Learning Modules

Prepared by:

ROSE ANN PIE O. DORIMAN

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 MODULE 2
MODULE 1 POPULAR CULTURE IN DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

TIME ALLOTMENT 14 hours

INSTRUCTOR Ms. Rose Ann Pie O. Doriman

FACEBOOK Rose Ann Pie

EMAIL [email protected]
CELL NUMBER 09957513785

I. OVERVIEW
This module gives an overview of the different perspective of popular culture. Current
situation shows that popular culture is a thriving topic today. Students needed to know
how popular culture can help us understand ourselves, our experiences, our
communities, our country and our culture. The popular culture in different perspective
addresses the challenge by offering a practical guide that integrates content with
examples capturing the essence and elegance of theory in the straight forward manner.

This chapter reveals variety of perspectives using different metaphors for better
understanding of the concepts related to it.
II. TARGETED COURSE LEARNING OUTCOME
CLO 1 Understand and discuss critically the theoretical approaches applied to
Philippine popular culture
CLO 2 Articulate how society interacts with popular culture and offer analysis on the
core issues and debates.
CLO 3 Evaluate Philippine popular culture from differing viewpoints and perspectives
and identify the strengths and flaws of each stance in preserving Filipino culture
to promote sustainable development.
III. TARGETED TOPIC LEARNING OUTCOME
At the end of the lesson, the students should:

1. Describe Popular culture in the views of Marxist, Structuralist, post-structuralist and

postmodernist
2. Compare and contrast the popular culture in different perspective.
3. Give situations of popular culture that Marxisms, structuralism and post structuralism
and postmodernism are applies
IV. ASSESSMENT
1. Your Initial Task. Answer the questions quickly.
2. Word Hunt. Find the hidden words and define each.
3. Express yourself! Write an Essay.
4. Let’s sum it up!
5. What’s on your mind?

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A.
A. ENGAGE
Learning Activity 1. Your Initial Task.

Instructions. Recall your prior knowledge about Marxism, Structuralism, Post-

Structuralism, and Post-Modernism. Answer the questions in the diagram as quick as
you can. Limit your answer in 3-5 sentences only. Write your answer inside each box.
(5 points each)

Marxism

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' political and economic theories, later developed
by their followers to form the basis for the theory and practice of Communism.
To understand Marxism in simple terms, it is a philosophy of politics and
economics where a society is without classes. Every individual within society
works for a common good, and ideally, class conflict is gone.

Structuralism

Structuralism means there is a particular structure or system that makes up the

basic definition. A tool for understanding and evaluating aspects of human
cognition, behavior, culture and experience that focuses on the contrasting
relationships between elements in a conceptual framework that represent trends
underlying superficial diversity.

Post-Structuralism

Post-structuralism is the literary and philosophical work which in structuralism,

the intellectual movement which preceded it, both builds on and rejects
concepts. The post-structuralism concentrate on the moment when we impose
meaning in a space that is no longer. Characterized by shared social agreement
over the structure of meaning.

Post-Modernism

Postmodernism is a popular movement that evolved through philosophy, the

arts, architecture and criticism in the mid- to late 20th century, representing a
departure from modernism. More broadly, the term has been used to describe a
historical period that is said to imitate modernity and the characteristics of this
period.

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 B. EXPLORE
Learning Activity 2. Word Hunt.

Instructions. Encircle 10 hidden words below and define each. Words appear
straight, back word, straight across, up and down, down and up, and diagonally. All words
should be related to culture. (2 points each)

1. DISCROUSE - a historically transmitted expressive system of communication

practices, of acts, events, and styles, which are composed of specific symbols,
symbolic forms, norms, and their meanings.
2. MARXISM - is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist
interpretation of historical development, better known as historical
materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict as well as a
dialectical perspective to view social transformation.
3. STRUCTURALISM - a method of interpretation and analysis of aspects of
human cognition, behavior, culture, and experience that focuses on
relationships of contrast between elements in a conceptual system that
reflect patterns underlying a superficial diversity.
4. POST-STRUCTURALISM - Post-structuralism is the literary and philosophical work
that both builds upon and rejects ideas within structuralism, the intellectual
project that preceded it.
5. SIGNIFIED - is the concept or meaning indicated by the signifier. "plane of content,
6. SIGNIFIER - is the sound associated with or image of something plane of
expression.
7. LINGUISTICS - is the scientific study of language. It involves the analysis of
language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguists traditionally
analyse human language by observing interplay between sound and meaning.
8._______________________________________________________________
9._______________________________________________________________
10.______________________________________________________________
M X C S I G N I F I E R U I O P M
A S D F G H J K L Q W E R S W E S
R A F J P A R T D S C A Z C Q R I

