Cultural Studies

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Connexions Library

Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain
Collini, Stefan
Book
2006
An argument against what Collini calls the 'declinist thesis', the belief that contemporary intellectual life is getting increasingly dumbed down and stagnant. Declinists, Collini suggests, are in den...
Adventures in Marxism
Berman, Marshall
Book
1999
Marshall Berman explores and rejoices in the emancipatory potential of Marxism.
Against Post-Modernism: A Marxist Critique
Callinocos, Alex
Book
1982
Callinocos argues that the relativism preached by post-modernists leaves us with no objective criteria by which to reject those who would falsify the past.
All cultures are not equal
Malik, Kenan
Article
2002
A common thread binds contemporary Western radicalism and fundamentalist Islam. On the surface the two seem poles apart: fundamentalists loathe Western decadence, Western radicals fear Islamic presump...
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity
Berman, Marshall
Book
1982
Berman examines the clash of classes, histories, and clutures in the modern world, and ponders our prospects for coming to terms with the relationship between a liberating social and philosophical ide...
Anarchism, Representation, and Culture: Cohn, Jesse
Article
2002
A discussion of the role of anarchism in the formation of modernist avant-garde aesthetics.
Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies
Hutnyk, John
Book
2004
Cultural Studies commonly claims to be a radical discipline. This book thinks that's a bad assessment. After an introduction critiquing the so-called 'Marxism' of the academy, Hutnyk provides detailed...
Baxandall, Lee: Connexipedia Article
Article
American writer, translator, editor, and activist, first known for his New Left engagement with cultural topics and then as a leader of the naturist movement. (1935-2008).
Berman, Marshall: Connexipedia Article
Article
American philosopher and Marxist Humanist writer. (Born 1940).
Beyond a Boundary
James, C.L.R.
Book
1963
Part memoir of a boyhood in a black colony (by one of the founders of African nationalism), part passionate celebration of the game of cricket, this book raises serious questions about race, class, po...
Bound By Power: Intended Consequences
Klaehn, Jeffery (ed.)
Book
These essays focus on how power and ideology work within society. Interviews are with Noam Chomsky, Linda McQuaig, Robert Bertuzzi and others. They speak to the issues of the understanding of power an...
Civility: A Cultural History
Davetian, Benet
Book
2009
Through a historical, social, and psychological discussion of the civility practices in 3 nations - England, France and the United States, Davetian addresses major topics in public discourse today reg...
Connexions Library: Arts, Media, Culture Focus
Website
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on media, culture, and art.
The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998
Jameson, Fredric
Book
2009
Fredric Jameson, a leading voice on the subject of postmodernism, assembles his most powerful writings on the culture of capitalism.
Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America
Hughes, Robert
Book
1993
Propaganda-talk, euphemism, and evasion are so much a part of American usage today that they cross all party lines and ideological divides. The art of not answering the question, of cloaking unpleasan...
Django Unchained, or, The Help: How "Cultural Politics" Is Worse Than No Politics at All, and Why
Reed, Adolph Jr.
Article
2013
On reflection, it's possible to see that Django Unchained and The Help are basically different versions of the same movie. Both dissolve political economy and social relations into individual quests a...
Edward Said, Orientalism: Reviewed by Malcolm Kerr
Kerr, Malcolm
Article
1980
The book contains many excellent sections and scores many telling points, but it is spoiled by overzealous prosecutorial argument in which Professor Said, in his eagerness to spin too large a web, lea...
For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their enemies
Irwin, Robert
Book
2006
A rebuttal of Edward Said which examines who the Orientalists were, how historically they advanced their disciplines, and what their achievements have been. Irwin calls Said's book "a work of malignan...
The German Ideology: Critique of Modern German Philosophy According to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stirner, and of German Socialism According to
Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich
Book
1846
Marx and Engels take on the "philosophic charlatanry" and pettiness and "parochial narrowness" of the pseudo-radicals of their time, "in particular the tragicomic contrast between the illusions of the...
Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science
Gross, Paul; Levitt, Norman
Book
1994
Describes attacks on science, and on concepts of truth and rationality, in areas of the humanities.
Ignorance and Courage in the Age of Lady Gaga
Bageant, Joe
Article
2010
It can be safely said that cultural ignorance consists of the rational, sensible questions that never get asked. But it also includes the weird ones that are. For instance, one of the questions asked ...
The Illusions of Postmodernism
Eagleton, Terry
Book
1996
Eagleton explores the origins and emergence of postmodernism, revealing its ambivalences and contradictions. His primary concern is less with the more intricate formulations of postmodern philosophy t...
Institute for the Study of Cultural Evolution
Article
1972
An attempt to make the university of humanity a conscious coordinated effort towards humanity at peace with itself and its environment.
Is that an archive in your basement... or are you just hoarding?: Sources News Release
Article
2012
Are you an 'accidental archivist'? Have you been saving the publications and documents produced by the social justice projects you've been involved in? Then Connexions would like to hear from you.
Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory
Dews, Peter
Book
1987
Essays summarizing and critiquing post-structuralism. According to Dews, for all its posture of radicality, post-structuralist thought is itself bound to certain vulnerable assumptions. Dews argues th...
Macdonald, Dwight: Connexipedia Article
Article
American writer, editor, social critic, philosopher, and political radical. (1906-1982).
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Herman, Edward S.; Chomsky, Noam
Book
1988
Contrary to the usual image of the press and cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitious in its search for truth, Herman and Chomsky depict how an underlying elite consensus largely structures all facets...
The Movement and the Sixties
Anderson, Terry H.
Book
1995
Drawing on interviews, manuscripts, and archives, Anderson reveals how one event built upon another and exploed into the kaleidoscope of activism in the United States by the early 1970s. Civil rights,...
Multiculturalism or World Culture?: On a "Left"-Wing Response to Contemporary Social Breakdown
Goldner, Loren
Article
1991
Post-modernists are profoundly bored by any questions of economics and technology which cannot be connected to cultural differences. The implicit agenda of the multiculturalists is to present the valu...
The Nazis and Deconstruction: Jean-Pierre Faye's Demolition of Derrida
Goldner, Loren
Article
1993
A review of Jean-Pierre Faye's book 'La raison narrative', which traces the Nazi origins of deconstructionist and post-modernist concepts and terminology. Faye shows, for example, that the concept of ...
Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism
Brodribb, Somer
Book
1992
An explanation of the foundation of recent post-modern theory which also criticises the misogynist and patriarchal work of Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard and Jean-Fr...
Ontological "Difference" and the Neo-Liberal War on the Social: Deconstruction and Deindustrialization
Goldner, Loren
Article
2001
We have today legions of people with a smattering of knowledge turning out reams of books filled with buzz words that could be (and have been) produced by a computer program, and could be (and are) pi...
Postmodernism and the Left
Epstein, Barbara
Article
1997
Barabara Epstein provides an overview of the approach and subculture of postmodernism and how they relate to, or conflict with, leftwing ideas.
Postmodernism Generator
Bulhak, Andrew C.
Website
2000
A computer program written by Andrew. C. Bulhak using the Dada Engine, a system for generating random text. Each time you click on the page, it generates a brand-new postmodernist essay, completely me...
Postmodernism: Paralysed by postmodernism
Kitching, Gavin
Article
2008
A great deal of "theory" in the humanities and social sciences -- and not just postmodern theory -- involves the creating of a kind of conceptual landscape filled with curious kinds of abstract object...
Problems of Everyday Life: And Other Writings On Culture & Science
Trotsky, Leon
Book
1973
The focus of this book is the impact of the Russian Revolution of the culture life of the country -- and conversely, the effect of the country's cultural backwardness on the course of the revolution. ...
Radical Perspectives in the Arts
Baxandall, Lee (ed.)
Book
1972
An anthology of Marxist literary and cultural criticism.
Raids and Reconstructions: Essays on Politics, Crime, and Culture
Enzensberger, Hans Magnus
Book
1976
