Culture/Metaculture

by Mulhern,Francis

• ISBN13: 9780415102308
• ISBN10: 0415102308
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-06-05
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Francis Mulhern offers a stimulating and concise introduction to the meanings of "culture" in contemporary Western society. In this critical survey, he provides a compelling account of the conceptual and political issues involved in the changing definitions of "culture," as well as critical summaries of key thinkers, such as Mann, Arnold, Freud, Sartre, Woolf and Eliot, and their theories of twentieth-century culture. Mulhern also provides an understanding of the history of debates over high and low culture using an interdisciplinary approach which traverses the boundaries between literary and cultural studies.

Author Biography

Francis Mulhern is Professor of Critical Studies at Middlesex University, UK.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction	xiii
Part I Kulturkritik
Against mass civilization	3	(19)
The unpolitical Thomas Mann	4	(3)
Julien Benda, clerc	7	(2)
Karl Mannheim's intellectuals	9	(3)
Ortega's aristocratic vision	12	(3)
F.R. Leavis's critical minority	15	(3)
The discourse of Kulturkritik	18	(4)
In the wars	22	(27)
Freud's critique of Kultur	25	(3)
Woolf's androgyny	28	(7)
Orwell's English	35	(7)
Marxist incursions	42	(4)
Anti-fascist culture	46	(3)
Welfare?	49	(12)
Eliot's whole way of life	51	(4)
Hoggart and the abuses of literacy	55	(6)
A reckoning	61	(16)
Raymond Williams: beyond culture-and-society	64	(5)
From paternalism to democracy	69	(8)
Part II Cultural Studies
A theory	77	(16)
Williams: creation is ordinary	79	(4)
Marxism and cultural theory	83	(10)
A centre	93	(14)
Literature and Contemporary Cultural Studies	93	(5)
From Hoggart to Stuart Hall	98	(3)
Ten years of Cultural Studies	101	(3)
The new subject	104	(3)
A theatre of critical situations	107	(25)
Hall: beyond New Left `culturalism'	108	(3)
The structures of signification	111	(3)
New times for subjectivity	114	(5)
Identities in motion	119	(5)
Wrestling with Marxism	124	(8)
Towards popular culture?	132	(43)
Populism in Cultural Studies	134	(7)
Bimbos and fans	141	(4)
Organic intellectuals?	145	(3)
The `politics' of metaculture	148	(9)
Part III Metaculture And Society
The desire called Cultural Studies	157	(2)
Between past and future	159	(4)
Metaculture and society	163	(6)
Cultural politics?	169	(6)
Notes	175	(6)
Glossary	181	(2)
Bibliography	183	(10)
Index	193