THEORISTS AT A GLANCE

Below are several individuals and schools of thought that may crop up in your readings or discussions.  As with the glossary, this by no means represents a comprehensive look at these theories or theorists, but should provide new context for critical inquiry.  Many of the discussions of theorists below include links to sources outside of POP which will help further your engagement.  If at any point during your foray in to the wide world of the web you find a site or other source you think we should include in these links, please email us.

You should also check out PopCultures.com <http://www.popcultures.com> for a fine resource you can browse by theorist, archived articles, and much more.

Adorno, Theodor

Associated with the Frankfurt School; coined the term “culture industry”; examines and critiques popular culture as something which controls, which maintains social authority

LINKS:

Theory.org.uk has a useful overview and bibliography at http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-ador.htm>

A somewhat “academic” overview of his life and work is available at <http://pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/Adorno.html?>

PopCultures.com features links to Adorno, as well as access to writings by and about Adorno <http://www.popcultures.com/theorists/adorno.html>

Althusser, Louis

French Marxist; defines ideology as material practice, as a way of binding us to a social order that is marked by vast inequalities (of wealth, power, etc.)

LINKS:

Old Dominion University provides a brief overview at <http://courses.lib.odu.edu/engl/cbrooke/aacra/althusser.htm

Arnold, Matthew

defined culture as “the best that has been thought and said in the world”

LINKS:

The Victorian Web has several links and resources at <http://65.107.211.206/arnold/arnoldov.html

WSU has a page on Arnold and his discussions of culture at <http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/culture-definitions/arnold-text.html

Bakhtin, Mikhail

Russian critic who coined the term “carnivalesque”

LINKS:

PopCultures.com features links to Bakhtin, writings, and more at

<http://www.popcultures.com/theorists/bakhtin.html>

The University of Colorado at Boulder has a useful overview at <http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/bakhtin.html

Barthes, Roland (early work in Structuralism)

French structuralist (and later poststructuralist) working mainly in literary and cultural studies.  Some ideas of his to keep in mind: Aims to make explicit what is left implicit in the texts/practices of popular culture--to interrogate “the falsely obvious,” to target the “bourgeois norm,” to find ideological abuse hidden in display of “what-goes-without-saying” Barthes adds a second level of signification to Saussure’s signifier and signified: denotation (primary signification) and connotation (secondary signification) Myth is produced for consumption at level of secondary signification. Myth, for Barthes: is ideology understood as the body of ideas and practices which defend the prevailing structure of power by actively promoting the values and interests of dominant groups in society points out and notifies--connotations draw from and add to an already existing cultural repertoire is not homogenous, but rather continually confronted by counter-myth exists in triple context: the location of the text, the historical moment, and the cultural formation of readers; part of context includes readership and reader expectation gives historical intention a natural justification

Barthes, Roland (later work in Poststructuralism)

Denotation is no longer neutral.  It is, in fact, no more than the last connotation.  Denotation is as ideological as connotation.
Signifiers do not produce signifieds, only more signifiers.
Meaning is unstable.
Barthes wrote “The Death of the Author,” which argues that a text cannot be seen as a pure medium of authorial intent.  It is instead a space in which variety of writings blend and clash, none of them original.  A text is a work inseparable from the active process of the intertextuality of its many readings.

LINKS:

The University of Sunderland (UK) has a series of brief online lectures on Barthes and his work; some citations appear in French <http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/myth.htm

PopCultures.com also has a page on Barthes at <http://www.popcultures.com/theorists/barthes.html

Baudrillard, Jean

Postmodern theorist engaged with “the culture of the sign,” “simulacrum,” and the “hyperreal”

LINKS:

S(t)imulacrum(b) has a bizarre but engaging page on Baudrillard, including a quite detailed annotated bibliography of his works <http://www.csun.edu/~hfspc002/baud/

A good overview is available at <http://cgi.student.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/d95-aeh/get/baudrillard

