Cultural Resistance Reader Pa

by Duncombe,Stephen

• ISBN13: 9781859843796
• ISBN10: 1859843794
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-17
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

From the Diggers seizing St. George Hill in 1649 to Hacktivists staging virtual sit-ins in the 21st century, from the retributive fantasies of Robin Hoods to those of gangsta rappers, culture has long been used as a political weapon.This expansive and carefully crafted reader brings together many of the classic texts that help to define culture as a tool of resistance. With illuminating introductions throughout, it presents a range of theoretical and historical writings that have influenced contemporary debate, providing tools for the reader's own interventions. In these pages can be found the work of Karl Marx, Matthew Arnold, Antonio Gramsci, C.L.R. James, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Virginia Woolf, Mikhail Bakhtin, Stuart Hall, Christopher Hill, Janice Radway, Eric Hobsbawm, Abbie Hoffman, Mahatma Gandhi, Dick Hebdige, Hakim Bey, Raymond Williams, Robin Kelley, Tom Frank and more than a dozen others, including a number of new activists/authors published here for the first time.

Author Biography

Stephen Duncombe, an Associate Professor at the Gallatin School of New York University, is the author of Dream and Notes from Underground, editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader, and coeditor (with Maxwell Tremblay) of White Riot.

Theodor Adorno was director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt from 1956 until his death in 1969. His works include In Search of Wagner; Aesthetic Theory; Negative Dialectics; and (with Max Horkheimer) Dialectic of Enlightenment and Towards a New Manifesto.

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) began teaching sociology at the Université de Paris-X in 1966. He retired from academia in 1987 to write books and travel until his death in 2007. His many works include Simulations and Simulacra, America, The Perfect Crime, The System of Objects, Passwords, The Transparency of Evil, The Spirit of Terrorism, and Fragments, among others.

Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama.

Andrew Boyd is a writer and activist living in New York. He is the author of Life’s Little Deconstruction Book: Self-Help for the Post-Hip

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theater director. An influential theater practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theater company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.

Frederick Engels was born in 1820, in the German city of Barmen. Brought up as a devout Calvinist he moved to England in 1842 to work in his father’s Manchester textile firm. After joining the fight against the counter revolution in Germany in 1848 he returned to Manchester and the family business, finally settling there in 1850. In subsequent years he provided financial support for Marx and edited the second and third volumes of Capital. He died whilst working on the fourth volume in 1895.

Christopher Hill (1912–2003) was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and later became Master of the college. His celebrated and influential works include Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, The World Turned Upside Down and A Turbulent, Seditious and Fractious People: John Bunyan and His Church.

A Fellow of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Eric Hobsbawm is the author of more than twenty books of history, including The Age of Revolution and The Age of Extremes. He lives in London.

Robin D.G. Kelley is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at the University of South California.

George Lipsitz is Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Midnight: Life and Labor in the 1940s, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture, The Sidewalks of St Louis and A Life in Struggle: Ivor Perry and the Culture of Opposition, which was the winner of the Eugene M. Kayden Press Book Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations.

Karl Marx was born in 1818, in the Rhenish city of Trier, the son of a successful lawyer. He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, completing his doctorate in 1841. In Paris three years later, Marx was introduced to the study of political economy by a former fellow student, Frederick Engels. In 1848 they collaborated in writing The Communist Manifesto. Expelled from Prussia in the same year, Marx took up residence first in Paris and then in London where, in 1867 he published his magnum opus Capital. A co-founder of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864, Marx died in London in 1883.

Adolph L. Reed, Jr. is a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of Class Notes, The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon, W. E. B. DuBois and American Political Thought, and Stirrings in the Jug. He has written articles for the Progressive, Black Agenda and many other publications. Politically active since the 1960s, he brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the debates around Barack Obama, and wider issues concerning both black and progressive politics.