X T H N O A R U O P X C V I A W X
I T Y U S Q R T Y U I N L T I P R
S S F H T T Q A S Z X C V S E N A
M Y T H S Q R T N S E R O I N A M
O U Z Q T A Q U A M I R O U D G C
L I X A R A W O C L A N T G A N X
N P C X U Z E P I T U Q N N O I S
M L V C C X R T N S U O L I A C A
G K B V T C T R N U E R L L C O Q
D J N F U V Y E G E R S A R L E W
F H M D R B U W N N A N C L H A E
C G L V A N I Q I E G A S D I C R
A F K B L M O Z P U A S D F G S P
W D J G I Q P X A Q W E R T Y U M
R S H H S A S G Q S C D F G H J K
T A G N M L E V D E I F I N G I S
D I S C O U R S E Q W E R T Y U U

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 Read and Grasp…

Cultural Marxism Is Real

Samuel Moyn, a Yale law professor, recently asked, “What is ‘cultural Marxism?’” His
answer: “Nothing of the kind actually exists.” Moyn attributes the term cultural Marxism
to the “runaway alt-right imagination,” claiming that it implicates zany conspiracy
theories and has been “percolating for years through global sewers of hatred.”

Alexander Zubatov, an attorney writing in Tablet, countered that the “somewhat unclear
and contested” term cultural Marxism “has been in circulation for over forty years.” It
has, moreover, “perfectly respectable uses outside the dark, dank silos of the far right.”
He concluded that cultural Marxism is neither a “conspiracy” nor a “mere right-wing
‘phantasmagoria,’” but a “coherent intellectual program, a constellation of dangerous
ideas.”

In this debate, I side with Zubatov. Here’s why.

Despite the bewildering range of controversies and meanings attributed to it, cultural
Marxism (the term and the movement) has a deep, complex history in Theory. The word
“Theory” (with a capital T) is the general heading for research within the interpretative
branches of the humanities known as cultural and critical studies, literary criticism, and
literary theory—each of which includes a variety of approaches from the
phenomenological to the psychoanalytic. In the United States, Theory is commonly
taught and applied in English departments, although its influence is discernable
throughout the humanities.

A brief genealogy of different schools of Theory—which originated outside English

departments, among philosophers and sociologists for example, but became part of
English departments’ core curricula—shows not only that cultural Marxism is a nameable,
describable phenomenon, but also that it proliferates beyond the academy.

Scholars versed in Theory are reasonably suspicious of crude, tendentious portrayals of

their field. Nevertheless, these fields retain elements of Marxism that, in my view, require
heightened and sustained scrutiny. Given estimates that communism killed over 100
million people, we must openly and honestly discuss those currents of Marxism that run
through different modes of interpretation and schools of thought. To avoid complicity,
moreover, we must ask whether and why Marxist ideas, however attenuated, still
motivate leading scholars and spread into the broader culture.

th th
English departments sprang up in the United States in the late 19 and early 20 century,
ushering in increasingly professionalized studies of literature and other forms of aesthetic
expression. As English became a distinct university discipline with its own curriculum, it
moved away from the study of British literature and canonical works of the Western tradition
in translation, and toward the philosophies that guide textual interpretation.

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Although a short, sweeping survey of what followed may not satisfy those in the field, it
provides others with the relevant background.

The New Criticism

The first major school to establish itself in English departments was the New Criticism. Its
counterpart was Russian formalism, characterized by figures like Victor Shklovsky and
Roman Jakobson, who attempted to distinguish literary texts from other texts, examining
what qualities made written representations poetic, compelling, original, or moving
rather than merely practical or utilitarian.

One such quality was defamiliarization. Literature, in other words, defamiliarizes language by
using sound, syntax, metaphor, alliteration, assonance, and other rhetorical devices.

The New Criticism, which was chiefly pedagogical, emphasized close reading, maintaining
that readers searching for meaning must isolate the text under consideration from
externalities like authorial intent, biography, or historical context. This method is similar
to legal textualism whereby judges look strictly at the language of a statute, not to
legislative history or intent, to interpret the import or meaning of that statute. The New
Critics coined the term “intentional fallacy” to refer to the search for the meaning of a
text anywhere but in the text itself. The New Criticism is associated with John Crowe
Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, I. A. Richards, and T.S. Eliot. In a way, all subsequent schools of
Theory are responses or reactions to the New Criticism.

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

Structuralism permeated French intellectual circles in the 1960s. Through structuralism,

thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Louis Althusser imported
leftist politics into the study of literary texts. Structuralism is rooted in the linguistics of
Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist who observed how linguistic signs become
differentiated within a system of language. When we say or write something, we do it
according to rules and conventions in which our anticipated audience also operates. The
implied order we use and communicate in is the “structure” referred to in structuralism.

The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss extended Saussure’s ideas about the
linguistic sign to culture, arguing that the beliefs, values, and characteristic features of a
social group function according to a set of tacitly known rules. These structures are
“discourse,” a term that encompasses cultural norms and not just language practices.

