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Summary for Culture: Middle East, Weeks 1 to 5
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Janaan FarhatCulture – Middle East Readings Summaries (+ Lecture notes for all weeks)
Culture – ME Week 1
Readings Week 1
Within cultural studies, culture is understood to encompass all that individuals use, make or do
to give meaning to reality, in partcular their social reality.
Stuart Hall explains that cultural studies considers culture to be “primarily concerned with the
producton and exchange of meaning […] between members of a society or group (Hall 1997,
2).
Crucially, cultural studies assumes that sign systems are never neutral and that the ways in
which people give meaning to the world are wrought with unequal power structures. The 1964
opening of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University, beter
known as “the Birmingham School, can be said to consttute the birth of Cultural Studies as an
academic discipline.
One of the chief intellectual projects of the Frankfurt School was to expose how mass media
constructed and reinforced a dominant, but imperceptble, cultural norm that served to
normalize class divisions. This norm is referred to with the term hegemony coined by the Italian
thinker Antonio Gramsci. Exposing the ideology underlying the ways in which culture renders
some things “normal and others deviant has remained one of the pillars of cultural studies untl
today.
Cultural Studies has contnued to take popular culture seriously.
The Birmingham School is closely associated with the New Lef.
Cultural Studies is sometmes described as being antidisciplinary in that it does not rely on fxed
methods but rather draws from a variety of disciplines. Methods may be drawn from sociology,
anthropology and linguistcs, but the close analysis of texts and images with a strong reliance on
theoretcal concepts developed by critcal theory and psychoianalysis are one of the most
important methodological approaches within cultural studies. In this sense, the discipline builds
in partcular on the analytcal rigour of comparatve literature.
Cultural studies tends to start with diference in order to show complexity and nuance, and to
show exceptons to, and subversions of, the norm.
Its aims are openly politcal and it is precisely this politcal project, rather than any
methodological approach, that tes the discipline together as a whole
The development of cultural studies as a discipline is thus frmly embedded within the politcal
struggle for social justce and cultural recogniton as it developed within the context of late
capitalist liberal democracies, in partcular of the UK and the US, and increasingly in intellectual
exchange with the French philosophical traditon.
A successful cultural studies should be adaptable to various contexts, remaining true to itself as
long as it focuses on the artculaton between culture and power.
Cultural Studies is sometmes described as being antidisciplinary in that it does not rely on fxed
methods but rather draws from a variety of disciplines.
Middle Eastern Studies is a direct descendant of the academic discipline called Orientalism
To further complicate maters, the insttutonal development of Area Studies in the US, in which
a modern variant of Orientalism was to fnd its place in the form of Middle Eastern Studies, was
designed to serve Cold War US interests.
,Janaan Farhat
Culture – Middle East Readings Summaries (+ Lecture notes for all weeks)
At the end of the 20th century, Comparatve Literature struggled with an increasingly
multcultural student populaton and a globalizing culture more generally for which the
Eurocentric literary heritage on which the discipline was built seemed embarrassingly irrelevant.
Cultural and PostiColonial Studies, fully responding to these new socioicultural realites, ofered
according to Spivak, “no more than metropolitan languageibased presentst and personalist
politcal convictons, ofen with visibly foregone conclusions (Spivak 2003, 8).
Culture and Ideology in the Middle East
One of the main concerns is the analysis of ideology in cultural objects and practces.
Much of cultural studies is concerned less with what ideology is and more with how ideology
works; that is, the queston how culture artculates what is normatve in society and what is
considered to be a transgression or a deviaton
When studying ideology in the Middle East, it is important to realize that under authoritarian
regimes the balance between force and consent – i.e. between Althusser’s Repressive State
Apparatuses and Ideological State Apparatuses or between Gramsci’s politcal hegemony and
cultural hegemony – is diferent than under liberal democracies.
Dina Matar, in an insightul artcle, further points out that despite the obvious signs of global
capitalism, the role of the state in culture and media should be taken into account, especially in
a historicalicomparatve perspectve (Matar 2012). States in the Middle East do not only actvely
produce propaganda, and silence critcal resistance, they are also more openly and practcally
involved in the fnancializaton, producton and distributon of culture than most European
states. A careful assessment of the various ways in which state and commercial interests
intersect from country to country, in flm and television in partcular, could shed more light on
the dynamics between makers, aesthetcs and audiences in the Middle East.
Modernity and Cultural Present in the Middle East
Three important approaches meet each other in this respect. First the discipline is commited to
the detailed analysis of popular culture and everyday life.