A collection of essays on culture and poltics.
Raymond Williams and the Moral Project of the New Left: A review of 'Views Beyond the Border Country: Raymond Williams and Cultural Politics'
Murphy, Terry
Article
1997
Views Beyond the Border Country is an ample demonstration that activist-scholarship, a concrete political standpoint and the insights of feminism and anti-racism ought to inform the politics of any fu...
Reading Orientalism: Said and the unsaid
Varisco, Daniel Martin
Book
2008
An extensive discussion of Edward Said's influential 1978 polemic 'Orientalism'. Varisco mounts a sustained critique on Said's flawed methodology, his skewed and selective handling of literary evidenc...
Edward Said's shadowy legacy: Tricky with argument, weak in languages, careless of facts: but, thirty years on, Said still dominates debate
Irwin, Robert
Article
2008
So many academics want the arguments presented in Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) to be true. It discourages any kind of critical approach to Islam in Middle Eastern studies.
Sign Crimes/Road Kill: From Mediascape to Landscape
Nelson, Joyce
Book
1992
A collection of thirty short essays by Joyce Nelson, a writer specializing in the politics of the mass media.
Society of the Spectacle
Debord, Guy
Book
1967
An analysis of modern society and how it can be changed, written in the form of 221 theses. The first thesis reads: "In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an ...
Telling the Truth: Socialist Register 2006
Panitch, Leo; Keys, Colin (eds.)
Book
2005
A collection of essays that examines the difficulties of illuminating the degenerative and secretive nature of public life.
Towards a Method for the Revolutionary Reconstruction of Everyday Life
Brown, Bruce
Article
1972
On the critique and transformation of everyday life as a key part of the struggle for revolutionary transformation. Published in Liberation magazine April 1972.
The Trouble with Theory: The Educational Costs of Postmodernism
Kitching, Gavin
Book
2008
Postmodern theory has engaged the hearts and heads of the brightest students because of its apparent political and social radicalism. Yet Kitching writes: "At the heart of postmodernism is very poor, ...
The Unfashionable Human Body
Rudolfsky, Bernard
Book
1973
A discussion of apparel, in the broadest sense of the word, and how it has reflected and shaped attitudes to the human body.
The Uses of Literacy
Hoggart, Richard
Book
1957
In this partly autobiographical book Hoggart observes the loss of an authentic popular culture and denounces the imposition of mass culture by the culture industries.
Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals
Goodman, Paul
Book
1951
Whatever the subject, Goodman asks: What blocks and limits human freedom, joy, and creativity? What tends to release, free, liberate? In criticizing society and life his purpose is to improve. Goodman...
Walter Benjamin: Or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism
Eagleton, Terry
Book
2009
Eagleton's goal here is to to contemplate Benjamin's approach to language, history, and art and to chart a dynamic new course for contemporary socialist criticism.
Where Do Postmodernists Come From?
Eagleton, Terry
Article
1995
Eagleton argues that left intellectuals have adopted postmodernism out of a sense of having been badly defeated, a belief that the left as a political tendency has little future. Culturalism, he argue...

Sources Experts & Spokespersons

Sources Library

The Book-of-the-Millennium Club
Macdonald, Dwight
1952
For $249.50, which is (for all practical purposes) $250, one could buy, in 1952, a hundred pounds of Great Books: four hundred and forty-three works by seventy-six authors, ranging chronologically and...
Communicating in Canada's Past
Essays in Media History
Allen, Gene; Robinson, Daniel J. (eds.)
2009
Address sizable gaps in the literature on media history in Canada. Includes a substantial introduction to media history as a field of study and essays on a range of subjects, including print journalis...
Dialogues on Cultural Studies
Interviews with Contemporary Critics
edited by Xie, Shaobo; Wang, Fengzhen
2002
Thirty-three questions were asked (but not necessarily answered) of each participant, dealing with cultural studies, modernity, postmodernism, referentiality, ideology and history, post-colonialism, n...
Other Conundrums
Race, Culture, and Canadian Art
Gagnon, Mokia Kin
2000
A collection of essays on Canadian art.

From the Connexions Archives

Break Their Haughty Power
Goldner, Loren
Website
Articles on capitalism, socialism, and revolution, from a left-Marxist perspective.
Docs Populi
Documents for the public
Website
Dedicated to documenting and publishing oppositional artwork of the late 20th century.