PopCultures.com <http://www.popcultures.com/theorists/baudrillard.html>

Beauvoir, Simone de

LINKS:

Trinity College has a page at <http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/phils/beauvoir.html>

Benjamin, Walter

See the Frankfurt School

Bourdieu, Pierre

French sociologist who examines the ways in which we distinguish notions and valuations of “culture” and how that reveals the struggle between dominant and subordinate social groups

Certeau, Michel de

French cultural theorist engaged in examining ideas of consumption and production in popular culture

Derrida, Jacques

Poststructuralist; some key ideas:

Meaning is always deferred, always both absent and present (90)

Derrida uses the term différence to describe the divided nature of the sign, as it implies both to “defer” and “differ.”  For example, if you look up a word in the dictionary, then look up all the component words of that definition, etc., etc. you can see the unceasing intertextual deferment of meaning. There is a temporary halt to endless signifiers when located in discourse and read in context, but even context cannot fully control meaning--trace of meanings carried from other contexts(90-1)

In binary oppositions, the privileged term can be shown to be dependent on the other for meaning You can deconstruct by showing the dependence on violent assumptions

LINKS:

The Stanford Lecture Series offers this site <http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/>

Eco, Umberto

Semiotician and novelist, engaged in explorations and critiques of language and signs

LINKS:

The Pratt Institute offers a useful look at Eco, including some presentation of his discussion of langue and parole at <http://pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/Eco.html>

Fiske, John

Foucault, Michel

Poststructuralist; concerned with issues of discourse and power; some key ideas:

Foucault is concerned with the relationship between power and knowledge, and how relationship operates within discourse formations. He speaks of the dialogical: how language is used and how language-use is always articulated with other social and cultural practices.

Discourse is inseparable from power.

Power is not property of the ruling class, but rather the strategic terrain, the site of unequal relationship between the powerful and the powerless (97)

His “repressive hypothesis” suggests an approach to sexuality in terms of censorship and prohibition; different discourses on sexuality are not about sexuality but, rather, constitute sexuality.

Frankfurt School

Group of German “critical theorists” engaged in a combination of Marxism and psychoanalysis

Gramsci, Antonio

Italian Marxist concerned with issues of ideology and hegemony

LINKS:

Theory.org.uk has an extensive resource at <http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-gram.htm>

Hall, Stuart

Hebdige, Dick

Lacan, Jacques

Poststructuralist-pschyoanalytic theorist; he used structuralist theory to rearticulate Freud’s psychoanalysis; some key ideas:

Lacan rereads Freud using the theoretical methodology of structuralism to come up with a post-structuralist psychoanalysis

According to Lacan, we are born into “lack” (a separation from our mothers) and spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome this

There are three stages of development: the mirror phase, the fort-da game, and the Oedipus complex

In the mirror phase, we attempt to find ourselves in what is not ourselves; we engage “the imaginary.”  In the fort-da game (here-gone), we begin to articulate our demands through language; we enter “the symbolic,” the order of human subjectivity.  There is no essential self; rather, the language we speak produces our subjectivity. 

In the Oedipus complex we begin our pursuit of a fixed signified.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude

Structuralist engaged in the study of myths and structuring oppositions; some key ideas:

The langue of a culture is found in the varieties of the culture’s parole

A homogenous structure exists under the heterogeneity of myths

Individual myths are examples of parole, are articulations of the underlying structure

Myths work like language.  They are composed of “mythemes” that take on meaning only when combined.

Myths are structured in binary oppositions.  Meaning is produced by dividing the world into mutually exclusive categories (man/woman; good/bad; black/white; us/them).

Lyotard, François

French postmodernist; author of The Postmodern Condition

Mulvey, Laura

Feminist psychoanalytic theorist known for her work with film and the establishment of women as objects to be “looked at”

Radway, Janice

Feminist theorist best known for studying women’s readings of romance novels

Saussure, Ferdinand de

Swiss linguist from whom structuralist and poststructuralist theorists extend their thinking