Cultural Studies

 Hello Everyone, I'm a student of the Department of English,M.K.B.U. This blog is a part of a thinking activity which is given by Dr.Dilip Barad Sir. This blog is based on Cultural Studies.

What is Cultural Studies :-

Cultural studies, also called the cultural sciences, is an interdisciplinary field or scientific branch that examines the dynamics of contemporary culture and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation. Employing cultural analysis, cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes. The field of cultural studies encompasses a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinct from the discipline of cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies, cultural studies draws upon and has contributed to each of these fields.

Cultural studies was initially developed by British Marxist academics in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and has been subsequently taken up and transformed by scholars from many different disciplines around the world. Cultural studies is avowedly and even radically interdisciplinary and can sometimes be seen as anti-disciplinary. A key concern for cultural studies practitioners is the examination of the forces within and through which socially organised people conduct and participate in the construction of their everyday lives.

Cultural studies combines a variety of politically engaged critical approaches drawn including semiotics, Marxism, feminist theory, ethnography, post - structuralism, postcolonialism, social theory, political theory, history, philosophy, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, communication studies, political economy, translation studies, museum studies and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies and historical periods. Cultural studies seeks to understand how meaning is generated, disseminated, contested, bound up with systems of power and control, and produced from the social, political and economic spheres within a particular social formation or conjuncture. The movement has generated important theories of cultural hegemony and agency. Its practitioners attempt to explain and analyse the cultural forces related and processes of globalisation.

During the rise of neoliberalism in Britain and the US, cultural studies both became a global movement, and attracted the attention of many conservative opponents both within and beyond universities for a variety of reasons. A worldwide movement of students and practitioners with a raft of scholarly associations and programs, annual international conferences and publications carry on work in this field today. Distinct approaches to cultural studies have emerged in different national and regional contexts.

Cultural Studies in the reading of Poem,Play and Novel  :-

In this study I am going to discuss this  poem,Play and novel with the perspective of cultural studies.

1). Helmet (Play)

2). Frankenstein (Novel)

3). To His Coy Mistress (poem)

1). Helmet  :-

"Hamlet" by William Shakespeare offers a rich tapestry for analysis from a cultural studies perspective, allowing us to explore the societal norms, power structures, and ideological clashes of the Elizabethan era.

1. Political Power and Monarchy 

   - In Shakespeare's time, England was transitioning from the Tudor dynasty to the Stuart monarchy. "Hamlet" reflects the political uncertainties of the period, and Hamlet's internal struggles can be seen as emblematic of a nation grappling with questions of legitimacy, power, and governance.

2. Religious Context

   - The play is set against the backdrop of the Protestant Reformation, which had a profound impact on England. The ghost of Hamlet's father and the moral dilemmas faced by the characters resonate with the religious upheavals of the time, questioning traditional values and moral certainties.

3. Humanism and Individualism

   - The Renaissance humanist movement influenced Elizabethan culture, emphasising the worth and agency of the individual. Hamlet's internal conflicts, his questioning of the meaning of life, and his introspective nature can be interpreted as reflections of the emerging humanist ideals of the period.

4. Gender Roles and Patriarchy

   - Elizabethan society was deeply patriarchal, and "Hamlet" reflects and challenges these gender norms. Ophelia's tragic fate and Gertrude's complex character offer insights into societal expectations placed on women and the consequences of deviating from those norms.

5. Revenge and Justice

   - The theme of revenge in "Hamlet" can be examined in the context of the cultural importance placed on honour and justice in Elizabethan society. The play explores the moral complexities of seeking revenge and the societal consequences of such actions.

6. Class Hierarchies

   - Class distinctions and courtly etiquette play a significant role in "Hamlet." The contrast between the court and the common people, as well as the intricate politics within the royal court, provides a window into the social structures and hierarchies of Shakespeare's time.

Analysing "Hamlet" through the lens of cultural studies allows us to uncover layers of meaning embedded in the text and understand how Shakespeare engaged with and challenged the cultural norms and tensions of the Elizabethan era. The play becomes a mirror reflecting the broader societal concerns and intellectual currents of its time.

In the play Helmet, if we see with the lense of cultural studies we can find class conflict, discrimination between the characters who belong to the upper Class and the characters who are coming from a lower class. 

For Example :- Rosencrantz and guildenstern

Both are the minor characters but they play a vital role in the play. Both are coming from a lower class. At the end of the play they sacrifice their lives for the king, then the king doesn't have any kind of grief for them. 

