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Postmodernism and Popular Culture
Postmodernism and Popular Culture brings together eleven recent essays by Angela McRobbie in a collection which deals with the issues which have dominated cultural studies over the last ten years.
A key theme is the notion of postmodernity as a space for social change and political potential. McRobbie explores everyday life as a site of immense social and psychic complexity to which she argues that cultural studies scholars must return through ethnic and empirical work; the sound of living voices and spoken language. She also argues for feminists working in the field to continue to question the place and meaning of feminist theory in a postmodern society. In addition, she examines the new youth cultures as images of social change and signs of profound social transformation.
Bringing together complex ideas about cultural studies today in a lively and accessible format, Angela McRobbie's new collection will be of immense value to all teachers and students of the subject.
A key theme is the notion of postmodernity as a space for social change and political potential. McRobbie explores everyday life as a site of immense social and psychic complexity to which she argues that cultural studies scholars must return through ethnic and empirical work; the sound of living voices and spoken language. She also argues for feminists working in the field to continue to question the place and meaning of feminist theory in a postmodern society. In addition, she examines the new youth cultures as images of social change and signs of profound social transformation.
Bringing together complex ideas about cultural studies today in a lively and accessible format, Angela McRobbie's new collection will be of immense value to all teachers and students of the subject.
234 pages, Hardcover
First published June 30, 1994
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173 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 2, 2014
It would be fair to say that cultural studies has a bad name. It is ridiculed on the right as meaningless mumbo-jumbo and on the left as not being a serious response to the utter seriousness of existing social conditions. McRobbie uses the first few chapters in this book – essentially a collection of articles she has written over the years – to tackle these questions. In some ways these are the least interesting parts of the book – but necessary all the same.
The problem is that traditional Marxism has so comprehensively failed – the collapse of the Soviet Union at the time much of this was written is symptomatic of that failure – meant that the objectivist project that was traditional left-wing politics was looking pretty unattractive. Furthermore, in England at least, it was very clear that the working classes were voting in Thatcher - and not just once, you could nearly forgive them that, but time and again. You could argue that the working classes were infected with false consciousness or petty bourgeois ideology or misrecognition due to the all-pervasive influence of commercial culture – but they seemed to also be enjoying it, enjoying and voting for it. Wallets and ballots celebrating a government and culture that any objective analysis would have to conclude was stealing from the poor to give to the rich. The old Marxists and leftwing social democrats may not have been happy about it, but clearly someone needed to ask why. It was also clear that telling people to pull on their hair-shirts while singing the chorus to The International wasn’t really competing with the glitz and glamour of consumer culture.
The other fun part about Marxism was the preference it gave to economic discrimination – something which feminists, race theorists, gay and lesbian activists and anyone else discriminated against in uniquely different ways justifiably felt made them feel like second class victims when compared to the 'true victims' of our society, the working class, and therefore that the issues they were most concerned about were being defined as also being second class issues. While Marx was calling on workers of the world to unite, they were being asked to do so on his terms - and such a unity was ignoring the diversity only upon which such unity would be possible.
The real question with all of this, for me at least, is just why do we need cultural studies when we already have sociology? This question is touched on here, but I did not come away thinking – oh yeah, I see. Even though I do see that cultural studies prefers to consider itself as a kind of mongrel, bastard child of insanely mixed parentage, there have been strands of sociology, Walter Benjamin is even discussed at length here, that has been occupying that space for a very long time. Just as Barthes haunts the pages of this book without getting his own chapter. The bringing together of semiology, post-structuralism, the reclaimed parts of Marxism, film studies and so on still seems to me to be a sociological project.
The thing that cultural studies does that seems to annoy people the most – and that is done so beautifully in the last four chapters that make up part three of this book – is to get down and dirty with ‘low-culture’. So, the last chapters of this book are about the fashion industry, particularly around Camden Market in London and second hand dresses. Or about Rave dance parties and post-AIDS sexuality or on ‘moral panic’ – that forever young concern of older people about how much worse the youth of today are compared to when they were young. I’m nearly certain that when Adam found out Cain had killed Abel his first words were, “Well, you wouldn’t have seen that in my day.”
These latter chapters in particular reminded me of Bathes Mythologies. There is a really fascinating chapter on Susan Sontag, someone I hadn’t realised was quite so right wing, having only read her On Photography, and also one on Walter Benjamin that helped to fill in some details for me – I’ve been hearing lots about Benjamin lately, but wasn’t sure how to approach him. It is looking like I’m going to have to read bits of his Arcade Project when I get the time.
This book might seem a little dated now – she even says so herself at one point, in what I thought was one of the nicest parts of the book – where she talks about how uncomfortable she feels talking about ‘youth issues’ now that she has a 15 year-old daughter. Time is a prick like that. But where this book remains relevant and interesting and useful isn’t so much due to what she looks at – the problem cultural studies is always going to face is that what might be called ‘low-culture’ is always changing in ways so as to appear forever new. No, what is interesting isn’t what she looks at, but how she looks.
And the questions she poses are just as relevant today as ever. Why might young women not want to call themselves feminists? Does that mean the ‘back lash’ has been successful? Is there a ‘female gaze’ that objectifies men? To what extent is the heightened sexual assertiveness of females and female role models a product of ‘taken for granted’ feminism in young women? How do you assert your identity in a market place that commodifies everything?
I liked this a lot. Cultural studies is often criticised for being obscure and impossible to read – no one could accuse McRobbie of that. She looks out for the reader in ways that other academic writers don’t bother with, always making sure you have kept up and that she still has you beside her. For that alone she deserves to be more read.
