Conceptions of Culture - Case Study Example

Once assumed as linear, fixed and universal, current theoretical inquiries into the definition, creation, and preservation of culture have come to one general consensus about this seemingly illusive concept; it involves the “untidy but characteristic unevenness of development, [where are centered around] the significant breaks – where old lines of thought are disrupted, older constellations displaced, and elements, old and new, are regrouped around a different set of premises and themes”.1 Although the article was published in 1980, Stuart Hall’s comprehensive historiography of the significant contributors to the field of cultural studies provides a front seat view into the complexity involved in understanding culture. Although this attempt at understanding has, and continues to involve a myriad of confusing and contradictory theories, the only constant in this field is “that no single, unproblematic definition of ‘culture’ is to be found”; yet, there is collective acknowledgement, as first articulated by Raymond Williams in the Long Revolution, that culture is the domain of ideas and social practices.2 Although Williams was taken to town for the “imperializing sweep of his concept of ‘culture’”, this first foray into attempting to comprehend the intricate workings of culture, as created within, through, and by individuals, opened up a space in which Marxist, feminist, culturalist, etc., perspectives could initiate a deeper investigation into the motivations and intentions of the specific actors involved in the drama of constructing culture.3 In the end, the question of how to conceptualize culture requires a discussion on the role of ideology (competing and complimentary ideologies) in the formation of culture. In this regard, understanding how ideologies function as a mechanism for constructing and maintaining culture is of the utmost importance in contemporary studies of culture because, as it continually shifts from the national to the international context through the process of globalization, the window to reinvent, reinscribe, relocate, and resignify the structures that create culture is open to those who strive to free culture from the “determinism of historical inevitability – repetition without difference”.4 Before delving into a discussion on how culture is being produced through the process of globalization, it is important to take a closer look at the role of ideology in shaping our conceptions of culture. In Mythologies, Roland Barthes endeavors to make explicit that which has rendered itself implicit; he argues that, in society, certain myths are created by and for the benefit of the dominant group and, as these myths embed themselves within the fabric of the society, they become invisible.5 The myth goes beyond invisibility, in that it becomes naturalized and seemingly universal, or timeless; however, as the term implies, myths are “false representations and erroneous beliefs… constructed in order to mask the real structures of power obtaining in society.”6 A secondary purpose in keeping the myth in place is that it serves as justification for why and how power is distributed. The naturalized and justified myth acts as a barrier against those who challenge its legitimacy and credibility by casting the challenger as “lacking ‘bons sens’”.7 Therefore, although the reality of ideology is that it is socially constructed, the way in which the ideology functions serves to remove the notion of instability while asserting itself as always having been present. In response to this function, Barthes, the mythologist, sees that it is his job to “expose the artificiality of those signs which disguise their historical and social origins.”8 The task of the mythologist takes on even greater importance when he or she fully grasps the centrality of myths in culture, and the consequences that arise from these myths. Utilizing the lens of gender, class, technology, and media and communication, Barthes investigates how these embedded myths have served to benefit some while suppressing others. In the context of gender, the myths ensure that overt and covert pressures are lobbied against those who challenge the sexual politics of a society, which has conventionally been that “women have no other role than that defined by men.”9 Similarly, in order to retain power among the petty bourgeoisie, the centering of consumer culture as the dominant ideology served to keep the working class in endless pursuit of the newest commodity, rather than in endless pursuit of displacing those in power. Finally, mass culture and communication, resulted in turning the once, socially powerful working class into a “passive recipient, a void, an empty vessel waiting to be filled, to be told what to think and how to act;.. [as] uncritically consuming an alien – and alienating – culture.”10 In the end, Barthes attributes the central function of myths as strengthening the ideology of capitalism, which is achieved by subordinating the majority to the power of a few. Yet, this ideology is still in the abstract; therefore, it needs to be written into existence. Language cements the ideology of capitalism into the foundation of society and culture. Referencing Saussure’s work to explain the function of the sign, Barthes sees that language is composed of two elements: the first element, the signifier, represents the sound while the second element, the signified, represents the concept of the written image.11 In this respect, as language has the ability to connote meaning beyond the liberal and tangible reality of the signifier (the sound), it serves as the ideological house of myths, and from this house, myths are able to manipulate the