2). Frankenstein :-

Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is a rich source for cultural studies, providing insights into the societal anxieties, scientific advancements, and ethical dilemmas of the early 19th century.

1. Scientific and Technological Anxiety

   - The novel emerges during a period of scientific revolution and Enlightenment thinking. Victor Frankenstein's ambitious pursuit of creating life reflects the cultural fascination and unease surrounding scientific advancements and the power they bestowed upon individuals.

   - The monster, created through scientific experimentation, becomes a symbol of the unintended consequences and ethical quandaries associated with unchecked scientific progress.

2. Fear of the Other and Social Alienation

   - The monster's isolation and rejection by society highlight cultural fears of the "other." The creature's appearance and the way he is treated draw attention to societal prejudices and the consequences of ostracising those who don't conform to traditional norms.

   - The narrative prompts reflection on how society constructs and marginalises individuals who don't fit established norms, mirroring broader cultural anxieties about difference.

3. Gender Roles and Feminism

   - Mary Shelley, a woman in a male-dominated literary landscape, contributes to the cultural discourse on gender. The novel explores the consequences of masculine hubris and the exclusion of women from scientific and creative endeavours.

   - The absence of a strong maternal figure and the tragic fate of female characters underscore the societal limitations imposed on women during the early 19th century.

4. Ethical Responsibilities of Creation

   - Victor Frankenstein's negligence and abandonment of his creation raises questions about the ethical responsibilities tied to scientific innovation. Cultural studies can delve into how the novel engages with moral dilemmas, exploring the consequences of playing god and tampering with the natural order.

5. Industrial Revolution and Alienation

   - The Industrial Revolution's impact on society, characterised by rapid technological advancements and urbanisation, is reflected in the novel's themes of isolation and estrangement. The creature's experiences echo the alienation and dehumanisation associated with industrialization. (Chat.gpt)

By employing a cultural studies perspective, one can unravel the layers of meaning in "Frankenstein" and understand how Mary Shelley's work engages with and comments on the cultural and societal currents of her time. The novel becomes a lens through which to examine broader questions about power, responsibility, and the human condition in the context of 19th-century European culture.(chat.gpt)

This novel is based on a scientific experiment. We can connect it with the corona pandemic. In this novel victor made a creature to give happiness to all because he wants to always show happiness in each person and similarly in the corona pandemic also lots of experiments have been done to find a corona vaccine. The intention of both have to give happiness to people but in the novel victor didn't get a good result, he got the opposite response from his creature and in the pandemic also lots of hospitalised people have been die from the experiments of the corona vaccine. 

3). To His Coy Mistress :-

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" can be examined through the lens of cultural studies, revealing insights into societal norms and values of the 17th century. The poem's exploration of love, time, and sexuality reflects the cultural dynamics of the period.

In the context of cultural studies, the speaker's attempts to persuade his mistress to seize the moment and embrace physical intimacy can be seen as a reflection of the societal expectations and constraints regarding relationships during that era. Marvell engages with the prevailing ideas of courtship, marriage, and the roles of men and women, highlighting how cultural norms influence personal desires and behaviors.

The poem's manipulation of time, particularly the use of Carpe Diem (seize the day), resonates with the cultural emphasis on the fleeting nature of life. The urgency expressed by the speaker underscores societal anxieties about mortality and the brevity of human existence, a theme that was prevalent in the cultural and philosophical discourse of the time.

Furthermore, the language and metaphors employed in the poem can be dissected through cultural studies to unveil the prevailing attitudes towards sexuality and gender roles. The coy mistress becomes a symbol of societal expectations placed on women to be reserved and modest, while the speaker embodies the societal pressure on men to be assertive and persistent in pursuing romantic interests.

In essence, "To His Coy Mistress" serves as a cultural artefact that allows us to peek into the attitudes, norms, and tensions of the 17th century. By applying the principles of cultural studies, we can unravel the layers of meaning embedded in the poem and appreciate how it reflects and challenges the cultural milieu of its time.

Postcolonial Studies

 Hello Everyone, I'm a student of the Department of English,M.K.B.U. This blog is a part of thinking activity which is given by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. In this blog I'm going to summarise Ania Loomba's two articles which are based on the postcolonial theory.