Out of structuralism and post-structuralism emerged Structural Marxism, a school of

thought linked to Althusser that analyzes the role of the state in perpetuating the
dominance of the ruling class, the capitalists.

Marxism and Neo-Marxism

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Frankfurt School popularized the type of work usually labeled as
“cultural Marxism.” Figures involved or associated with this school include Erich Fromm,
Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin. These men
revised, repurposed, and extended classical Marxism by emphasizing culture and ideology,

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incorporating insights from emerging fields such as psychoanalysis, and researching the
rise of mass media and mass culture.

Dissatisfied with economic determinism and the illusory coherence of historical

materialism—and jaded by the failures of socialist and communist governments—these
thinkers retooled Marxist tactics and premises in their own ways without entirely
repudiating Marxist designs or ambitions.

Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, scholars like Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson were
explicit in embracing Marxism. They rejected the New Critical approaches that divorced
literature from culture, stressing that literature reflected class and economic interest,
social and political structures, and power. Accordingly, they considered how literary texts
reproduced (or undermined) cultural or economic structures and conditions.

Slavoj Žižek arguably has done more than any member of the Frankfurt School to integrate
psychoanalysis into Marxist variants. “Žižek’s scholarship holds a particularly high place within
cultural criticism that seeks to account for the intersections between psychoanalysis and
Marxism,” wrote the scholar Erin Labbie.[1] She added, “Žižek’s prolific writings about
ideology, revealing the relationships between psychoanalysis and Marxism, have altered the
way in which literary and cultural criticism is approached and accomplished to the extent that
most scholars can no longer hold tightly to the former notion that the two fields are at
odds.”[2] Žižek is just one among many continental philosophers whose Marxist and Marxist-
inflected prognostications command the attention of American academics.

Deconstruction

Jacques Derrida is recognized as the founder of deconstruction. He borrowed from

Saussure’s theory that the meaning of a linguistic sign depends on its relation to its
opposite, or to things from which it differs. For instance, the meaning of male depends on
the meaning of female; the meaning of happy depends on the meaning of sad; and so
forth. Thus, the theoretical difference between two opposing terms, or binaries, unites
them in our consciousness. And one binary is privileged while the other is devalued. For
example, “beautiful” is privileged over “ugly,” and “good” over “bad.”

The result is a hierarchy of binaries that are contextually or arbitrarily dependent,

according to Derrida, and cannot be fixed or definite across time and space. That is
because meaning exists in a state of flux, never becoming part of an object or idea.

Derrida himself, having re-read The Communist Manifesto, recognized the “spectral”
furtherance of a “spirit” of Marx and Marxism.[3] Although Derrida’s so-called
“hauntology” precludes the messianic meta-narratives of unfulfilled Marxism,
commentators have salvaged from Derrida a modified Marxism for the climate of today’s
“late capitalism.”

Derrida used the term diffèrance to describe the elusive process humans use to attach
meaning to arbitrary signs, even if signs—the codes and grammatical structures of
communication—cannot adequately represent an actual object or idea in reality. Derrida’s
theories had a broad impact that enabled him and his followers to consider linguistic signs
and the concepts created by those signs, many of which were central to the Western

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tradition and Western culture. For example, Derrida’s critique of logocentrism contests
nearly all philosophical foundations deriving from Athens and Jerusalem.

New Historicism

New Historicism, a multifaceted enterprise, is associated with Shakespearean scholar

Stephen Greenblatt. It looks at historical forces and conditions with a structuralist and
post-structuralist eye, treating literary texts as both products of and contributors to
discourse and discursive communities. It is founded on the idea that literature and art
circulate through discourse and inform and destabilize cultural norms and institutions.

New historicists explore how literary representations reinforce power structures or work
against entrenched privilege, extrapolating from Foucault’s paradox that power grows
when it is subverted because it is able to reassert itself over the subversive person or act
in a show of power. Marxism and materialism often surface when new historicists seek to
highlight texts and authors (or literary scenes and characters) in terms of their effects on
culture, class, and power. New historicists focus on low-class or marginalized figures,
supplying them with a voice or agency and giving them overdue attention. This political
reclamation, while purporting to provide context, nevertheless risks projecting
contemporary concerns onto works that are situated in a particular culture and historical
moment.

In the words of literary critic Paul Cantor, “There is a difference between political
approaches to literature and politicized approaches, that is, between those that rightly
take into account the centrality of political concerns in many literary classics and those
that willfully seek to reinterpret and virtually recreate class works in light of
contemporary political agendas.”[4]

Cultural Marxism Is Real

Much of the outcry about cultural Marxism is outrageous, uninformed, and

conspiratorial. Some of it simplifies, ignores, or downplays the fissures and tensions
among leftist groups and ideas. Cultural Marxism cannot be reduced, for instance, to
“political correctness” or “identity politics.” (I recommend Andrew Lynn’s short piece
“Cultural Marxism” in the Fall 2018 issue of The Hedgehog Review for a concise critique of
sloppy and paranoid treatments of cultural Marxism.)

