Postmodernism and Popular Culture

by Mcrobbie; Angela

• ISBN13: 9780415077125
• ISBN10: 0415077125
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-08-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Cultural studies began as a radical political project, establishing the cultural centrality of everyday life and popular culture. In a postmodern world where old uncertainties are undermined and identities fragmented, the way forward for those working with popular culture has become less clear. In contrast to more pessimistic readings of the possibilities of postmodernity,Postmodernism and Popular Cultureengages with postmodernity as a space for social change and political transformation. Ranging widely over cultural theory and popular culture, Angela McRobbie looks at everyday life as an eclectic and invigorating arena for the interplay of different cultures and identities. McRobbie assesses the contribution of key figures in cultural and postcolonial theory--Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak--and surveys the landscape of today's youth and popular culture, from salvation army fashion to the rave scene, from moral panic to teen magazines. Throughout,Angela McRobbie argues for a commitment to cultural studies as an "undisciplined discipline," reforming and re-inventing itself as circumstances demand, for the importance of ethnography and empirical work, dealing with living voices and spoken language, and for the necessity for feminists to continually ask questions about the meaning of a feminist theory in a postmodern world.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vi
Introduction	p. 1
Postmodernity and Cultural Studies	p. 11
Postmodernism and Popular Culture	p. 13
New Times in Cultural Studies	p. 24
Post-Marxism and Cultural Studies	p. 44
Feminism, Postmodernism and the 'Real Me'	p. 61
Key Figures in Cultural Theory	p. 75
The Modernist Style of Susan Sontag	p. 77
The Passagenwerk and the Place of Walter Benjamin in Cultural Studies	p. 96
Strategies of Vigilance: an Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak	p. 121
Youth, Media, Postmodernity	p. 133
Second-Hand Dresses and the Role of the Ragmarket	p. 135
Shut Up and Dance: Youth Culture and Changing Modes of Femininity	p. 155
Different, Youthful, Subjectivities: Towards a Cultural Sociology of Youth	p. 177
The Moral Panic in the Age of the Postmodern Mass Media	p. 198
Index	p. 220
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