Raymond Williams (1921–1988) was for many years Professor of Drama at the University of Cambridge. Among his many books are Culture and Society, Culture and Materialism, Politics and Letters, Problems in Materialism and Culture, and several novels.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction	1	(16)
Cultural Resistance	17	(18)
``Levellers and True Levellers,'' from The World The World Turned Upside Down	17	(18)
Christopher Hill
The Politics of Culture	35	(47)
``Culture,'' from Keywords	35	(6)
Raymond Williams
The German Ideology	41	(8)
Karl Marx
Frederick Engels
Culture and Anarchy	49	(9)
Matthew Arnold
The Prison Notebooks	58	(9)
Antonio Gramsci
``The Author as Producer''	67	(15)
Walter Benjamin
A Politics that Doesn't Look Like Politics	82	(53)
Rabelais and His World	82	(7)
Mikhail Bakhtin
Weapons of the Weak	89	(7)
James C. Scott
Rebels	96	(3)
Robin D.G. Kelley
``Why Is There No Black Political Movement?''	99	(1)
Adolph Reed Jr.
``The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media''	100	(13)
Jean Baudrillard
TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone	113	(5)
Hakim Bey
Generation Ecstasy	118	(13)
Simon Reynolds
``Huge Mob Tortures Negro,'' account of a lynching in 1920	131	(4)
Subcultures and Primitive Rebels	135	(58)
Primitive Rebels	135	(14)
E. J. Hobsbawm
``OGs in Postindustrial Los Angeles'', from Race Rebels	149	(8)
Robin D.G. Kelley
``The Zoot-suit and Style Warfare''	157	(9)
Stuart Cosgrove
``The Meaning of Mod''	166	(8)
Dick Hebdige
``The Skinheads and the Magical Recovery of Community''	174	(4)
John Clarke
``Riot Grrrl Is...''	178	(2)
Riot Grrrl
Punk Planet	180	(3)
Kathleen Hanna
``Emphasis on Sport''	183	(2)
Bertolt Brecht
``Notes on Deconstructing `the Popular'''	185	(8)
Stuart Hall
Dismantling the Master's House	193	(47)
``The Ghost Dance War'', from Sister to the Sioux	193	(7)
Elaine Goodale Eastman
Hind Swaraj	200	(5)
Mahatma Gandhi
Beyond a Boundary	205	(10)
C.L.R. James
``Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness''	215	(16)
Lawrence Levine
``Immigration and Assimilation: Rai, Reggae, and Bhangramuffin'', from Dangerous Crossroads	231	(9)
George Lipsitz
A Woman's Place	240	(35)
A Room of One's Own	240	(8)
Virginia Woolf
Radicalesbians, ``The Woman-Identified Woman''	248	(6)
``A Broom of One's Own,'' from Bust	254	(5)
Jean Railla
Reading the Romance	259	(8)
Janice A. Radway
``Shopping for Pleasure'' from Reading the Popular	267	(8)
John Fiske
Commodities, Co-Optation, and Culture Jamming	275	(58)
``On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening''	275	(28)
Theodor W. Adorno
The Uses of Literacy	303	(9)
Richard Hoggart
Exile's Return	312	(4)
Malcolm Cowley
``Why Johnny Can't Dissent''	316	(11)
Thomas Frank
Revolution for the Hell of It	327	(3)
Abbie Hoffman
Do It!	330	(3)
Jerry Rubin
Mixing Pop and Politics	333	(64)
``The Politics of Prefigurative Community''	333	(14)
Barbara Epstein
``The Art of Necessity: The Subversive Imagination of Anti-road Protest and Reclaim the Streets''	347	(11)
John Jordan
``The God that People Who Do Not Believe in God Believe In: Taking a Bust with Reverend Billy''	358	(11)
Jason Grote
``Truth Is a Virus: Meme Warfare and the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)''	369	(10)
Andrew Boyd
``Electronic Disturbance: An Interview''	379	(18)
Ricardo Dominguez
Notes	397	(36)
Notes on contributors	433	(10)
Permissions	443