Nevertheless, Marxism pervades Theory, despite the competition among the several
ideas under that broad label. Sometimes this Marxism is self-evident; at other times, it’s
residual and implied. At any rate, it has attained a distinct but evolving character as
literary scholars have reworked classical Marxism to account for the relation of literature
and culture to class, power, and discourse.

Feminism, gender studies, critical race theory, post-colonialism, disability studies—these

and other disciplines routinely get pulled through one or more of the theoretical
paradigms I’ve outlined. The fact that they’re guided by Marxism or adopt Marxist terms
and concepts, however, does not make them off-limits or unworthy of attention.

Which brings me to a warning: Condemning these ideas as forbidden, as dangers that

corrupt young minds, might have unintended consequences. Marxist spinoffs must be

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studied to be comprehensively understood. Don’t remove them from the curriculum:
contextualize them, challenge them, and question them. Don’t reify their power by
ignoring or neglecting them.

Popular iterations of cultural Marxism reveal themselves in the casual use of terms like
“privilege,” “alienation,” “commodification,” “fetishism,” “materialism,” “hegemony,” or
“superstructure.” As Zubatov wrote for Tablet, “It is a short step from Gramsci’s ‘hegemony’
to the now-ubiquitous toxic memes of ‘patriarchy,’ ‘heteronormativity,’ ‘white supremacy,’
‘white privilege,’ ‘white fragility,’ ‘and whiteness.’” He adds, “It is a short step from the
Marxist and cultural Marxist premise that ideas are, at their core, expressions of power to
rampant, divisive identity politics and the routine judging of people and their cultural
contributions based on their race, gender, sexuality and religion.”

My brief summary is merely the simplified, approximate version of a much larger and
more complex story, but it orients curious readers who wish to learn more about cultural
Marxism in literary studies. Today, English departments suffer from the lack of a clearly
defined mission, purpose, and identity. Having lost rigor in favor of leftist politics as their
chief end of study, English departments at many universities are jeopardized by the
renewed emphasis on practical skills and jobs training. Just as English departments
replaced religion and classics departments as the principal places to study culture, so too
could future departments or schools replace English departments.

And those places may not tolerate political agitations posturing as pedagogical technique.

The point, however, is that cultural Marxism exists. It has a history, followers, adherents,
and left a perceptible mark on academic subjects and lines of inquiry. Moyn may wish it
out of existence, or dismiss it as a bogeyman, but it is real. We must know its effects on
society, and in what forms it materializes in our culture. Moyn’s intemperate polemic
demonstrates, in fact, the urgency and importance of examining cultural Marxism, rather
than closing our eyes to its meaning, properties, and significance.

(Source: https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/01/cultural-marxism-is-real/ )

Structural linguistics and the ideas of Saussure

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) attempted to establish and develop the
discipline of structural linguistics. On the basis of this he suggested it was possible to found a
science of signs.1 In these respects, his ideas played a crucial role in the emergence of
structuralism and semiology. Discussing his ideas should therefore help clarify their intentions
and methods, and their relevance for studying contemporary popular culture.

Saussure is concerned with establishing linguistics as a science. To do this he makes a

number of distinctions and definitions which have become familiar to anyone acquainted
with the academic study of culture. Saussure’s starting-point is the need to define the
object of structural linguistics. For this reason, he draws a distinction between langue and
parole, between language as an internally related set of differentiated signs governed by
a system of rules (language as a structure) and language as used in speech or writing
(language as an accomplished fact of communication between human beings). Langue is,

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according to Saussure, the object which linguists should study for it is the focus of their
analyses and their principle of relevance.

Langue is the overall system or structure of a language (its words, syntax, rules,
conventions and meanings). It makes the use of language (parole) possible and is given or
taken for granted by any individual speaker. Langue allows people to produce speech and
writing, including words and phrases which may be completely new. This idea of langue
has proved influential because it makes it relatively easy to infer that all cultural systems,
such as myths, national cultures or ideologies, may be described and understood in the
same way.

Parole is defined and determined by langue. It is the use of language made possible by,
and deriving from, langue. Parole is the sum of the linguistic units involved in speaking
and writing. These cannot be studied in and of themselves as single and separate
historical items. Instead, they evidence about the underlying structure of langue. The aim
of linguistics is to use speaking and writing to reveal the underlying structure of the
language, the object of linguistics. The rules and relations of this structure can then be
used to account for the particular uses people make of their language. Linguistics,
therefore, involves the study of langue as a system or structure.

Structural linguistics aims to discover and scrutinise the system of grammatical rules
governing the construction of meaningful sentences. These rules are not usually apparent
to the users of the language who none the less can still utter or write meaningful
sentences. As Saussure himself argues: ‘In separating language from speaking, we are at
the same time separating: (1) what is social from what is individual; and (2) what is
essential from what is accessory and more or less accidental’ (1974:14). From a
sociological point of view it is absurd to regard speaking as an individual, non-social act.
But for structural linguistics and its subsequent followers, Saussure is distinguishing
between fundamental and contingent social and cultural structures, between those
structures which provide the explanation and those which need to be explained.

The second distinction Saussure introduces is that between the signifier and the signified,
According to Saussure, any linguistic sign, such as a word or phrase, can be broken down
into these two elements of which it is composed. It is a distinction which can only be
recognised analytically, not empirically, and is a function of langue rather than parole. It
accounts for the capacity of language to confer meaning, a feature which has made it
attractive for analysing cultural structures other than language (see, for example,
Barthes’s semiology below). For Saussure, the meaning of particular linguistic units is not
determined by an external material reality which imposes itself upon language. These
units do not have a direct referent in the external, material world. This world exists but
the meanings which are conferred upon it by language are determined by the meanings
inherent in language as an objective structure of rules and relations. The meanings
conferred by language arise from the differences between linguistic units which are
determined by the overall system of language.

The linguistic sign is made up of the signifier and the signified. Words such as ‘dog’ or ‘god’ do
not acquire their meaning from their equivalents in the world outside language but from the
way language contrasts them through its ordering of the letters. In the linguistic sign, the
signifier is the ‘sound image’, the word as it is spoken or written down, and the signified is the
concept of the object or idea which is being referred to by the sign. With the examples of
‘dog’ and ‘god’, the letters you see or the sounds you hear are the signifiers, and the

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object and idea evoked by these sounds and words are the signifieds. A letter change can
therefore give us an entirely different concept. Language confers meaning on both of the
examples through their linguistic differences and their place in the differentiated
categories of animals and supernatural beings.

Since the meanings of particular linguistic signs are not externally determined but derive
from their place in the overall relational structure of language, it follows that the
relationship between the signifier and signified is a purely arbitrary one. There is no
necessary reason as to why the notation ‘dog’ should refer to that specific animal nor
‘god’ to a supernatural deity. There is no intrinsic, natural or essential reason why a
particular concept should be linked with one sound image rather than another.
Therefore, it is not possible to understand individual linguistic signs in a piecemeal, ad
hoc or empiricist fashion. They have, rather, to be explained by showing how they fit
together as arbitrary signs in an internally coherent system or structure of rules and
conventions. These signs cease to be arbitrary and become meaningful once they are
located within the general structure of the language. They are only properly understood
when placed in this structure. This structure is what Saussure calls langue, and it is not
given but has to be reconstructed analytically.

These ideas are fundamental to the development of semiology as a way of studying

popular culture. However, the relationship between signifiers and signifieds is not
arbitrary in culture as it is in language. According to semiology and structuralism, there
are necessary factors linking conventions, codes and ideologies which ensure the
association of specific signifiers with specific signifieds.

Saussure argues that if languages are seen as systems, they can only be studied and
understood in relational terms. The same argument applies to cultures if they are seen as
systems. For structural linguistics, structuralism and semiology, meaning can only be
derived from a general objective structure of rules in which particular units are
differentiated from each other, and derive their meaningful character from their place in
this structure. This structure is not given empirically but has to be discovered and defined
in relational terms

Langue can be discovered and defined as a system, for Saussure, if the linguistic signs of
parole are studied, not as distinct, individual items, but as signs of the structure of
langue. There are two types of relationship within this system which Saussure considers
important: syntagmatic relationships between units in a linguistic sequence, say words
following each other in a sentence; and paradigmatic relationships between units which
might replace each other in a sequence, say substituting one word for another in a
sentence. To define any unit or sign in this manner is to specify its relation to other units
or signs which can be combined with it to form a sequence, or which are different from it
and can replace it in sequences. In either case, it is the relational character of the
structure which enables the unit or sign to acquire meaning. This helps explain why
structural linguistics has been influential because it suggests that other cultural systems
can be analysed in the way Saussure analyses language.

The final distinction Saussure makes is between synchronic and diachronic analysis. He
argues that if the task of linguistics is to reconstruct the langue which makes speech and
writing possible at any particular point in time, then synchronic analysis has to be kept
separate from diachronic analysis. Synchronic analysis refers to the study of structures or
systems at a particular point in time, while diachronic analysis involves the study of

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structures or systems over time. In Saussure’s linguistics, synchronic analysis entails the
reconstruction of the system of language as a relational whole which is distinguished from,
but not necessarily subordinated to, the diachronic study of the historical evolution and
structural changes of particular linguistic units and signs. To mix the two would undermine
the attempt to define the relational structure of a language. Language is seen as a system of
interrelated signs which are made meaningful by their place in the system rather than by their
place in history. Freezing the system assimilated by speakers and writers at one point in time
allows its structural and relational character to be clearly identified without being obscured
by contingent and incidental historical circumstances. Saussure seems to suggest that the
structure of langue can be more easily established if synchronic and diachronic analyses are
kept separate. But he has been criticised, as have structuralism and semiology, for
emphasising synchronic analysis and neglecting historical and social change.