What is postcolonialism :-

Ania Loomba 

Postcolonial theory is a body of thought primarily concerned with accounting for the political, aesthetic, economic, historical, and social impact of European colonial rule around the world in the 18th through the 20th century. Postcolonial theory takes many different shapes and interventions, but all share a fundamental claim: that the world we inhabit is impossible to understand except in relationship to the history of imperialism and colonial rule. This means that it is impossible to conceive of “European philosophy,” “European literature,” or “European history” as existing in the absence of Europe’s colonial encounters and oppression around the world. It also suggests that colonized world stands at the forgotten center of global modernity. The prefix “post” of “postcolonial theory” has been rigorously debated, but it has never implied that colonialism has ended; indeed, much of postcolonial theory is concerned with the lingering forms of colonial authority after the formal end of Empire. Other forms of postcolonial theory are openly endeavoring to imagine a world after colonialism, but one which has yet to come into existence. Postcolonial theory emerged in the US and UK academies in the 1980s as part of a larger wave of new and politicized fields of humanistic inquiry, most notably feminism and critical race theory. As it is generally constituted, postcolonial theory emerges from and is deeply indebted to anticolonial thought from South Asia and Africa in the first half of the 20th century. In the US and UK academies, this has historically meant that its focus has been these regions, often at the expense of theory emerging from Latin and South America. Over the course of the past thirty years, it has remained simultaneously tethered to the fact of colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century and committed to politics and justice in the contemporary moment. This has meant that it has taken multiple forms: it has been concerned with forms of political and aesthetic representation; it has been committed to accounting for globalization and global modernity; it has been invested in reimagining politics and ethics from underneath imperial power, an effort that remains committed to those who continue to suffer its effects; and it has been interested in perpetually discovering and theorizing new forms of human injustice, from environmentalism to human rights. Postcolonial theory has influenced the way we read texts, the way we understand national and transnational histories, and the way we understand the political implications of our own knowledge as scholars. Despite frequent critiques from outside the field (as well as from within it), postcolonial theory remains one of the key forms of critical humanistic interrogation in both academia and in the world.

 Artical :- 1

Globalization and the Future of Postcolonial Studies .

It starts with the introduction of a global war on terror,and the US invention of Afghanistan and Iraq. It happened for the freedom from colonialism. After freedom,the New-American Empire developed and it was advocated by policy-making ,politicians and academics in the US and elsewhere. Then the question arises for domination and resistance and it is raised by Anti-Colonial movements and Postcolonial studies. It was a globalised event. 

Globalisation seems to have transformed the world so radically, many of its advocates and critics suggest, that it has rendered obsolete a critical and analytical perspective which takes the history and legacy of European colonialism as its focal point. It is meaningless to continue to define our world in relation to the dynamics of European colonialism or decolonisa- tion. Globalisation, they argue, cannot be analysed using concepts like margins and centres so central to postcolonial studies.

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire argues that the con- temporary global order has produced a new form of sovereignty which should be called 'Empire' but which is best understood in contrast to European empires.

Empire argues that whereas the old imperial world was marked by com- petition between different European powers, the new order is characterised by a 'single power that overdetermined them all, structures them in a unitary way, and treats them under one common notion of right that is decidedly postcolonialism and post imperialist'.

According to Hardt and Negri "Empire is born through the global expansion of the internal US constitutional project ',a project which sought to include and incorporate minorities into the mainstream rather than simply expel or exclude them.

Hardt and Negri suggest that the new Empire is better compared to the Roman Empire rather than to European colonialism, since imperial Rome also loosely incorporated its subject states rather than controlling them directly.

The dynamics of contemporary global power and how best to challenge it. Vailashini Cooppan argues, makes it difficult to accurately analyse contemporary US imperialism and its place in the contemporary world. But Susie O'Brien and Imre Szeman believe that 'characterising US political and cultural power as a global dominant detracts from a more thorough examination of sites and modalities of power in the global era'; accordingly, they celebrate Empire as 'exceptionally helpful in advancing our capacity to think past the reinscription of globalisation as a centre/periphery dynamic that produces resistant margins and hege- monic cores.

The controversy about Empire is thus shaped by wider and ongoing debates about the nature and effects of globalisation.Simon Gikandi observes that globalisation is so often to have made redundant the term of Postcolonial critique, globalisation,is in fact asserted by appropriating the key terms of Postcolonial studies,such as ,'hybridity',and 'Difference '.