There is a deliberate move away from canonical classics (as has been common within literary
studies and art history) to the messy texture of diverse lives in the here and now. At the same
tme there is a move away from atempts to grasp complete social systems (as has been the
purpose of the social sciences including anthropology) to the aim of pointng out complexity,
multplicity, diference and dynamic change within such systems. Finally, Cultural Studies builds
upon a bulk of grand theories that seek to both defne and critcize modernity and posti
modernity.
All these aspects of Cultural Studies – an interest in mundane intmacies, a focus on diference,
and a commitment to critcal theory – face partcular challenges when conducted in the Middle
East. Tarek Sabry points out that within Arab academia the status of popular culture is so low
that it is deemed unworthy of study (Sabry 2010, 81).
As for the habits and practces of everyday life, anthropological studies have come a long way in
mapping some of the informal and mundane intmacies of various communites in the region.
However, these ofen remain largely descriptve, avoiding to make a politcal claim regarding the
ways in which power informs, and is shaped by, the ways in which such communites give
meaning tot their selves and societes.
,Janaan Farhat
Culture – Middle East Readings Summaries (+ Lecture notes for all weeks)
The third component of studying the cultural present is the commitment to critcal theory, and
in partcular the theories of modernity. This is one of the most challenging tasks for a Cultural
Studies in the Middle East.
Firstly, this inequality has shaped Europe in the collectve imaginaton as both the spatal centre
and the temporal forefront of modernity and fgured the European experience of modernity as
the genuine and authentc version, other variants of which cannot hope to become more than
incomplete copies. Such ideas have been so hegemonic that they have profoundly marked
modern debates in the Middle East.
The engagement with modern thought and culture was seen at the tme, and stll so today,
primarily as a global infuence from “the West demanding a response from the rest of world.
Secondly, the intertwinement of modernity as an ethical and politcal project with colonial
subjugaton as an economic and politcal project has tainted every aspect of it, including the
important concerns for social justce and politcal accountability. From humanism to feminism
and from natonalism to democracy, for many subjects of the formerly colonized natons, they
are all part of the violent project of economic, cultural and politcal dominaton by Europe and
the US of the rest of the world and in partcular Islamic civilizaton.
Culture and Identty in the Middle East
There are at least four important tasks for a Cultural Studies in the Middle East with regard to
the study of identtese
o One task would be the careful analysis of how competng identtes are being
constructed and have been transformed over tme.
o Secondly, there is a more external task, which is to expose how images of the region in
global media are ofen redundant and harmful and to counter this representaton with
an appreciaton of the diversity and complexity of Middle Eastern societes
o Thirdly, the religious and ethnic patchwork in the region and in the Levant in partcular,
but also the growing immigrant communites in for example Gulf states, ask for the
researcher to remain atentve to the ways in which various aspects of identtes and the
structures of oppression they entail intersect.
o Finally, Middle Eastern conceptons of what identtes are and how they work might
challenge Western conceptualizatons of identty.
Lecture 1
Structure of the coursee themes
Diversity and identty politcs
Modernity and traditon
Repression and dissent
Midterm and fnal exame NO MCQs, only open questons
Structure of this lecture
What is culture?
Why culture?
What is cultural studies?
, Janaan Farhat
Culture – Middle East Readings Summaries (+ Lecture notes for all weeks)
Two conceptse hegemony and discourse
What is Culture?
Fine Arts (classical view of culture as civilizaton)
Pierre Bourdieu
He rejected this classical view of culture as civilizaton [which distnguishes higher classes from
lower classes].
“I would simply ask why so many critcs, so many writers, so many philosophers take such
satsfacton in professing that the experience of a work of art is inefable, that it escapes by
defniton all ratonal understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the
defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belitle ratonal understanding
come from, this rage to afrm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable
word, its transcendence (Rules of Art)
What is culture?
Fine Arts (classical view of culture a civilizaton)
o One category only
Shared values (sociology perspectve sees culture as…)
Shared way of life (anthropology sees culture as…)
o Endorsing a certain culture for an extended period
o Involves feldwork
Shared meanings (cultural studies sees culture as…)
The producton, circulaton and recepton of cultural objects and practces produce a shared
understanding of the meaning of our social reality
o Involves politcs; we give meaning to a very complex reality through narratve, images,
practces, etc.; also limitng as well
o How we understand our reality is by defniton, politcal
o This emphasis on producton, circulaton, etc. is Marxist as well
Why culture?
Enrichment
o Read! Watch! Visit! Listen!
o Cherish the arts – they make life worth living.
o Learn about other cultures and experience a sense of shared humanity across
diference
Politcs
o Military and economic dominaton are legitmized through culture, and entangled with
cultural dominaton
o Natons, minorites, transnatonalisms [state insttutons] only have meaning through
culture (identty constructons).
Cultural Studies [History of CS as academic discipline; briefy]
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