Saussure regards linguistics as a sub-branch of semiology. He suggests that semiology is a

science which studies the life of signs within society, shows what they are composed of,
and discovers the laws which govern them. Language can be studied as a semiological
system of signs which make communication possible and meaningful. It can be clarified
further by being compared with other systems of signs. Structural linguistics is one of the
first stages in the development of semiology. In making his case, Saussure laid the
foundations for later attempts to use structuralism and semiology to study other systems
such as popular culture.

(Source: Strinati, D. (2004). An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture Second Edition.

NEW YORK: Routledge)

Marx and ideology

Karl Marx (1818–1883) does not appear to have clearly defined ideology, any more than
he clearly defined social class. He, in fact, appears to have had different views on ideology
as his thoughts progressed and changed. One of these views is based on the theory of
commodity fetishism, already outlined in the chapter on the Frankfurt School. The first
approach to be considered here argues that the dominant ideas in any society are those
which are drawn up, distributed and imposed by the ruling class to secure and perpetuate
its rule.

In one of his earliest discussions of ideology (in The German Ideology, originally published
in 1845/46), Marx argued that ‘the ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling
ideas: i.e. the class, which is the dominant material force in society, is at the same time its
dominant intellectual force’. This is because ‘the class which has the means of material
production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental
production.’ As a result, ‘the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are,
in general, subject to’ the ruling ideas, while ‘the individuals composing the ruling class…
rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution
of the ideas of their age. Consequently their ideas are the ruling ideas of the age’
(1963:93).

This clearly suggests that the predominant ideas common to a capitalist society, including its
popular culture, are those of the ruling class. They are produced and spread by the ruling class
or its intellectual representatives, and they dominate the consciousness and actions of those
classes outside the ruling class. Whatever other ideas the latter may have, it is the

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ideas of the ruling class which are the ruling ideas, although they may not be the only
ideas in circulation. It is also suggested that if the working class is to oppose the ruling
capitalist class successfully it must develop its own ideas and its own means of producing
and distributing them. This will enable it to struggle with and combat the ideas of the
ruling class, an idea consistent with the concept of hegemony.

This perspective on ideology stresses the role of human agency and struggle. The ruling
class constructs and circulates ideas which secure its power because they dominate the
minds of the working class. However, the material conditions of exploitation and
oppression experienced by the working class make it oppose and struggle against the
ruling class by producing its own ideas, together with its own industrial and political
organisations. Therefore a dominant ideology, the ideology of the ruling class, enables
the ruling class to rule by controlling this emergent consciousness of the working class
and other groups who are outside the ruling class but who are subject to its ideas.

Murdock and Golding attempt to adapt Marx’s view of ideology for a political economy
approach to the analysis of the mass media (1977). They argue that Marx’s statement in
The German Ideology entails three empirical propositions which they argue can be
successfully validated: that the production and distribution of ideas is concentrated in the
hands of the capitalist owners of the means of production; that therefore their ideas
receive much greater prominence and hence dominate the thoughts of subordinate
groups; and that this ideological domination serves to maintain the prevailing system of
class inequalities which benefits the ruling class and exploits the subordinate classes.

However, apart from the theory of commodity fetishism, Marx appears to have had a further
and more deterministic theory about the place of ideology in the structure of capitalist
societies. This is commonly known as the base— superstructure model. The base of a society
is its mode of material production, the economic system by which it reproduces itself, and the
source of exploitative class relations. It determines the superstructure of a society, its political
and ideological institutions, the social relations and sets of ideas that lie outside the base such
as the family, the state, religion, education and culture.

As Marx explains:

In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are
indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a
definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The totality of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on
which legal and political superstructures arise and to which definite forms of social
consciousness correspond. The mode of production of material life determines the general
character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of
men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their
consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production
come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or…with the property relations
within which they had been at work before.… Then occurs a period of social revolution.
With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more
or less rapidly transformed…the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophical—in
short, ideological—forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
(1963:67–68; originally published 1859)

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Despite differences between this perspective on ideology and that offered in The German
Ideology, Murdock and Golding incorporate it into their conception of a political economy
of the mass media. Since Marx offers this statement as an outline of a political economy
of civil society, it can be taken to include the modern media. Murdock and Golding
combine Marx’s ruling ideas and base—superstructure models of ideology. In referring to
the passage just cited, they argue:

Marx is concerned to emphasize the fact that the system of class control over the
production and distribution outlined in The German Ideology is itself embedded in and
conditioned by the fundamental dynamics underpinning the capitalist economy. Hence,
an adequate analysis of cultural production needs to examine not only the class base of
control, but also the general economic context within which this control is exercised.
(1977:16)