It is premature to argue that the images and narra- tives that denote the new global culture are connected to a global structure or that they are disconnected from earlier or older forms of iden- tity. In other words, there is no reason to suppose that the global flow in images has a homological connection to transformation in social or cultural relationships'.

There is also a connection between new writing and globalisation. They said , it is a new economic order.

Hardt and Negri suggest that the new cultural, economic and political flows offer 'new possibilities to the forces of lib- eration' (xv) because global power can then be challenged from multiple sites by its multiple subjects whom they refer to as the 'multitude'.

According to Hardt and Negri,new ideologies of difference are more flexible and Balibar actually suggests the opposite.

Balibar actually suggests the opposite. They write: Fixed and biological notions of peo- ples thus tend to dissolve into a fluid and amorphous multitude, which is of course shot through with lines of conflict and antagonism, but none that appear as fixed and eternal boundaries'.

Then there are the arguments regarding Muslims and imperialism and globalisation. There is also a description of the connection between the past Empire and the global economy.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and once Chief Economist at the World Bank, also uses the phrase 'marker fundamentalism' in his critique of globalisation as it has been imposed upon the world by institutions like the World Bank and the IMF.

Joseph connects the developments to colonialism,and also suggests that ' the IMF's approach to developing countries has the feel of a colonial ruler. Then the destructive histories of modern Empires are being widely whitewashed. Then there was also a refference of NBA movement (Narmada Bachao Abhiyan) ,leader of this movement is chittaroopa palit. He also shares his experiences regarding this movement. 

Inshort, we can say that this essay is based on European empires and the journey of Postcolonial people.

Article :- 2

The  Future of Postcolonial Studies .

Postcolonial criticism emerged as a distinct category only in the 1990s.  It starts with ecology, which is not a new concern for many intellectuals and activists concerned with the contemporary legacies of colonialism. For decades now, the environmental activist Vandana Shiva has exposed the connection between colonialism and the destruction of environmental diversity. She argues that the growth of capitalism, and now of transnational corporations, exacerbated the dynamic begun under colonialism which has destroyed sustain-

able local cultures; these cultures were also more women-friendly, partly because women’s work was so crucially tied to producing food and fodder. Other feminist environmentalists are more sceptical of such an assessment of pre-colonial cultures, which, they point out, were also stratified and patriarchal; however, they agree that questions of ecology and human culture are intricately linked.

Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martínez-Alier (1997) point out, is evident in American environmentalism and its obsession with the wilderness. Rob Nixon further notes that this wilderness obsession is celebrated in American literature as well as in natural history, where ‘There is a durable tradition … of erasing the history of colonised peoples through the myth of the empty lands. … a prodigious amount of

American environmental writing and criticism makes expansive gestures while remaining amnesiac towards non-American geographies that vanish over the intellectual skyline’.

There are also references to political power on colonialism. Roy writes that the constitution of free India ‘ratified colonial policy and made the State custodian of tribal homelands.Overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land. It denied them their traditional rights to forest produce, it criminalised a whole way of life’. They are focusing on these four issues—the environment, indigeneity, colonial legacies and globalcapital can help us understand that global capitalism today has both retained and refined the dynamics of plunder and colonialism that marked its inception. Karl Marx described the process in England: beginning at the end of the fifteenth century, the forcible usurpation of communal property occurred first ‘by means of individual acts of violence’ and later through the Parliamentary Acts for Enclosures of the Commons. Many commentators have suggested that postcolonial studies should not be thought of as a discrete field so much as an approach that has been honed by work on colonial dynamics and legacies in several disciplines; nevertheless, it is also a formation within the academy, shaped largely within English departments.

She had also discussed some recent scholarship and political movements that show why the colonial past and the globalised presents are deeply interconnected.  All the world literature is very deeply connected with the Postcolonial Studies.Postcolonial critique, however we interpret the term, can be meaningful only in conversation with scholarship and activism across the globe that strives to achieve a truly postcolonial world.

Foe Novel by J.M. Coetzee

 

Introduction :-

In Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the 17th-century island narrative becomes a lens for exploring gender roles, race, and independence. Defoe's portrayal of patriarchy is evident as Crusoe asserts authority over the island. J.M. Coetzee's Foe, a 1986 pastiche, reinterprets this classic, introducing Susan Barton as a narrator, challenging traditional gender dynamics and offering a more modern perspective.

 About the writer :-

John Maxwell Coetzee[a] FRSL OMG (born 9 February 1940) is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He has won the Booker Prize (twice), the CNA Literary Award (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates. Coetzee moved to Australia in 2002 and became an Australian citizen in 2006.He lives in Adelaide.