The problem is that traditional Marxism has so comprehensively failed – the collapse of the Soviet Union at the time much of this was written is symptomatic of that failure – meant that the objectivist project that was traditional left-wing politics was looking pretty unattractive. Furthermore, in England at least, it was very clear that the working classes were voting in Thatcher - and not just once, you could nearly forgive them that, but time and again. You could argue that the working classes were infected with false consciousness or petty bourgeois ideology or misrecognition due to the all-pervasive influence of commercial culture – but they seemed to also be enjoying it, enjoying and voting for it. Wallets and ballots celebrating a government and culture that any objective analysis would have to conclude was stealing from the poor to give to the rich. The old Marxists and leftwing social democrats may not have been happy about it, but clearly someone needed to ask why. It was also clear that telling people to pull on their hair-shirts while singing the chorus to The International wasn’t really competing with the glitz and glamour of consumer culture.
The other fun part about Marxism was the preference it gave to economic discrimination – something which feminists, race theorists, gay and lesbian activists and anyone else discriminated against in uniquely different ways justifiably felt made them feel like second class victims when compared to the 'true victims' of our society, the working class, and therefore that the issues they were most concerned about were being defined as also being second class issues. While Marx was calling on workers of the world to unite, they were being asked to do so on his terms - and such a unity was ignoring the diversity only upon which such unity would be possible.
The real question with all of this, for me at least, is just why do we need cultural studies when we already have sociology? This question is touched on here, but I did not come away thinking – oh yeah, I see. Even though I do see that cultural studies prefers to consider itself as a kind of mongrel, bastard child of insanely mixed parentage, there have been strands of sociology, Walter Benjamin is even discussed at length here, that has been occupying that space for a very long time. Just as Barthes haunts the pages of this book without getting his own chapter. The bringing together of semiology, post-structuralism, the reclaimed parts of Marxism, film studies and so on still seems to me to be a sociological project.
The thing that cultural studies does that seems to annoy people the most – and that is done so beautifully in the last four chapters that make up part three of this book – is to get down and dirty with ‘low-culture’. So, the last chapters of this book are about the fashion industry, particularly around Camden Market in London and second hand dresses. Or about Rave dance parties and post-AIDS sexuality or on ‘moral panic’ – that forever young concern of older people about how much worse the youth of today are compared to when they were young. I’m nearly certain that when Adam found out Cain had killed Abel his first words were, “Well, you wouldn’t have seen that in my day.”
These latter chapters in particular reminded me of Bathes Mythologies. There is a really fascinating chapter on Susan Sontag, someone I hadn’t realised was quite so right wing, having only read her On Photography, and also one on Walter Benjamin that helped to fill in some details for me – I’ve been hearing lots about Benjamin lately, but wasn’t sure how to approach him. It is looking like I’m going to have to read bits of his Arcade Project when I get the time.
This book might seem a little dated now – she even says so herself at one point, in what I thought was one of the nicest parts of the book – where she talks about how uncomfortable she feels talking about ‘youth issues’ now that she has a 15 year-old daughter. Time is a prick like that. But where this book remains relevant and interesting and useful isn’t so much due to what she looks at – the problem cultural studies is always going to face is that what might be called ‘low-culture’ is always changing in ways so as to appear forever new. No, what is interesting isn’t what she looks at, but how she looks.
And the questions she poses are just as relevant today as ever. Why might young women not want to call themselves feminists? Does that mean the ‘back lash’ has been successful? Is there a ‘female gaze’ that objectifies men? To what extent is the heightened sexual assertiveness of females and female role models a product of ‘taken for granted’ feminism in young women? How do you assert your identity in a market place that commodifies everything?
I liked this a lot. Cultural studies is often criticised for being obscure and impossible to read – no one could accuse McRobbie of that. She looks out for the reader in ways that other academic writers don’t bother with, always making sure you have kept up and that she still has you beside her. For that alone she deserves to be more read.
December 7, 2020
she started with a paragraph promising that she would not inform readers about what postmodern is nor what it is not.
OMG
OMG
February 19, 2013
McRobbie's work isn't always easy to read, but her contributions are crucial. McRobbie manages to make postmodernism not only graspable, but she makes it practical. Her critiques of postmodernism and some of its other big names are dense, and felt less useful to me than her articulation of her own ideas on how postmodernism can be applied to actual qualitative social research. Her own work on subculture is interdisciplinary, combining methods used by sociologists and cultural studies researchers. As a result, her research goes beyond semiology and finished cultural products, taking into account cultural labor, subcultural practices, and actual lived experience. Her renderings of youth and subcultures feel legitimate, sound honest, and are free of scholarly condescension. Highly recommended to those who study, work with, and participate in youth and subcultures.
August 4, 2014
buku yang cukup susah dipahami bagi pembaca awal yang tertarik pada posmodern. sedikit saran bagi para pembaca yang tertarik dengan posmodern bisa terlebih dahulu membaca buku yang bahasanya lebih mudah dicerna seperti menggunggat modernisme karya Medyh Aginta Hidayat atau buku pengant6ar posmodern lainya sebelum membaca buku ini
January 1, 2019
This was my first book on popular culture and its impacts on different aspects of life. I recommend it despite the fact that it might be little bit outdated right now in terms of the examples used in the book. Still worthy of spending some time.
February 20, 2012
she expected way too much from postmodernism.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews