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From: "J.F. Gannon" <jfgannon@cloud9.net>
To: <classics@u.washington.edu>
References: <Pine.PMDF.3.96.1001213084703.111666A-100000@maple.lemoyne.edu>
Subject: Re: Cultural Studies Stew
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 08:14:43 -0500
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----- Original Message -----
From: "John McMahon" <mcmahon@maple.lemoyne.edu>
To: <CLASSICS@u.washington.edu>
Cc: <mcmahon@maple.lemoyne.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 8:29 AM
Subject: Cultural Studies Stew


>
>
> Scripsit DL:
>
> Message sent: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 00:23:03 -0800.
>
>
> Look, here's one stab at what "cultural studies" might mean: it is
> (often, at least) the study of the way popular and/or counter-cultures
> play off against the official, dominant culture.  Schein himself implies
> this when he writes that "Cultural Studies focuses on the nature and
> effects of the political in everyday social life, viewing individuals
> not merely as performing defined roles in a social system but as
> resisting this system and the order it entails---as struggling to
> define themselves as subjects against a social order that would
> otherwise objectify them" (p. 285 of "Cutlural Studies and Classics,
> citing N.B. Dirks, G. Eley, and Sherry Ortner, "Culture/Power/History:
> A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory," Princeton U.P., 1994, 4).
>

Efforts to achieve or maintain control over others for various reasons, some
good some bad, and in a variety of situations, are inevitable in human
societies.  To suggest that all these efforts are "political" in the
degenerate sense, i.e., motivated by an unprincipled desire to dominate at
any cost begs the question, and it says more about the fantasy life of the
one who makes the suggestion than it reveals about society.  But why a focus
on this should be called Cultural Studies is beyond me.

J.F. Gannon

.