About the Novel :-

Foe is a 1986 novel by South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. Woven around the existing plot of Robinson Crusoe, Foe is written from the perspective of Susan Barton, a castaway who landed on the same island inhabited by "Cruso" and Friday as their adventures were already underway. Like Robinson Crusoe, it is a frame story, unfolding as Barton's narrative while in England attempting to convince the writer Daniel Foe to help transform her tale into popular fiction. Focused primarily on themes of language and power, the novel was the subject of criticism in South Africa, where it was regarded as politically irrelevant on its release. Coetzee revisited the composition of Robinson Crusoe in 2003 in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Comparative study of 'Robinson Crusoe and Foe' :-

In Daniel Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe, the novel portrayed as a foundational text to early fictional writings and introduced writers as well as readers to having a narrative in an island setting. Within Defoe’s novel, one is able to get a glimpse of the stereotypical gender roles from the 17thcentury because patriarchy reigned supreme. Women were property while men were authoritarians. The novel is shown through the eyes of a middle-aged white male during colonization. Crusoe “owns” the island and instructs those living there just as if he were the “governor” or political leader-just as any British colony would be governed. By this, the reader is able to see through the eyes of Robinson Crusoe about the issues of not only gender but with race and independence. AlthoughRobinson Crusoewas written in the early 1700’s, a more recent novel by J.M. Coetzee called Foewas an artistic piece that imitated Defoe’s well-known work. Even though the two novels share many similar aspects, Coetzee framed his work to provide an updated perspective of the story Defoe had composed by adding in the presence of a woman figure, incorporating a new setting, and more modernistic viewpoint.

Although Robinson Crusoewas written hundreds of years ago, a newer look into his island life and social views was created in 1986 when J.M. Coetzee wrote the novel Foe, a pastiche to Defoe’s famous work. While Robinson Crusoe is the main character and narrates the story from a first-person perspective in Defoe’s novel, Susan Barton is the woman who narrates Foe. The way Susan Barton conveys her own story helps articulate her strengths. Her character is aiding to the lack of women from the earlier novel. Crusoe makes brief mention of his mother, during which he reviews his family history. Then only sparing but on sentence to the mention of his wife: “In the meantime, I in part settled myself here; for first of all I marry’d and that not wither to my disadvantage and dissatisfaction, and had three children, two sons and one daughter” (Defoe 219). When Barton is introduced, she is shipwrecked on the island with Crusoe and Friday. The way in which she carried herself on the island was to become the dominant figure of the group and correct or manage the Crusoe’s actions and decisions. Then she says, “I presented myself to Crusoe, in the days when he still ruled over the island, and became his second subject, the first being his manservant Friday” (Coetzee 11). Her dependence on Crusoe and Friday to do more of the manly duties allowed the reader to see her weaker side. Coetzee’s decision of adding into a woman allowed for there to be a new interpretation of the story. Crusoe’s character was altered to depict the descriptions that Susan Barton presented. In Robinson Crusoe, the reader gets authentic details of Crusoe’s identity since the male figure is the direct focus of the novel, but in Foe, Barton offers the reader individual, physical characteristics that was not depicted in the first novel.

Foe follows the aspects of a more modern view. Even though Coetzee portrays a more feminine viewpoint through incorporating Susan Barton, her decisions and mindset raise a debate in how they relate to the life of a woman in the twentieth or even twenty-first centuries. As Barton falls asleep one night, Crusoe begins to pursue her. She described that night by saying, “I pushed his hand away and made to rise, but he held me. No doubt I might have freed myself, for I was stronger than he” (Coetzee 30). Although she realizes she is stronger than him, she decides not to leave but to “let him do as he wished” (Coetzee 30). Barton’s reputation is altered from the beginning to the end of the book by reshaping her morals. For instance, all her encounters with men all include having sexual relations only excluding Friday. Barton told herself “I did him (Friday) wrong to think of him as a cannibal or worse, a devourer of the dead. But Crusoe had planted the deed in my mind, and now I could not look on Friday’s lips without calling to mind what mean must once have passed them” (Coetzee 106). At the beginning of Coetzee’s novel, the reader would argue that Barton’s character is going to remain as a strong, female character, one who is bravely sacrificing for others. As the novel goes on the reader’s opinion on Barton shift because her character is not as clear as in what she stands for. On “Crusoe’s island” she is merely the “woman washed ashore,” and in England she is haunted with the question, “What life do I live but that of Crusoe’s widow?” (Coetzee 99). In England, she searches to define her role, but end up defining it through her gender. Although the novel does allot several chapters to Barton’s writing and thoughts, she is still hesitant to proclaiming her own truth by waiting for the go ahead from the male characters to feel accepted.

