Politics and Culture Flashcards
What did Bell Hooks argue in terms of our view of politics?
She argued against conventional politics - political markers and structures - with addressing identity and power in cultural studies
True or False:
Power shapes identities and interpetation
True - shapes how we understand gender, race, sex, class and age
How does cultural studies view our sense of identity?
As a product of our social and cultural environment/circumstances.
What are our identities subject to if they are of our culture?
Power relations that are embedded in meaning making thus in various societies some identities are favoured over others.
What is the aim of identity politics?
To questioning of traditionally favoured identities in order to create a society more inclusive of diversity
What is queer theory?
An example of identity politics challenging the binary assumptions promoting gender and sexuality in relation to our identity.
Who said, “We perform masculinity and femininity, homosexuality and heterosexuality according to pre-set cultural conventions.”
Judith Butler
In the modern individual, what is ‘identity’ used to describe?
The consciousness of self - with self being autonomous and self-critical
What are Hegel’s 3 characteristics of modern subjectivity?
- Individualism
- Right to criticism
- Autonomy of action
Complete the statement:
Identity is not (a)_______ it continuously (b)_______.
a.) fixed
b.) evolves
Complete the statement:
We must have a proper sense of our (a)_________, (b)__________ it in the present and (c)__________ it in the future.
a.) past identity
b.) sustain
c.) remake
What do the terms ‘colonialism’, ‘imperialism’, ‘neocolonialism’ and ‘post-colonialism’ refer to?
The history of colonialism
Define imperialism
Domination of one society by another - the sphere of control exercised on other parts of the world
Define colonialism
The direct control by settlement and military subjugation
Define neocolonialism
Period after decolonisation focusing on continuing control of independent countries normally referred to as ‘third world’ countries:
- Military
- Political and economic means despite their independence
Name the leaders that the post-colonial theory orignated from?
- Frantz Fanon
- Amil Cabral
- C.L.R James
What is the post colonial theory an umbrella term for?
1.) Imperial cultures
2.) Cultures of resistance that opposed imperialism
3.) Cultures of decolonialised states
4.) Relationship between first world and third world countries
What is Orientalism?
It identifies colonial discourse that denied and misrepresented Eastern and Arabic culture.
Other than orientalism, what other two theories are used to analyse imperial cultures
- Poststructuralism
- Psychoanalysis
Who does the term ‘subaltern’ refer to?
Marginalised and displaced people, especially those in a lower social classes who are subject to the power of the dominant class.
What has Gayatri Spivak questioned about subaltern representation?
Whether it is possible to accurately find the voice of the subaltern when that voice is spoken from the Western metropolitan culture
What does Homi Bhabha say regrading racial stereotyping in psychoanalytic theory?
The need to repeat racial insults illustrates ambivalence in the mind of the coloniser - the need to maintain and assert the relationship of dominance
How has politics extended its definition?
It accommodates social and cultural relations:
- Queer politics
- Trans politics
- Politics of identity
Evoking social change and rise of new social movements