They take the view that Marx is not an economic determinist. They suggest, first, that his
sense of causation is not rigidly deterministic but one ‘of setting limits, exerting pressures
and closing off options’, allowing for autonomy within the general limits set by ‘the
economic relations of capitalism’. Second, they argue that for Marx the relation between
the base and superstructure is a dynamic one, necessitating concrete and historical
analyses of capitalism (ibid.: 16–17)

However, these points may themselves be questioned. To say the relation between base
and superstructure is dynamic does not prevent it from being defined in rigid and
deterministic terms: the dynamic is continually determined by the economic base. Also, if
the historical nature of capitalism cannot be theorised in advance of its concrete
examination, how can we know that cultural autonomy must always be limited by the
economic base? Equally, how can the base— superstructure distinction be accepted in
advance of historical research?

As Murdock and Golding note, there is clear evidence that Marx may not have wished to
put forward an overdeterministic view of the relation between the economic base of
societies and their political and ideological superstructures. Compare the above
statement from Marx, for example, with this one taken from the third volume of Capital:

The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the direct
producers, determines the relation of domination and servitude, as it emerges directly out of
production itself and in turn reacts upon production. … It is always the direct relation
between the masters of the conditions of production and he direct producers which reveals
the innermost secret, the hidden foundation of the entire social edifice.… This does not
prevent an economic basis, which in its principal characteristics is the same, from
manifesting infinite variations and gradations, owing to the effect of innumerable
external circumstances, climatic and geographical influences, racial peculiarities,
historical influences from the outside, etc. These variations can only be discovered by
analysing these empirically given circumstances. (1963:113)

This passage clearly adds substance to Murdock and Golding’s interpretation of Marx’s
theory, but it also indicates some of the difficulties it confronts. It argues that the economic
relations of capitalism determine the other social relations to be found in these societies.
They provide the foundations or the base for the rest of society. Yet innumerable, incidental
and small-scale influences can give rise to ‘infinite variations and gradations’

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while economic relations remain the same. This questions the rigour of the base—
superstructure model. The superstructure, assuming it includes ‘innumerable, external
circumstances’, is now argued to be subject to infinite variations which do not derive
from the base. The last statement cited is not even talking about ‘autonomy within
limits’, since the possibilities for superstructural variations with the same economic base
are seemingly infinite.

The base—superstructure model argues that the limits set by the base must affect and
constrain the superstructure it gives rise to. This means that superstructural variations
must be limited and finite, otherwise why argue that they are determined by the
economic base? However, this defence demands rather than denies economic
determinism. If the economic base does not determine the superstructure then what
significance can the distinction have? Even if the relationship is defined by the limits the
economic base sets upon the superstructure, how can the same economic base be
associated with innumerable and infinite variations in the superstructure? This argument
must seriously undermine the theory’s explanatory power.

This is probably one of Marxism’s fundamental problems. On the one hand, it can adopt
an economic determinist position with all the difficulties this entails. On the other hand, it
can claim that the economic base sets limits to the superstructure; or it can even suggest
that there is ‘reciprocal interaction’ between the two. The problem with the latter two
responses is that they do not really need the ideas of base and superstructure, and tend
to rob Marxism of its theoretical distinctiveness in this area (cf. Williams 1977:80).

(Source: Strinati, D. (2004). An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture Second Edition.

NEW YORK: Routledge)

Postmodernism

There are a number of points—those most heavily stressed in the literature—which can
be used to define postmodernism.7 This definition is something of a composite picture,
but it is accurate enough for this chapter.

Culture and society First, the argument is that postmodernism describes the emergence of a
society in which the mass media and popular culture are the most important and powerful
institutions, and control and shape all other types of social relationships. Popular cultural
signs and media images increasingly dominate our sense of reality, and the way we define
ourselves and the world around us. Postmodern theory is an attempt to understand a media-
saturated society. For example, the mass media were once thought to hold a mirror up to a
wider social reality, and thereby reflect it. Now reality can only be defined by the surface
reflections of this mirror. Society has become subsumed Within the mass media. It is no
longer even a question of the media distorting reality, since this implies there is a reality,
outside the surface simulations of the media, which can be distorted; and this is precisely
what is at issue according to postmodern theory.

In a way, this idea comes from one of the directions taken by media and cultural theory.
To put it simply, the liberal view argued that the media held up a mirror to, and thereby
reflected in a fairly accurate manner, a wider social reality. The radical rejoinder to this
insisted that this mirror distorted rather than reflected reality. Subsequently, a more
abstract and conceptual media and cultural theory suggested that the media played some

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part in constructing our sense of social reality, and our sense of being a part of this reality
(Curran et al. 1982; Bennett 1982). It is a relatively short step from this (and one which
need not be taken) to the proposition that only the media can constitute our sense of
reality. To return to the original metaphor, it is claimed that this mirror is now the only
reality we have.