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoeis used across the generations and influences writers who are separated by centuries. The novel offered the writing world the style of having island narration and displayed the seventeenth century views whether it be social, political or creative aspects. It stimulated J.M. Coetzee to write in response to that novel, Foe, which sought to offer a modernized interpretation of Defoe’s novel, and provide room for others to be able to compare these two pieces. In Coetzee’s work, it has a female protagonist Susan Barton telling how the story really was before Mr. Foe sat down to turn it into a novel of his own intention, altering and disproving it. She tells her own story in the first-person perspective, in terms of the plot even before the writer Mr. Foe would have finished his Robinson Crusoe. Through this, Coetzee generates the illusion that Ms. Barton’s account might have indeed been the forerunner of the literary classic Robinson Crusoe. Although both books carry a different plot, they have similarities in techniques and in some social aspects. Whether discussing the presence of a woman figure, incorporation of a new setting, or more modernistic viewpoint, either novel depicts different perspectives on the matter, and portrays the evolution of the island narrative. Defoe makes certain that good writing is what it says it is and provides today’s generation a definite glimpse into the past.

 

Conclusion :-

In conclusion, Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" laid the foundation for island narratives, reflecting 17th-century gender and societal norms. J.M. Coetzee's response, "Foe," modernizes the tale with Susan Barton as a powerful female voice. The evolution from Crusoe's patriarchal dominance to Barton's complex journey highlights changing perspectives on gender and identity. Both novels, though centuries apart, contribute to the literary exploration of island narratives and societal shifts, showcasing the enduring influence of Defoe's original work across generations.

New-Historicism

 Hello Everyone, I'm a student of the Department of English,M.K.B.U. This blog is a part of a thinking activity which is given by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. In this blog I'm going to discuss New-Historicism as a part of cultural studies.

What is cultural studies ?

Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary field, drawing on theories and practices from a range of humanities and social sciences disciplines, that seeks to investigate the central role played by culture in the organisation and distribution of power locally and globally. At the centre of Cultural Studies sits a host of questions, such as what constitutes a text, how some texts, visual images, and cultural artefacts come to be valued over others, and how questions of value relate to the distribution of power and authority.

Rather than concentrating exclusively on the group of elite texts that make up so-called "high culture," Cultural Studies takes as its focus the whole complex of changing beliefs, ideas, feelings, values, and symbols that define a community’s organisation and sense of itself. Culture in this sense is often understood to be a primary vehicle of globalisation in the contemporary world and deeply enmeshed in particular social, economical and political environments. As such, when we study culture, we are studying the world we live in and how we function in it.

There are five types of cultural studies.That are like., 

1. British Cultural Materialism. 

2.  New Historicism. 

3. American Multiculturalism. 

1. A.African American Writers

2. B.Latina/o Writers

3. American Indian Literatures

4. Asian American Writers

4. Postmodernism and Popular Culture

1. Postmodernism

2.  Popular Culture

5. 5.Postcolonial Studies

British Cultural Materialism. 

Cultural studies is referred to as "cultural materialism" in Britain, and it has a long tradition. In the later nineteenth century Matthew Arnold sought to redefine the "givens" of British culture. 

In modern Britain two trajectories for "culture" developed: one led back to the past and the feudal hierarchies that ordered community in the past; here, culture acted in its sacred function as a preserver of the past. The other trajectory led toward a future, socialist utopia that would annul the distinction between labour and leisure classes and make transformation of status, not fixity, the norm.

Cultural materialism began in earnest in the 1950s with the work of F. R. Leavis, heavily influenced by Matthew Arnold's analyses of bourgeois culture. Leavis sought to use the educational system to distribute literary knowledge and appreciation more widely; Leavisites promoted the "great tradition" of Shakespeare and Milton to improve the moral sensibilities of a wider range of readers than just the elite.

American Multiculturalism

In this part, there is the history of the development of the American people. There are many types of American people. This part is divided into four parts. America is like a bowl of salad because there are so many different people lived in.

