Course Times: Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays, 11:30 AM-12:20 PM, in EPB 206
Office Hours: Mondays & Wednesdays 1-2 PM and by appointment; in EPB 455
Phone: 335-0465 (office); 337-3364 (home); Robert-Latham@uiowa.edu (e-mail)
Required Texts (all at University Bookstore as well as on library reserve):
Description: This course offers an intellectual genealogy of a central concept in the field of cultural studies: commodification. Since the production and consumption of commodities provides the basic organizational framework of modern (and postmodern) capitalist society, an understanding of the dynamics of this process is an essential component in the critical analysis of contemporary cultural forms and values. To "do" cultural studies in any meaningful sense requires, therefore, an attention to the socio-economic normativity of commodity relations in the production, distribution and reception of cultural texts and artifacts, even (perhaps especially) when the latter purport to resist or subvert these norms.
While the above may sound rather daunting, this course assumes no prior knowledge of commodification theory; rather, the syllabus is designed to survey, in introductory fashion, representative viewpoints on the complex entanglement of culture with the commodity form. We begin, of necessity, with Marx, then proceed to major debates in Western Marxism, as theorists critically engage the evolving forms of consumer society and the dynamics of mass audiences. Major developments in this intellectual tradition include the tense but sometimes productive confrontations of Marxism with semiotic analysis and postmodernist transvaluations of culture. Central figures in these debates are Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, V.N. Volosinov, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and Stuart Hall. Following this establishment of the critical background, we proceed to situated analyses of the imbrication of commodities and audiences within the public and private spaces of consumption, including a consideration of the gender and racial aspects of commodification. We conclude with an effort at global perspective, grappling with the internationalization of the commodity form and the effects of cultural imperialism.
Requirements and Assignments: The first requirement is preparation and attendance; you must be here for every class meeting with the day's reading completed. Because we have only 50 minutes per class session, you must also be on time; class will begin promptly at 11:30, and late arrivers will not be admitted. Students missing more than three sessions (or one week's worth of classes) will receive an automatic F in this grading area, meaning that no matter how exceptional your other work may be, you will not be able to score an A as a final grade (see section on "Grading" below for relevant percentages). If you feel that you are likely to have trouble meeting this basic expectation, you should drop this class now.
The required writing is as follows: weekly 3-page response papers and a final 15-page essay. The response papers are designed to record your comments upon and/or critiques of the week's readings in a fairly organized fashion; I do not want reading notes, but rather a coherent reaction distilled from such notes. These weekly responses are due in class on Mondays. On those weeks when we will be reading a number of essays by different critics and/or excerpts taken from various sources, I do not expect an exhaustive synthetic response, but I do want to see some effort to address the material as a whole, even if you ultimately choose to highlight a particular concept or theoretical position. What this means is that you should do the entire week's reading before the Monday session. The weekly reading burden, in terms of number of pages, is not extraordinarily heavy, but much of the material we will be covering is quite difficult, and all of it demands the most careful attention, so if you suspect the reading-and-response requirements are likely to overwhelm you, you should drop this class now.
The final essay is designed to identify and discuss a central topic or concept covered in the readings. This discussion can take either of two forms: you can analyze how this topic is treated or this concept deployed in three or more of the reading assignments, or you can apply some theoretical position or set of positions deriving from the assigned readings to a cultural text or texts of your choice. The purpose of the final essay is not to survey your cumulative knowledge of the course materials (the reading responses and class discussion will do that adequately enough), but rather to see whether you are able to work closely and effectively with some limited subset of these materials. The final essays are due at the end of the semester. If you are concerned that this expectation of intellectual mastery of a relevant concept or topic by semester's end is too demanding, you should drop this class now.
Grading: The grades will be apportioned as follows: 15% attendance and participation; 45% reading responses; and 40% final essay. Though I will provide fairly extensive feedback on the individual reading responses, thus giving you some developing sense of how you are handling the assignments, they will not be graded on a week-by-week basis; at the end of semester, I will assign a letter grade to this work as a whole. Some of you may feel trepidatious about taking a course in which so much of your grade calculation is deferred until semester's end; if so, you should drop this class now.