signifier into propagating the messages of the signified while simultaneously appearing to be invisible. Barthes compares the myth to a parasite who lives off the first-order sign, and that needs the first-order sign in order to do its evil bidding.12 In returning to the discussion of culture, language has always played an important role in the construction, maintenance, preservation, and suppression of cultures; however, as language alone is not sufficient to ensure that all members conform to the appropriate rules of the established order, certain apparatuses of repression are needed to ensure willing compliance and blind conformity. In agreeance with Barthes, Louis Althusser argues that ideologies “are so integrated into our everyday ‘consciousness’ that it is extremely hard, not to say almost impossible, to raise oneself to the point of view of reproduction.”13 In his view, Althusser states that, in order to ensure the subjection of the labor power to the ruling ideology, two different apparatuses are utilized. The first apparatus, the Ideological Status Apparatus (ISA), is composed on a number of realities which are evident in institutions, such as religion, education, the family, the legal system, politics, trade unions, communications, and culture.14 The ISA is where the dominant or ruling ideology resides. However, as the power of the ISA is relegated to the intangible capacities of ideological coercion and contradiction, it needs the State Apparatus (SA) to act as its bodyguard against those who attempt to challenge it. In contrast to the plurality of the private ISA, the public SA is seen as the “‘machine’ of repression, which enables the ruling classes to ensure their domination over the working class, thus enabling the former to subject the latter to surplus-value extortion (i.e. to capitalist exploitation)”.15 The SA consists of all institutions that serve to repress dissent, including the courts, the army, the government, the police, the prisons, the administration, etc. In the simplest terms, the ISA constructs the individual into a subject by symbolically writing the ruling ideology all over that individual, as though the individual was a blank page and, when the individual wears the markings of the ruling ideology, the SA is employed, usually through violence, to ensure that the individual, now a subject of the state, does not remove the marking (or challenge the message of the markings). However, in closing the discussion on the role and function of the ISA and SA, Althusser states that, to his knowledge, “no class can hold state power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses.”16 Althussers statement about the necessary co-existence between the ISA and SA is pivotal in the contemporary study of culture, especially a culture that is currently being reshaped and redefined along the process of globalization. It is at this moment that we must return to the concept of ideology. Althusser’s central thesis about the structure of ideology posits that, first, “ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence,” and second, “ideology has a material existence… [in that] an ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or practices.”17 However, he also argues that the presence of the subject is essential to the functioning of an ideology, in that “there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects.”18 The centrality of the [willing] subject in the functioning of ideology is both the ruling party’s strength and its main weakness because, as long as the subject learns and adheres to the “appropriate” codes of behavior, the ruling ideology remains intact; however, if the subject finds enough strength (in terms of the support of other subjects) to challenge the ruling ideology, a battle ensues and, although the repressive function of the SA frequently disables a subject from effecting tangible change, there have been numerous instances when the challenger rejects assimilation and collaboration in favor of a third alternative – the establishment and entrenchment of a new ideology, backed by a new ruling class. Homi Bhabha asserts that underlying “the rise of religious ‘fundamentalisms,’ the spread of nationalist movements, the redefinitions of claims to race and ethnicity… is a deeper unease” about the impact of globalization on the current ruling classes stronghold on the construction of ideology because, although the interests of the dominant group are seen as underpinning all global endeavors, the structures and mechanisms involved in the process of globalization (media and technology) provide avenues through which the marginalized group(s) can attack and dismantle the dominant ruling ideology, while writing an alternative ideology into existence.19 Fredric Jameson enters the discussion on the concept of ideology in the study of culture through his article on globalization, which he defines as a process that, through the creation of extensive communication, has simultaneously brought the dominant cultures to the marginalized, and the marginalized cultures to the dominant. This “cybernetic revolution” has created communication networks that are facilitating the ideology of a world culture.20 For those who celebrate globalization, they see this communication network as facilitating the spread of cultural pluralism; however, for those who see the inherent evils in the economic process, they see globalization as the assimilation, standardization, and homogenization of culture, in which the plurality of cultures is funneled into a representation of the dominant culture. As the United States is considered at the center of dominance, globalization is seen as a vehicle through which Americanization and American