125010 PS Proseminar Cultural and Media Studies (2015W)

In this course we will focus on a detailed discussion of the concepts of ideology and hegemony as outlined in theories of Gramsci and Foucault. On this basis students will gain a sound understanding of theories on the negotiation of power and the push-and-pull over meanings among all classes of society.
Tracing relations between counter-hegemonic forces and subcultures and debates on resistance to pre-defined subject-positioning (e.g. Foucault:power as productive;docile bodies; Althusser: always-already-subjects), we will consider how we are to define the notion of sub-culture/s within a theoretical negotiation of culture and cultural hegemony. Is it a term indicating a relation to be thought as hierarchically put beneath(?), positioned within (?), opposed to (?) dominant culture/s? How do subcultures come into being and what are their cultural histories and social practices? Why do cultural studies embrace the term counter-culture?
We will consider a range of theoretical approaches which will shed some interesting light on the theoretical twilight-zone which sub/counter-cultures pose while, at the same time, appearing as flamboyant spaces of/for outsiders. The course's overall paradigm will be Hebdige's notion that subculture is "...a declaration of independence, of Otherness, of alien intent, a refusal of anonymity of subordinate status. It is an Insubordination. And at the same time, it is also a confirmation of the fact of powerlessness, a celebration of impotence."
Based on a discussion of the Foucaultian and poststructuralist background of Hebidge's concept, we will encounter a variety of sub/counter-cultures and analyze in detail how they react to and/or interact with diverse master-discourses of dominant cultures. Our focus will be put on four major perspectives on hegemonic master-discourses and the counter-cultural responses to these - we will examine how dialectical and/or fluid the boundaries are between them:

(1) Cultural (-patriarchal) significations of the body, gender & frames of sexual identity:
Patti Smith: "Outside is Society - Rock'n'Roll Nigger" (1978)
Club-culture, drag-balls etc: drag performance & cultural repudiation

(2) Theorisations of youth-movements and subcultural music & style-communities as formations against political/moral/ethnical cultural dogma; historical influences, bricolage, and intertextuality; production & consumption in mainstreaming
Here are some of the numerous examples for analysis:
The Beats (Ginsberg "Howl" (1955)); influences on the Hippie-movement
Punk: DIY-Culture, radical anarchy, provocation and the commercialisation of the Unpleasant
Gothic: rebellion and cultural melancholia - Romanticist influences on the 1980s Gothic/Indie movement
Goa/Psytrance/Rave: transgression and oneness - Hippie influences on the 1990s formations of global tribes and a "social divine"
HipHop & Rap: transcoding of racial identity
Postcolonial identities and subculture
Visual Kei

(3) Subversive re-inscriptions of public and private spaces:
graffiti-activism and social figurations of tattoo-subculture

(4) Fans, networks, pirates, zines: considerations of a "global underground"

In the respective units we will be concerned with theoretical approaches as well as practical application & analysis.