Week 1. The Materialist "Base"
Wed. 1/17:
- Introduction; Review of Syllabus
Fri. 1/19:
- Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 221-236--selections from the Introduction to the Grundrisse
Week 2. The Commodity Form
Mon. 1/22-Fri. 1/26:
Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 294-442--selections from Capital, Vol. 1
Week 3. Class Consciousness and Reification
Mon. 1/29:
- Georg Lukacs, "What is Orthodox Marxism?" (in History and Class Consciousness, pp. 1-26)
Wed. 1/31:
- Lukacs, " Class Consciousness" (in ibid, pp. 46-82)
Fri 2/2:
- Lukacs, "The Phenomenon of Reification" (in ibid, pp. 83-110)
Week 4. The Culture Industry
Mon. 2/5:
- Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception"--in Dialectic of Enlightenment *
Wed. 2/7:
- Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Mechanical Reproducibility"--in Illuminations *
Fri. 2/9:
- Horkheimer, Adorno, & Benjamin, cont'd
Week 5. Apparatus and Ideology
Mon. 2/12:
- Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, pp. 127-186)
Wed. 2/14:
- Althusser, "Ideology and ISAs," cont'd
- ---, "A Letter on Art" (in Lenin and Philosophy, pp. 221-228)
Fri. 2/16:
- Pierre Macherey and Etienne Balibar, "Literature as an Ideological Form" *
Week 6. Spectacle
Mon. 2/19:
- Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle--selections *
Wed. 2/21:
- Debord, Society, cont'd
Fri. 2/23:
- Debord, "Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy" *
- Mike Davis, "Fortress L.A." *
Week 7. Hegemony
Mon. 2/26:
- Raymond Williams, "Hegemony" *
- Stuart Hall, "Popular Culture and the State" *
Wed. 2/28:
- Stuart Hall, "Encoding, Decoding" *
Fri. 3/1:
- Stuart Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology': Return of the Repressed in Media Studies" *
Week 8. The Linguistic Turn
Mon. 3/4:
- V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language--selections *
Wed. 3/6:
- Roland Barthes, Mythologies--selections
Fri. 3/8:
- Barthes, Mythologies, cont'd
- ---, "Change the Object Itself: Mythology Today" *
Week 9. The Sign Form
Mon. 3/11:
- Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign
Wed. 3/13:
- Baudrillard, Critique, cont'd
Fri. 3/15:
- Baudrillard, Critique, cont'd
Week 10. Spring Break
No Classes
Week 11. Postmodernizing Marx
Mon. 3/25:
- Jean Baudrillard, "The End of Production" *
Wed. 3/27:
- Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" *
Fri. 3/29:
- Baudrillard & Jameson, cont'd
Week 12. The Politics of "Popular" Pleasure
Mon. 4/1:
- W.F. Haug, Critique of Commodity Aesthetics--excerpt *
Wed. 4/3:
- Don Slater, "Going Shopping: Markets, Crowds and Consumption" *
Fri. 4/5:
- John Fiske, "Shopping for Pleasure" *
Week 13. The Commodity Audience
Mon. 4/8:
- Barbara Klinger, "Digressions at the Cinema: Commodification and Reception in Mass Culture" *
Wed. 4/10:
- Eileen R. Meehan, "Why We Don't Count: The Commodity Audience" *
- Ian Eng, "Living Room Wars: New Technologies, Audience Measurement, and the Tactics of Television Consumption" *
Fri. 4/12:
- Janice Radway, "Mail-Order Culture and Its Critics: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Commodification and Consumption, and the Problem of Cultural Authority" *
Week 14. Gender and Race in Commodity Culture
Mon. 4/15:
- Susan Willis, A Primer for Daily Life
Wed. 4/17:
- Willis, Primer, cont'd
Fri. 4/19:
- Willis, Primer, cont'd
- Kobena Mercer, "Black Hair/Style Politics" *
Week 15. Sexing/Queering the Commodity
Mon. 4/22:
- Susan Buck-Morss, "The Flaneur, The Sandwichwoman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering" *
Wed. 4/24:
- Danae Clark, "Commodity Lesbianism" *
- Mark Simpson, "Narcissus Goes Shopping: Homoeroticism and Narcissism in Men's Advertising" *
Fri. 4/26:
- Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman, "Queer Nationality" *
Week 16. Cultural Imperialism
Mon. 4/29:
- John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism
Wed. 5/1:
Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, cont'd
Fri. 5/3:
- Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, cont'd
- Michael Taussig, "Fetishism: The Master Trope" *
Links:
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
University of Sheffield Bakhtin Center
Public Culture (interdisciplinary journal)