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Beyond Celebration: A Call for Rethinking Cultural Studies

Lea, Carolyn
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1194285318

Abstract Details

2007, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies/Communication.
This is a polemical dissertation which seeks to serve as an intervention into the theoretical debates and tensions within cultural studies. These debates, which have taken place over the last few decades, have centered on the populist bent within cultural studies, the turn away from the concerns of political economy, and the influence of French theories that emphasize signification, play, and relativism. At stake in these debates is our way of understanding the world and imagining it differently. I argue that the celebratory direction found in much of the work by cultural studies scholars in which resistance, subversion and transgression are located in all things popular has led to an expressivist politics which lacks explanatory power and is symptomatic of a loss of political will. This dissertation critiques three particular directions that exemplify the celebratory turn: claims regarding transgression; claims regarding audience activity; and celebratory accounts of consumption. Chapter one provides an exposition of the debates that have plagued cultural studies, laying the ground for later arguments. Chapter two provides an introduction to reality television which is enlisted as a cultural symptom through which to interrogate weaknesses in theoretical positions (in chapters three through five) adopted by cultural studies scholars and strengths in alternative theoretical legacies. Chapter three turns toward the concept of transgression, arguing the romantic view of transgression as subversion relies on a partial reading of the work of figures such as Bakhtin. Chapter four focuses upon a critique of the limitations of conceptions of the active audience, arguing that the political economy of the Frankfurt School theorists can serve as a corrective to perspectives that divorce production from consumption. Chapter five then examines the promotion of consumption as resistance, construing individual self-fashioning as a politics. Such an expressivist politics ignores broad structural change in favor of changing the self. Finally, I conclude that there has been a failure of imagination within cultural studies scholarship. I propose that a return to devalued theoretical legacies, such as the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, can provide a vantage point for rethinking cultural studies.
Ellen Berry (Advisor)
237 p.
American Studies
Cultural Populism; Transgression; Audiences; Consumerism

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Lea, C. (2007). Beyond Celebration: A Call for Rethinking Cultural Studies [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1194285318

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Lea, Carolyn. Beyond Celebration: A Call for Rethinking Cultural Studies. 2007. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1194285318.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Lea, Carolyn. "Beyond Celebration: A Call for Rethinking Cultural Studies." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1194285318

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1194285318
3,961
© 2007, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.