An aspect of this is the idea that in the postmodern condition it becomes more difficult to
distinguish the economy from popular culture. Consumption—what we buy and what
determines what we buy—is increasingly influenced by popular culture because popular
culture increasingly determines consumption. For example, we watch more films because
of the extended ownership of VCRs, while advertising, which makes increasing use of
popular cultural references, plays a more important role in deciding what we will buy.

(Source: Strinati, D. (2004). An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture Second Edition.

NEW YORK: Routledge)

C. EXPLAIN
Learning Activity 3. Express yourself!

Instructions: Check your understanding on the following points by answering

the questions below. Discuss your answers in 5-8 sentences. A rubric for
scoring is presented below.

1. Why is it significant for you to study different perspective of Popular Culture?

A cultural perspective takes a view of a situation or idea through the eyes of the
native environmental and social influence of a person. It is the effect of a culture
and community upon the worldview and viewpoint of an individual. In the social
sciences, this is an essential concept because it is important to understand how an
person or community may interpret something based on the cultural and societal
norms they are used to.

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2. Choose one among the different perspectives of popular culture and
explain how does it influence our society.
Postmodernism is an approach that attempts to define how society has
progressed to an era beyond modernity. Within this era individuals are more
likely to have a greater importance placed on science and rational thought as
traditional metanarratives no longer provide a reasonable explanation for
postmodern life. In addition, a postmodern society traditionally will have
experienced globalization which means new religions will be integrated into
society. Therefore, society will be more likely to experience a ‘pick and mix’
culture when deciding a religion as individuals will choose a religion that best
suits their lifestyle and choices

Scoring Rubric. Your composition will be rated as follows:

5 3 1
Content There is one Thesis is clear Vague or unclear
clear, well- but supporting thesis;
focused thesis; information is Supporting
Supporting general; details are a
arguments Supporting seemingly
relate to main details are random
claim and are relevant, but collection of
well organized. one or more key information,
issues is unclear, or not
unsupported related to the
topic.
Organization Details are in Details are in Poor, hard-to-
logical order. logical order, but follow
may be organization.
presented in less
interesting ways.
Grammar and No errors in Occasional Frequent errors
Mechanics spelling, errors in of spelling,
punctuation, spelling, punctuation,
capitalization, punctuation, capitalization,
sentence capitalization, sentence
structure and sentence structure and
grammar. structure and grammar;
grammar, but meaning
meaning is not confused or
obscured. obscured.

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 D. ELABORATE
Learning Activity 4. Let’s Sum it Up!

Instructions: Answer the question below. Discuss your answer in 5 to 10 sentences.

1.Out of all the perspectives mentioned and discussed, what do you think is
the most relevant nowadays? Why? Why not?

For my own opinion the perspective that is still relevant nowadays is the
Structuralism for It’s still relevant because we mostly used it in academics and for
education an example of structuralism is describing an apple. An apple is crisp,
sweet, juicy, round, and hard. Another example of structuralism is describing your
experience at the ocean by saying it is windy, salty, and cold, but rejuvenating.
Similarly, what is a criticism of structuralism? The main critique of structuralism
was its focus on introspection as the method by which to gain an understanding of
conscious experience. Critics argue that self-analysis was not feasible, Since
introspective students cannot appreciate the processes or mechanisms of their
own mental processes. And also we tend to explain things with a differ meaning or
other explanations which conveniently provide such information. By today’s
scientific standards, the experimental methods used to study the structures of the
mind were too subjective—the use of introspection led to a lack of reliability in
results. Other critics argue that structuralism was too concerned with internal
behavior, which is not directly observable and cannot be accurately measured.
However, these critiques do not mean that structuralism lacked significance.
Structuralism is important because it is the first major school of thought in
psychology. The structuralist school also influenced the development of
experimental psychology.

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 E. EVALUATE

Learning Activity 4. What’s in your mind?

Instructions: Based on the discussion above, choose one perspective of

popular culture, cite your own example, and analyze how did it influence
your own culture. Your composition will be rated as follows:

5 3 1
Content There is one clear, Thesis is clear but Vague or unclear
well-focused thesis; supporting thesis; Supporting
Supporting information is details are a
arguments relate to general; Supporting seemingly random
main claim and are details are relevant, collection of
well organized. but one or more key information,
issues is unclear, or not
unsupported related to the topic.
Organization Details are in logical Details are in logical Poor, hard-to-follow
order. order, but may be organization.
presented in less
interesting ways.
Grammar and No errors in spelling, Occasional errors in Frequent errors of
Mechanics punctuation, spelling, spelling,
capitalization, punctuation, punctuation,
sentence structure capitalization, capitalization,
and grammar. sentence structure sentence structure
and grammar, but and grammar;
meaning is not meaning confused
obscured. or obscured.

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