English 3150 Critical Theory Today Ch. 9

Question 1

Marxism

Answer 1

Attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our experi- ence.

Question 2

Feminism

Answer 2

Attempts to reveal the ways in which patriarchal gender roles are the ultimate source of our experience.

Question 3

Psychoanalysis

Answer 3

Attempts to reveal the ways in which repressed psychological conflicts are the ultimate source of our experience.

Question 4

Structuralism

Answer 4

Attempts to reveal the simple structural systems that make possible our understanding of an otherwise chaotic world.

Question 5

Reader-Response

Answer 5

Attempts to reveal the operations whereby readers create the texts they read.

Question 6

Questions of New Historicists

Answer 6

“How has the event been inter- preted?” and “What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?”

Question 7

New Historicists

Answer 7

Argue that reliable interpretations are, for a number of reasons, difficult to produce. Don’t believe we have clear access to any but the most basic facts of history.

Question 8

Impossibility of objective analysis

Answer 8

Historians may believe they’re being objective, but their own views of what is right and wrong, what is civilized and uncivilized, what is important and unimportant, and the like, will strongly influence the ways in which they interpret events.

Question 9

Event

Answer 9

Product of its culture, but it also affects that culture in return.

Question 10

Subjectivity

Answer 10

Selfhood, is shaped by and shapes the culture into which we were born. A lifelong process of negotiating our way, consciously and unconsciously, among the constraints and freedoms offered at any given moment in time by the society in which we live.

Question 11

Power

Answer 11

Does not emanate only from the top of the political and socioeconomic structure. power circulates in all directions, to and from all social levels, at all times. And the vehicle by which power circulates is a never-ending proliferation of exchange: (1) the exchange of material goods (2) the exchange of people;and (3) the exchange of ideas.

Question 12

Discourse

Answer 12

A social language created by particular cultural conditions at a par- ticular time and place, and it expresses a particular way of understanding human experience. Discourse draws attention to the role of language as the vehicle of ideology

Question 13

Historical Analysis

Answer 13

(1) cannot be objective, (2) cannot adequately dem- onstrate that a particular spirit of the times or world view accounts for the complexities of any given culture, and (3) cannot adequately demonstrate that history is linear, causal, or progressive.

Question 14

Issues that new Historicism considers important

Answer 14

How ideology operates in the formation of personal and group identity, how a culture’s perception of itself influences its political, legal, and social policies and customs, and how power circulates in a given culture.

Question 15

Think Description

Answer 15

Not a search for facts but a search for meanings, and as the examples of cultural productions listed above illustrate, thick description focuses on the personal side of history.

Question 16

History

Answer 16

A matter of interpretations, not facts. Not linear nor progressive.

Question 17

Personal Identity

Answer 17

Like historical events, texts, and artifacts—is shaped by and shapes the culture in which it emerges.

Question 18

Cultural Criticism

Answer 18

Shares with new historicism the view that human history and culture constitute a complex arena of dynamic forces of which we can construct only a partial, subjective picture.

Question 19

Culture

Answer 19

Process, not a product; it is a lived experience, not a fixed definition.

Question 20

Distinctions of Cultural Criticism from New Historicism

Answer 20

1. Cultural criticism tends to be more overtly political in its support of oppressed groups.
2. Because of its political orientation, cultural criticism often draws on Marx- ist, feminist, and other political theories in performing its analyses.
3. Cultural criticism, in the narrower sense of the term, is especially inter- ested in popular culture.