Thomas Rickert  <trickert@purdue.edu>                                     Office: Heav 303B

Engl 680C-0101                                                                                  Office Phone: 494-3719

Cultural Studies®™, Rhetoric, and Pedagogy                             Office Hours: W: 4:00-5:30; R: 10:30-12:00

Fall 2003: W: 6:30-9:30                                                                    English Office Phone: 494-3740

 

 

 

Texts

Required

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno—Dialectic of Enlightenment (new trans. by Jephcott)

Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichler—Cultural Studies

Slavoj Zizek—The Sublime Object of Ideology

James Berlin—Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures

Karen Fitts and Alan France—Left Margins: Cultural Studies and Composition Pedagogy

Thomas Frank—New Consensus for Old: Cultural Studies from Left to Right

Bill Readings—The University in Ruins

 

Course Packet (available at CopyMat)

 

Online

Situationist International (Guy Debord)

Donna Haraway—"A Cyborg Manifesto"

Geoffrey Sirc—"Composition's Eye, Orpheus's Gaze"

Various—Teaching Writing for Social Change

Bruce McComiskey—"Social Process Rhetorical Inquiry: Cultural Studies Methodologies for Critical Writing about Advertisements"

 

Recommended

Ben Agger—Cultural Studies as Critical Theory

Jere Paul Surber—Culture and Critique: An Introduction to the Critical Discourses of Cultural Studies

John Storey—What is Cultural Studies: A Reader

Raymond Williams—Keywords

Walter Benjamin—Illuminations

Antonio Gramsci—Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Friedrich Nietzsche—Genealogy of Morals

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe—Hegemony and Socialist Strategy

Roland Barthes—Mythologies

Kobena Mercer—Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies

Laura Kipnis—Ecstasy Unlimited

Tricia Rose—Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America

Fredric Jameson—Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Terry Eagleton—Ideology: An Introduction

Janice Radway—Reading the Romance

bell hooks—Teaching to Transgress

Craig Saper—Artificial Mythologies

Gregory Ulmer—Teletheory and Heuretics

Judith Butler—Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter

Donna Haraway—Modest Witness@Second Millennium: Female Man Meets OncoMouse

Bruno Latour—We Have Never Been Modern

Homi K. Bhaba—The Location of Culture

 

Objectives

Cultural critique has a long and complex tradition going back at least to the ancient Greeks, and in this sense, cultural studies as it has emerged in the last half of the 20th Century is not particularly new. But in terms of its stated definition(s), interests, orientations, and methodologies, it constitutes a break from (while it also builds on) previous forms of cultural critique. One significant break is cultural studies' recognition and embracement of popular (or mass) culture as a legitimate object of study. Indeed, this focus on the popular often became overt celebration, with the result that “critique” itself became hotly contested. This tended to add confusion about what exactly cultural studies was doing. Other significant breaks include its interdisciplinarity, its (sometimes) inventive combining of various methodological/ideological strands (Marxism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, sociology, ethnology, deconstruction, and so on), and its will-to-intervene. It is the latter characteristic that supplies cultural studies with its strong political (and predominately leftist if not Marxist) flavor, and it also contributed mightily to the flames of the 1990s culture wars. In keeping with its roots, cultural studies continues to dig deep into the phenomena and practices of everyday life and the popular as well as continuing its expansion into global and multicultural issues. Currently, concerns about media spectacle, gender, race, ethnicity, technology, globalization, politics, and economics continue to dominate cultural studies approaches. This course will look at a broad selection of cultural studies texts in order to give us a grounding sense of what cultural studies is, what it does, how it's taught, where it's been, and where it might be going. In addition, we will be concerned with the ways cultural studies and rhetoric were combined beginning in the late 1980s, and how the fruits of these theoretical labors made their way into writing classrooms and textbooks throughout America (although this process was not without controversy).

 

One somewhat confusing aspect of cultural studies is its insistence that it can't be defined. Such claims are similar in tone to the claims made by some theorists that postmodernism can't be defined, and the goal is to avoid the disciplining framework and pigeonholing that a definition creates. That is, cultural studies wants to thrive on its conflicts and fragmentation, seeing in them not impediments to its ongoing work but resources for growth and ingenuity. It will be an ongoing question whether this claim has validity, though certainly cultural studies tends to assume or assert a strong ethical component that gives even the more disparate works a sense of commonality. This, I think, will become readily apparent as the course progresses. In the meantime, we can still provide some provisional understandings of cultural studies. We might think of cultural studies as a wide-ranging, highly interdisciplinary group of methodological approaches, focused on various aspects of culture, that more or less tend to:

 

a) theorize (what culture is, what its parameters are, why culture takes the shape and trajectories that it does, how it affects us as we affect it, what are its ethical and political implications, etc.)

b) read (what is happening in culture, what sense we are to make of it, what does it mean for us)

c) diagnose (what is right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or sick, liberating or oppressive—and etc.—in culture)

d) politicize (re/creating conditions for better futures, greater participation, true justice and equality, more liberty)

e) respond (formulating, initiating, and—sometimes—conducting actions)

 

Our class approach to this material will be to focus on reading selected primary texts and essays of significant topical interest (I recommend Ben Agger's Cultural Studies as Critical Theory for filling in historical/theoretical background). We will begin with Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, one of the most influential contributions by the Frankfurt School, whose bleak thesis is that domination now occurs through mass culture, and that the emergence of such an administered society has been implicit in social progression since ancient Greece. Next, we will read a smattering of Guy Debord and the Situationist International, an obscure but widely ripped off group of French enrages, and the Birmingham School, who were the first to coin the term "cultural studies" and to initiate the dissolution of the high/low culture distinction. From there, we will move to the consolidation and Americanization of cultural studies, which will include the first big CS conference in America (Grossberg et al), rhetoric's adaptation of CS (Berlin), and the implementation of CS writing pedagogies (Fitts and France). After that, we will read the first major work by arguably the premiere cultural theorist today, Slavoj Zizek, who confronts us with the importance of fantasy and enjoyment in social practice. Then, we will consider some debates and problems concerning cultural studies, including political troubles, the problem of cynicism, and so on, after which we will consider the role of globalization, the waning of the nation-state (and its sense of a national culture), the corporatization of the university, media spectacle, and the emergence of globalized capital (Readings, Hardt and Negri). In the last part of the course, we will read theorists who point towards future directions for cultural studies, such as jettisoning cultural studies' critical and/or audience-based orientation in order to emphasize cultural invention and production, exploring the contested relationship between culture and technology, considering the co-option of cultural studies in spite of its declared radical-ness, rethinking the possibility of totalizing critique ala the Frankfurt School, and more.

 

With so much material to be covered, we will necessarily be excluding much that is important (Barthes is particularly missed!) and neglecting to read each figure as thoroughly as we might want. Nevertheless, we are reading enough primary and secondary material that you should have a solid understanding of what cultural studies is, what kind of work it does, and how it manifests itself in pedagogy—enough to work with, build on, or move beyond it howsoever your interests might require. Lastly, you will also gain a sense of some of the key debates in rhetoric and composition, the humanities, and the university as they pertain to the emergent culture of the New World Order, Ltd. We are all wired for the Culture Trust™.

 

Assignments

In-Class Papers: Four one-page papers (legal size, single-spaced), to be read aloud in class on the due date. The first half of the papers will be a summary of the previous weeks' readings; the second will be either a) a discussion of these readings, highlighting a central issue or concern, or b) an application of the methodology derived from the readings on a cultural object. If choosing option b, I recommend using the same cultural object throughout the course; this will facilitate your ability to discern crucial differences among the many approaches we will be examining during the semester. I will discuss this assignment in more detail later.

 

Final Paper: This course requires a final summation paper; it asks you to present your understanding of what cultural studies is, where it's been, and where you think it might be going, both in terms of scholarship and pedagogy. You might highlight key debates, focus on future issues, assess upcoming problems, and so on. If your in-class papers followed option b, you might also return to considerations about your cultural object. Lastly, the summation paper is an opportunity for you to begin tailoring cultural studies to your own interests.

 

Late Work: Papers to be read aloud will not be excused. If you miss the due date, you will be docked a letter grade (unless I excuse your absence beforehand) and required to read your work the following week.

 

All assignments are required to complete the course.

 

Assessment

Your grade will be determined on a 100-point scale. The percentages break down evenly:

 

Papers (4):              20% x 4 = 80%

Final Paper:             20%

 

Attendance

Although I will give brief lectures regularly, this class is not a lecture course; accordingly, your attendance and participation is crucial not only for you personally, but for everyone in the class. I will expect you not to miss class. However, if a problem does arise that requires your absence, please discuss the matter with me beforehand to see if arrangements can be made.

 

Disability

If you have a disability that requires special accommodations, please see me privately within the first week of class to make arrangements.

