This document summarizes the theories of several postmodern theorists: - Barthes explored semiotics and how meaning is interpreted based on audience experience and culture, allowing for multiple meanings. - Hall examined how audiences can have hegemonic, negotiated, or oppositional readings of texts based on their relationship to the producer. - Jameson argued that postmodernity has lost connection to the past and focuses on exaggerated replicas and entertainment over meaning. - Foucault discussed panopticism and how society is structured to encourage constant surveillance and watching of others. - Denzin analyzed how postmodernity blurs past and present, uses blunt statements, and presents the unpresentable through sexuality and violence.

1. The Last Theorists!
Bathes
Hall
Jameson
Foucault
Denzin

2. Bathes –Semiotics
• The study of signs and symbols (denotative
and connotative)
• Bathes argues that the interpretation of
meaning lies with the audience and depends
on the experiences, interests, beliefs and
culture they bring with them (multiple
meanings)

8. Hall
• Hall again focuses on the audience and the
different reading they can make of a text
• But in this case individuality is downplayed
and it is more about the relationship between
the audience and the producer/institution
making the text
• The Producer will have in mind a way in which
they want their text to be read and we as an
audience can either accept or reject that
reading

9. Hall
• Hegemonic Reading
– Reader accepts and reproduces the preferred
meanings of the text (as set by the ‘institution’)
• Negotiated Reading
– Reader broadly accepts the preferred reading but
resists or modifies elements
• Oppositional Reading
– Reader understands the preferred reading but
rejects it

10. Hall
Reading FOTC Catfish Lady Gaga
Hegemonic
Negotiated
Oppositional

11. Jameson
• Pomo for Jameson is all about the modern day and
how it has lost connects to the past.
• In regards to ‘reality’ Jameson argues that we make no
effort to get to know the ‘real’ but instead like and get
to know the exaggerated replicas of people (simulacra
– Hyperreality)
– Less on concern about the past
– The entertainment value is more important than historical
accuracy/ meaning eg Music Vidoes
– ‘Historical deafness’
– We live in the here and now (instantaneous)
– Depthlessness: there is not deep thought/meaning/
ideology anymore

12. Jameson

13. Foucault
• Panopticalisation – gaining power through
watching
• We live in a society where we are always being
watched and want to be watched
• We like watching other people

14. Foucault
The
Guardian

15. Denzin (1988)
• Past and present boundaries are blurred
• Blunt statements about social climate
• Unreal is real
• Present the unpresentable
• Sexuality/violence as a tool for freedom
• 2 categories of women – red and white
• Remnants of the past used to signify safe and
unsafe.