Marxism and Cultural Studies

As mentioned in your syllabus, each group is responsible for doing one in-class presentation designed to introduce us to that day’s reading and to guide our discussion of that reading. Your group assignments were made somewhat randomly (aside from attempting to create a kind of balance in the groups), and the group numbers were assigned purely alphabetically. Presentation dates have been assigned in group-number order, and thus, totally randomly. If these dates are absolutely impossible, you should let me know immediately.
Each member of each group should be responsible for part of the presentation; how you divide up that work is up to you, but everyone should speak. What the presentation looks like is likewise entirely up to you. The presentation should, however, take NO MORE THAN 15 minutes, and should lead into a well-facilitated and energetic discussion. We’ll spend some time this afternoon discussing how that might best be accomplished.
For now, presentation dates are as follows:
Group 1: October 20
Group 2: October 25
Group 3: November 1
Group 4: November 3
Group 5: November 15
Group 6: November 22
Group 7: November 29

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory” (1973)
Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977): section II, “Cultural Theory”
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms” (1980)
Stuart Hall, “Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the Post-Structuralist Debates” (1985)

For this second stage of the term paper assignment, you need to do some preliminary research. On Monday, October 4, you will turn in to me a bibliography listing at least ten secondary sources that you intend to consult in the process of working on your term paper. These sources should include critical books and articles on (or related to) the topic you intend to pursue, and should be scholarly in nature (meaning you need to pay attention to the provenance of these sources, ensuring that they’re well-researched and authoritative; stuff grabbed off the internet may not suffice). These sources should not include class readings, though of course you’ll want to use class readings as sources in the term paper itself. Each entry in the bibliography should be followed by a one-sentence description of what the source is, and why you think it might be important to your research.

Antonio Gramsci, selections from The Prison Notebooks (1929-35, 1949)
Chantal Mouffe, “Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci” (1979)
Stuart Hall, “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity” (1986)
Term paper, stage two: Preliminary bibliography due

I want you to begin today — and I know this will come as a shock — in your small groups. Spend about 20 minutes discussing the two essays by Althusser that you read for today; what are the major points that you should glean from each? What concepts or ideas that we’ve encountered earlier in the semester do these essays make use of? Where do you need clarification on the essays’ arguments?
Each group should come back with at least one answer to each of the following questions:

• How does the Althusserian position seem to deviate from the ideas about social structure that we’ve encountered in previous authors?
• In what ways do the positions staked out by the two essays seem to differ?

After 20 minutes, we’ll come back together for a larger discussion.

Louis Althusser, “Contradiction and Overdetermination: Notes for an Investigation” (1962)
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)” (1969)

For this first stage of the term paper assignment, please write 250 to 500 words about the topic that you think you’ll want to work on this semester. The term paper assignment asks that you use your deep understanding of Marxist cultural theory to do a careful, thorough, interesting analysis of some media text or phenomenon; in your preliminary project proposal, you should give me a sense of what media object you’d like to explore, what questions you have about that object, and how you expect Marxist cultural theory will help you in this analysis.

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1939)
Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (1944)
Term paper, stage one: Preliminary project proposal due

Last time, we began a jigsaw reading project; each of you read one of four essays, the readers of each essay spent 20 minutes talking together, and then each of you returned to your small groups to present your essay. Some of you were absent on Monday; you are still responsible to your group for providing them with insight into your essay.
For today, everyone should have read the selections from Capital and one other essay. Please break into discussion groups, and spend 20 minutes re-discussing the essays. Having read more now, do the arguments begin to make more sense to you? Where do you begin to sense connections between the four essays? Try to articulate the concepts that bind the essays together.
Each group should return to the whole with a concept that connects the essays, and any concepts that need further explaining.