevertheless, it is worth reading if only because of Eco's views on
media, politics, and his "invention" of Dan Brown.
You have to register with the Times (it is free) to view the article.
Questions for Umberto Eco
Media Studies
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: November 25, 2007
Q: Although you’re known best as the author of the highbrow murder mystery “The Name of the Rose,” you’re also a prolific
political commentator whose essays have now been collected in a book, “Turning Back the Clock,” in which you warn against
the dangers of “media populism.” How would you define that term?
A: Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political
affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.
Q: Much of your book is an assault on Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who used his media empire to assist
his political ends.
A: From ’94 to ’95, and from 2001 to 2006, Berlusconi was the richest man in Italy, the prime minister, the owner of three
TV channels and controller of the three state channels. He is a phenomenon that could happen and is maybe happening in other
countries. And the mechanism will be the same.
But here we have the F.C.C. and other federal agencies to prevent the sort of monopolies that would allow a politician to
control the country’s newspapers and TV stations. In the States, there is still a great separation between the media and political
power, at least in principle.
Q: So why would any country besides Italy be at risk of having the media takeover you describe?
A: One of the reasons why foreigners are so interested in the Italian case is that Italy was in the last century a laboratory.
It started with the Futurists. Their manifesto was in 1909. Then fascism — it was tested in the Italian laboratory and then
it migrated to Spain, to the Balkans, to Germany.
Q: Are you saying that Germany got the idea of fascism from Italy?
A: Oh, certainly. According to what the historians say, it is so.
Maybe just the Italian historians. If you don’t like it, don’t tell it. I am indifferent.
Q: You’re saying that Italy was a trendsetter in both fashion — or art — and fascism?
A: Yes, O.K., why not?
Q: What do you make of Berlusconi’s successor, Romano Prodi, who was elected last year and has shifted the government leftward?
A: He is a friend. I like him, but I think he has been overwhelmed by the infighting after the election within his own majority.
Berlusconi has the advantage of being a big actor. Prodi is not an actor, which is not a crime, but it is a weakness.
Prodi is an intellectual as opposed to a businessman? Yes, he was a professor of economics. In the early ’90s, Prodi was also
a teacher in one of my programs. Suddenly he went into politics.
Q: You’re referring to the department of communications at the University of Bologna, where you’re a professor of semiotics.
A: I retired this month. I am 75.
Q: Have you ever wanted to go into politics?
A: No, because I think everybody must do his job.
Q: Do you see yourself mainly as a novelist?
A: I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.
Q: I am wondering if you read Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code,” which some critics see as the pop version of your “Name of the
Rose.”
A: I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters
in my novel, “Foucault’s Pendulum,” which is about people who start believing in occult stuff.
Q: But you yourself seem interested in the kabbalah, alchemy and other occult practices explored in the novel.
A: No, in “Foucault’s Pendulum” I wrote the grotesque representation of these kind of people. So Dan Brown is one of my creatures.
Q: Do you care if people read your novels 100 years from now?
A: If somebody writes a book and doesn’t care for the survival of that book, he’s an imbecile.
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY DEBORAH SOLOMON
Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason available from Internet Archive
The text of Max Horkheimer's Eclipse of Reason (1947), which contains the essay "The Revolt of Nature" is now available
from the Internet Archive at
http://www.archive.org/eclipseofreason006330mbp
Midterm essays are due. Hard copies please, as I will be traveling and without access to a computer during the coming weekend.
For Thursday: Since I had to cancel the meeting last Thursday, we will continue with the readings for last week.
For Wednesday: Since we had such a good discussion, I did not get to give you a couple of examples of landscape interpretation.
We will do that tomorrow and continue with the Horkheimer & Adorno reading next week
The assignment for your midterm essay is to critique (as in analyze) some of what you find connecting Horkheimer and Adorno's
Culture Industry chapter, Eco's essay on Casablanca, and Borges' Pierre Menard.
For example, Borges writes of “one of those parasitic books which situate Christ on the boulevard, Hamlet on the La Cannebiere
or Don Quixote on Wall Street. Like all men of good taste, Menard abhorred these useless carnivals, fit only --- as he would
say --- to produce the plebeian pleasure of anachronism or (what is worse) to enthrall us with the elementary idea that all
epochs are the same or are different.” (Ficciones, pg. 48)
While Horkheimer and Adorno discuss the absorption of “light art into serious or vice versa. That, however, is what the culture
industry attempts.... What is new, however, is that the irreconcilable elements of culture, art, and amusement have been subjected
equally to the concept of purpose and thus brought under a single false denominator: the totality of the culture industry.
Its element is repetition. The fact that its characteristic innovations are in all cases mere improvements to mass production
is not extraneous to the system. With good reason the interest of countless consumers is focused on the technology, not on
the rigidly repeated, threadbare and half-abandoned content....” (Dialectic of Enlightenment, pg. 108) Today the culture industry
has taken over the civilizing inheritance of the frontier and entrepreneurial democracy, whose receptivity to intellectual
deviations was never too highly developed. All are free to dance and amuse themselves, just as, since the historical neutralization
of religion, they have been free to join any of countless sects. But freedom to choose an ideology, which always reflects
economics coercion, everywhere proves to be freedom to be the same. (pg. 136)
And Eco writes about how “in order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to unhinge it, to break it up or
take it apart so that one then may remember only parts of it, regardless of their original relationship to the whole... it
must display certain features since, beyond the conscious control of the producer, it has become a sort of textual syllabus,
a living example of living textuality. In the face of this, the addressee must suspect that it is not true that works are
created by their authors. Works are created by other works, texts by other texts, and all together they speak to and with
one another independently of the intentions of their authors. A cult movie is the proof that, as literature comes from literature,
cinema comes from cinema. (pg.4)
What Casablanca does unconsciously, other movies will do with an extreme intertextual awareness --- and with the expectation
that the spectator be equally aware of their purposes. These are 'postmodern' movies, where the quotation of the topos is
recognized as the only way to cope with the burden of our encyclopedia filmic competence.” (pg.11)
Foucault's “What is an Author” likewise discusses at length the author function in relation to intention, intertextuality,
classification, etc.
____________________________
Your essay should be concise, and should not exceed 8-10 typed pages. You can write your essay on the connections you see
between these selections (read these fully, I did not include complete quotes for reasons of space) or choose other aspects
to highlight, but these four texts are the primary ones to use.
I want to emphasize that your reading of Marx for next week should not focus on the economics of the political economists,
but rather on the continuities of critique that you can find between the Holy Family, the Grundrisse, and Capital.
There are significant discontinuities as well, and Althuseer goes over these in his "Ideological State Apparatus" essay in
Lenin and Philosophy --- though most of these discontinuities existed either in the locus communis of Althusser's
acolytes or in his attempts to justify the pro-USSR stances of the French Communist Party while taking into account the contradictions
between Marx and "actually existing Marxism."