consumer culture is transmitted to the remotest parts of the globe. Frederic sees this process in terms of exporting and importing, in which America exports its culture to other places through the centering of the English language and through media sources that simultaneously broadcast American culture to other nations while also commenting or criticizing other cultures.21 In addition, the exporting of American culture is reinforced by the strength of such biased agreements as NAFTA and GATT, which Althusser would define as the SA. These repressive measures were enacted simply to ensure the centering of American interests in the global economy and in cultural production; however, as the dominant ideology of the “American way of life” penetrates other cultures, it starts to take on the air of normalcy, naturalness, and universality, in which the “American way of life” starts to be perceived as the “best way of life”.22 However, unless other cultures have the economic and historic credibility needed to challenge the “American way of life” ideology, they are, for the most part, incapable of stopping the incursion and encroachment of American ideals and values on their unique culture. Globalization is creating a world in which the multiplicity of culture is being standardized and turned into a lesser version or a more inadequate conceptualization of American culture. However, Jameson argues that globalization underestimates the power of nationalism to resist the invasion of other dominant cultural ideologies. Although globalization can be utilized by dominant cultures to (and has) bully other cultures into submitting to their ideologies, it can also be utilized by less dominant cultures to resist this bullying and to find strategic ground in the contradictions of ideology to assert its presence while challenging the center.23 In addition to the power of the nationalist sentiment of a subordinate culture against the dominant culture, a second sub-group, which has emerged as a result of globalization, is also challenging the dominant cultural ideology. Although these subgroups are not perceived as equal to dominant cultures because they do not fulfill the criteria of a large enough pool of subjects and a long enough history of existence, they do exist in a unique space that challenges the us-them divide. Homi Bhabha defines these groups of people as hybrids who have a unique voice in this discussion on cultural reinventions and resignification; to Bhabha, The…hybrid is not only double-voiced and double-accented… but is also double-languaged; for in it there are not only (and not even so much) two individual consciousnesses, two voices, two accents, as there are [doublings of] socio-linguistic consciousnesses, two epochs… that come together and consciously fight it out on the territory of the utterance… It is the collision between differing points of view on the world that are embedded in these forms… such unconscious hybrids have been at the same time profoundly productive historically: they are pregnant with potential for new world views, with new ‘internal forms’ for perceiving the world in words.24 Although the quote is lengthy, it embodies Bhabha central argument: hybrid agengies hold in their unique history and identity a voice that “does not seek cultural supremacy or sovereignty”, but seeks to achieve legitimacy and credibility for the position they occupy – “the outside of the inside; the part in the whole.”25 In conclusion, culture is created and maintained through ideology and, as the ruling class has state power, they also hold the power to shape the ideological state in a fashion that serves their interests. These ideologies, or myths, appear as natural and universal; however, as Barthes and Althusser point out, they are socially constructed, constantly in flux, and highly sensitive to being challenged. When challenged, the dominant group utilizes the SA as a “machine of repression” to protect the ISA from incursions from alternative ideologies; however, periods of economic and cultural transitions create a space in which the ISA is more vulnerable to outside influence. This period of time, the period of globalization, is seen as an unstable period in which competing ideologies are vying for a piece of the cultural pie and, even though it seems that the “American way of life” is winning in the bid to recreate the global culture in its image, the mechanisms that facilitate the export (and dominance) of American values and ideologies are also serving as the mechanisms that are allowing for the (subtle) import of other cultures into America and other dominant cultures. This infiltration of dominant cultures by lesser-dominant cultures is creating a space in which the presence of nationalism and partial cultures are acting as a significant hindrance to the attempted homogenization of the global culture into the image of a (lesser) America. It is in this space that the most important redefinitions and re-imaginings of culture will take place. References Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological States Apparatuses.” In Essays on Ideology. London & New York: Verso, 1993. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Vintage, 1993. http://seacoast.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/myth.htm. Bhabha, Homi. “Culture’s in between.” Artforum 3, no. 1(1993): 167-170. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural studies: Two paradigms.” Media, Culture and Society 2 (1980): 57-72. Jameson, Fredric. “Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue.” In The Cultures of Globalization, edited by Fredric Jameson & Masao Miyoshi, 54-77. Durkham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Read More