Re: Where to study Material Culture?
Gordon Fitch (gcf@panix.com)
15 Jul 1995 20:03:16 -0400
gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >If pop culture is studied in the university, is it still
| >pop culture? At first, yes, of course, because, unaware,
| >it can still be distinguished from some other kind of
| >culture. But eventually the mirrors leak out of the towers
| >and everything finds itself reflected. What then? Doesn't
| >pop culture at least have to put on some quotation marks?
rshields@superior.carleton.ca (Rob Shields):
| So fortunately, one doesn't study popular culture IN a university but
| in case histories...
That's an interesting advance in self-referentiality. One
gets _inside_ a case study -- presumably the one one is
studying. Well, it's certainly postmodern.
| Very interesting that cultural studies wasn't
| mentioned as a venue for intersts in 'material culture'. Depends on
| whether one wants to study 'culture' critically or merely celebrate
| it, I guess.
Mere celebration seems like a recent thing to me, the Elvis
Presley and Marilyn Monroe postage stamps. Has it been
going on in universities? Speaking of pop here, of course.
Actually, it seems to me that mere celebration is a sign
that the culture is dead, a closed case you can't get in any
more. No one thinks of critiquing Tutankhamen's stuff the
way they critique the latest movies. So -- what died so
that Elvis Presley could be on a postage stamp? Maybe this
has something to do with my orphaned question.
--
}"{ Gordon Fitch }"{ gcf@panix.com }"{
|