 

Tentative Schedule of Pedagogical Events

Aug. 27—Wk. 1: In Through the Out Door

Introductions; Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach"

 

Sep. 3—Wk. 2:  Evil Empire: The Frankfurters

Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment

Adorno, "Free Time"

Steinart, Culture Industry (excerpt)

 

Sep. 10—Wk. 3: The Raw and the Cooked: The Situationist International and the Birmingham School

                Debord, "Theory of the Dérive"; "Detournement as Negation and Prelude" (online); Chs. 1-2, Society of the

                                Spectacle (online)

                Marcus, "The Long Walk of the Situationist International"

                Sadler, The Situationist City (excerpt pp.82-94, plus maps)

                Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (excerpt)

                Hall, "Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies" (from Cultural Studies); "What Is This 'Black' in Black

                                Popular Culture"

                Johnson, “What is Cultural Studies Anyway?”

                McRobbie, "Post-Marxism and Cultural Studies" (from Cultural Studies)

               

                Recommended: Andreotti, "Architecture and Play"

               

Sep. 17—Wk. 4: Paper #1

 

Sep. 24—Wk. 5:  Bang a Gong, Get it On: Cultural Studies Gets Down to Work

                Grossberg, "Mapping Popular Culture"

                Grossberg, et al, "Cultural Studies: An Introduction" (from Cultural Studies)

                Spivak, "Scattered Speculations on the Question of Cultural Studies"

                Kellner, "The Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies"

                Haraway, “The Cyborg Manifesto” (online)

                Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”

                Marcus, Lipstick Traces (excerpt)

               

                Recommended: Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations"

 

Oct. 1—Wk. 6: You Can't, You Won't, and You Don't Stop: Culture, Culture Everywhere…

Grossberg, et al, Cultural Studies: essays by Mani, Brunt, Penley, Kipnis, hooks, Wallace, Warner, West

 

Oct. 8—Wk. 7: Paper #2

 

Oct. 15—Wk. 8: Power, Corruption, and Lies: The Social Becomes Cultural

                Berlin, Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures

Alcorn, "The Subject in Postmodern Theory" (from Changing the Subject in English Class)

 

Recommended: McComiskey, "Social Process Rhetorical Inquiry: Cultural Studies Methodologies for Critical

Writing about Advertisements" (online)

 

Oct. 22—Wk. 9: Left of the Dial: Fitts and France and More

                Fitts and France, Left Margins

                Worsham, "Writing against Writing"

                hooks, "Remembered Rapture"

 

Oct. 29—Wk. 10: Paper #3

 

Nov. 5—Wk. 11: Vienna Calling: Gettin’ Ziggy with Siggy

                Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology

               

                Recommended: Kay, "Glossary of Zizekian Terms"

 

Nov. 12—Wk. 12: Pre-Millennium Tension: Consolidation, Troubles, Cynicism

Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (excerpt)

Drew, "(Teaching) Writing: Composition, Cultural Studies, Production"

Vitanza, "The Wasteland Grows" + response by Drew

Brodkey, "Making a Federal Case out of Difference"

Giroux, "Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders" + response by Sirc

Olson, "Ideological Critique in Rhetoric and Composition"

Hairston, "Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing"

North, "Rhetoric, Responsibility, and the 'Language of the Left'"

 

Recommended: Baudrillard, "After the Orgy"

               

Nov. 19—Wk. 13: Paper #4

 

Nov. 26— Wk. 14: NO CLASS: Thanksgiving Holiday

                The Creek Drank the Cradle: Cultural Studies in the New World Order

                Readings, The University in Ruins

                Hardt and Negri, "Globalization and Democracy" + Interview in Cultural Studies

                Klein, "The Branding of Learning"

               

Dec. 3—Wk. 15: The Action is Go: Towards a Post-Critical Cultural Studies

                Sirc, "The Writing Class as an A&P Parking Lot"; "Composition's Eye (Orpheus's Gaze)"

                Massumi, Parables for the Virtual (excerpt)

                Vitanza, "The Hermeneutics of Abandonment"

                Ballif, "Apres l'orgie: Baudrillard and the Seduction of Truth"

Ulmer, "Introduction: The Emeragency" (from Internet Invention)

Halberstam, “An Introduction to Female Masculinity”

Rickert, "Hands Up, You're Free"

 

Recommended: Dean, “I Want to Believe”

 

Dec. 10—Wk. 16: The End: "Driver, where you taking us?"

Frank, New Consensus for Old

                Kellner, “Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle”

                Nealon and Irr, "Introduction: Rethinking the Frankfurt School"

                Szeman, "The Limits of Culture"

                Dobrin and Weisser, "The Evolution of Ecocomposition"

                Hansen, "Introduction: The Resistance to Technology"

                Rodowick, "An Uncertain Utopia—Digital Culture"

 

                Recommended: Slack and Wise, “Cultural Studies and Technology”

 

Dec. 15-20: Finals Week: Final Paper Due