The intellectual roots of Cultural Studies MARXISM POST MODERNISM IDENTITY QUESTION IDEAS

1. The Intellectual Roots
of
C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S
Dr. A. Gangatharan
Department of History
Banaras Hindu University
gangatharan33@gmail.com

2. • Cultural studies as a discipline slowly emerged after 2nd World War in
Britain and gained momentum over the period with the result of
changing world conditions.
• Richard Hoggart is considered to be the pioneering scholar of the
cultural studies as a discipline.
• He was responsible in starting the Centre for Cultural Studies in the
University of Birmingham in 1964

3. • Stuart Hall gave a much needed fillip to the development of Cultural
Studies.
• He joined with Hoggart in 1968 at Birmingham and advanced the cause
of cultural studies through his intellectual input.
• As a scholar from Jamaica he carried along with him a range of cultural
influence to give new dimension to the study by incorporating
multicultural trends and world views.

4. • The cultural studies began to grow by leaps and bounds in the 1970s
and it moved slowly from Britain to Australia, America and North
European countries.
• Now it has almost covered the entire planet under the rubric of
Cultural Studies/Translation Studies/ Cross Cultural Analysis/ Queer
Theory and /Gender Studies.
• In due course of time number of journals and periodicals were
launched to advance the cause of cultural studies in many major
languages.

5. • International Journal Of Cultural Studies, Popular Culture, Journal of
American Cultural Studies And The Journal of European Cultural
Studies are some of the leading international journals that continue
to sustain and carry out research activities in this field.
..Continued

6. • The cultural studies also has its own critiques who constantly
underscore its intellectual inviability on account of its poor
grounding in theory and research amd intellectual thought.
• Alan Sokal calls the cultural studies as a fashionable non-sense.
• Pierre Bourdieu enumerates cultural studies as a discipline without
substance and intellectual rigour.
• Most of the Marxist scholars ignore the uniqueness of cultural studies
since they try to locate these developments under the rubric of base
super structure continuum.

7. • Culture and cultural studies are two different phenomena that must
be understood at the outset.
• Culture, as E.B. Tylor argues that it is "that complex whole which
includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.“
• Cultural studies is a field of theoretically, politically, and empirically
engaged cultural analysis that concentrates upon the political
dynamics of contemporary culture, its historical foundations,
defining traits, and conflicts

8. • The main focus of our lecture is to throw light on the intellectual
background to the emergence of cultural studies.
• In this context our focus would be more of the ideas of intellectuals
rather than engendering ideologies
• A host of scholars may be sighted as the proponents of cultural
studies.
• The following scholars are chosen to highlight the different
dimensions of culture and cultural studies along with the champions
and its critiques.

9. Research Supervisor Research Scholar
Dr. Padmini Ravindra Nath
Professor of Economics,
MMV, Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Pramod Kumar Yadav
Doctoral Fellow,
Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
•T he political history of the Deccan of the Satavahanas
• The history of Vaishnavism
Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar (1837 –1925)

10. Research Supervisor Research Scholar
Dr. Padmini Ravindra Nath
Professor of Economics,
MMV, Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Pramod Kumar Yadav
Doctoral Fellow,
Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
 Indian Shipping: A History of Seaborne Trade and Maritime
Activity of the Indians from the Earliest Times
1884–1964
Radha Kumud Mukherjee

11. Research Supervisor Research Scholar
Dr. Padmini Ravindra Nath
Professor of Economics,
MMV, Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Pramod Kumar Yadav
Doctoral Fellow,
Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Antonio Francesco Gramsci (1891 – 1937)
• Prison Notebooks

12. Research Supervisor Research Scholar
Dr. Padmini Ravindra Nath
Professor of Economics,
MMV, Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Pramod Kumar Yadav
Doctoral Fellow,
Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Theodor W. Adorno (1903 – 1969)
• Culture industry
• Dialectic of Enlightenment

13. Research Supervisor Research Scholar
Dr. Padmini Ravindra Nath
Professor of Economics,
MMV, Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Pramod Kumar Yadav
Doctoral Fellow,
Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Raymond Henry Williams (1921 –1988)
• Culture
• Culture and society
• Marxism and literature

14. Research Supervisor Research Scholar
Dr. Padmini Ravindra Nath
Professor of Economics,
MMV, Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Pramod Kumar Yadav
Doctoral Fellow,
Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Clifford James Geert z (1926- 2006)
• Interpretation of cultures
• Religion as a cultural system

15. Stuart McPhail Hall (1932 –2014)
• The Hippiies and the American Movement
• Situating Marx

16. Edward Wadie Said (1935 – 2003)
• Orientalism
• Culture and imperialism

17. Research Supervisor Research Scholar
Dr. Padmini Ravindra Nath
Professor of Economics,
MMV, Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Pramod Kumar Yadav
Doctoral Fellow,
Dept. of Economics,
BHU, Varanasi-221005
Terry Eagleton ( born 1943
• After Theory

18. Thank you