1. African American Writers

2. Latina/o Writers

3. American Indian Literatures

4. Asian American Writers

Postmodernism and Popular Culture

1. Postmodernism

Postmodernism, like poststructuralism and deconstruction, is a critique of the aesthetics of the preceding age, but besides mere critique, postmodernism celebrates the very act of dismembering tradition. Postmodernism questions everything rationalist European philosophy held to be true, arguing that it is all contingent and that most cultural constructions have served the function of empowering members of a dominant social group at the expense of "others." Beginning in the mid-1980s, postmodernism emerged in art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and other fields.Modernist literature rejected the Victorian aesthetic of prescriptive morality (famously argued by Henry James in "The Art of Fiction") and, using new techniques drawn from psychology, experimented with point of view, time, space, and

stream-of-consciousness writing. Major figures of "high modernism" who radically redefined poetry and fiction included Virginia Woolf, james foyce, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, and William Faulkner.

2. Popular Culture

There was a time before the 1960s when popular culture was not studied by academics-when it was, well, just popular culture. But within American Studies programs at first and then later in many disciplines, including semiotics, rhetoric, literary

criticism, film studies, anthropology, history, women's studies, ethnic studies, and psychoanalytic approaches, critics examine such cultural media as pulp fiction, comic books, television, film, advertising, popular music, and computer cyberculture. They assess how such factors as ethnicity, race, gender, class, age, region, and sexuality are shaped by and reshaped in popu-

lar culture.

There are four main types of popular culture analyses: 

1. production analysis 

2. Textual analysis

3. Audience analysis

4. Historical analysis. 

Postcolonial Studies

Postcolonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by Third World countries after the decline of colonialism: for example, when countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean separated from the European empires and were left to rebuild themselves. Many Third World writers focus on both colonialism and the changes created in a postcolonial culture. Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempts both to resurrect their culture and to combat the preconceptions about their culture.

New-Historicism

New- Historicism is also a type of cultural studies. It told about the importance of history in day to day life. How history is saved in the form of books,diaries etc. 

"If the 1970s could be called the Age of Deconstruction," writes Joseph Litvak, "some hypothetical survey of late twentieth-century criticism might well characterise the 1980s as marking the Return to History, or perhaps the Recovery of the Referent". 

Michael Warner phrases new historicism's motto as, "The text is historical, and history is textual".

Through this quote we can say that a text is always connected with history. Whenever something is happening in the world writers may write that in their work and through that we can get the history. 

Frederic Jameson insisted, "Always historicize!" 

Through this statement Frederic tries to say that if we historicize history then only we can get the knowledge of those particular things because no one can remember all the things which happened in the past.

As a return to historical scholarship, new historicism concerns itself with extraliterary matters-letters,diaries, films, paintings, medical treatises-looking to reveal opposing historical tensions in a text. With the help of diaries,films , paintings we can save history and we show that whenever we want.

New historicists seek "surprising coincidences" that may cross generic, historical,and cultural lines in borrowings of metaphor, ceremony, or popular culture. New historians see such cross-cultural phenomena as texts in themselves. From Hayden Atrhite, cultural studies practitioners learned how figural relationships between present and past are shaped by historical discourses.

New historicism versus old historicism :-

the latter, says Porter, saw history as "world views magisterially unfolding as a series of tableaux in a film called Progress,"

The new historicism rejects this periodization of history in favour of ordering history only through the interplay of forms of power.Stephen Greenblatt, a Renaissance scholar and founding editor of the journalRepresentations, may be credited with the coining of the term "new historicism."

New historicism exists, Veeser explains, between these two poles in an attempt to work with the "apparently contradictory historical effects of capitalism" without insisting upon an inflexible historical and economic theory.

From Foucault, new historicists developed the idea of a broad "totalizing" function of culture observable in its literary texts, which Foucault called the episteme. For Foucault history was not the working out of "universal" ideas: because we cannot know the governing ideas of the past or the present, we should not imagine that "we" even

have a "centre" for mapping the "real."

History itself is a form of social oppression, told in a series of ruptures with previous ages; it is more accurately described as discontinuous, riven by "fault lines" that must be integrated into succeeding cultures by the epistles of power and knowledge.

Conclusion :-

To conclude, we can say that history is most important for remembering past events. Through history we can connect past and present. Letters , diaries,films, painting,medical treatises are the elements which help us to note the history.  In text there may also be  several points about the history through which we can get the knowledge of our past events or history.