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Introduction: Selling Authenticity

Elizabeth Outka

in Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodified Authentic

This chapter introduces the concept of the “commodified authentic” and the nostalgic, originary, and aesthetic forms of such marketing, examining the explosive growth of efforts to sell these various ... More

This chapter introduces the concept of the “commodified authentic” and the nostalgic, originary, and aesthetic forms of such marketing, examining the explosive growth of efforts to sell these various forms in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. The chapter traces the interdisciplinary expressions of the commodified authentic and explores how such a strategy eased for consumers the abrupt transition from the Victorian age to the modern era. The chapter further analyzes the importance of the commodified authentic in the history of modernity and for the development of literary modernism. Tracing some of the central debates in modernist criticism—such Huyssen’s concept of “the great divide,” and the relations between modernism and material culture—the chapter argues that the commodified authentic offers a new way to explore two critical but missing parts of the equation: how commercial ventures in fact deployed and dismantled the vexed relationship between high and low culture, and how literary modernism developed not through a reliance on the great divide or its dismantling but on the uneasy movement between the two impulses, a movement intimately connected to the paradoxical impulse to construct authenticity. The chapter concludes with a detailed summary of the chapters that follow.Less

High Culture, Religious Culture, and Ethnicity

HUGH M. THOMAS

in The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066-c.1220

Castles and cathedrals are important heritage sites in England and Britain, with the Tower of London, the origins of which date to William the Conqueror's attempts to secure the Norman conquest, as a ... More

Castles and cathedrals are important heritage sites in England and Britain, with the Tower of London, the origins of which date to William the Conqueror's attempts to secure the Norman conquest, as a prime example. In general, past cultural achievements are celebrated as important sources for national identity. At the same time, the continuing production of high culture is considered important to national pride. This chapter examines whether cultural achievements played a similar role in English or Norman pride and identity after the Norman conquest. First, it provides a brief and necessarily oversimplified account of the cultural interaction between English and Normans in several important cultural arenas. The Anglo-Norman period was a crucial one not only for the emergence of high culture, but also of religious culture.Less

The Finishing Touches

Edwin L. Battistella

in Do You Make These Mistakes in English?: The Story of Sherwin Cody's Famous Language School

Chapter Seven takes up Cody's advice on literature and book culture, connecting these to early 20th century self‐improvement views.

Culture, Education, and Values

Anthony Quinton

in Of Men and Manners: Essays Historical and Philosophical

This chapter begins by considering the relations between culture, education, and values in general, to draw attention to what is at issue, which is, briefly, not culture in its most inclusive sense, ... More

This chapter begins by considering the relations between culture, education, and values in general, to draw attention to what is at issue, which is, briefly, not culture in its most inclusive sense, but high culture. It then puts our present situation in some sort of comparative context by outlining an extremely short and selective history of education. Education is the transmitter of culture and the inculcation of values is at the centre of education. Traditionally, high culture, as embodied in the canon and the more theoretical academic disciplines and made possible by developed linguistic capacity, has been assumed to be the supremely valuable part of education. Hitherto those who wished to extend education from the few to the many aimed to enlarge the constituency for high culture. But now, by those who would unmask it as an elitist device, it is under threefold attack.Less

Lewis Namier and the Rejection of Austria

AMY NG

in Nationalism and Political Liberty: Redlich, Namier, and the Crisis of Empire

The relation between the family backgrounds of Josef Redlich and Lewis Namier is a relation of theme and variations. The common themes arise from their common membership of the affluent assimilated ... More

The relation between the family backgrounds of Josef Redlich and Lewis Namier is a relation of theme and variations. The common themes arise from their common membership of the affluent assimilated Jewish strata in Central and Eastern Europe; the variations from differences in personalities and geography. Like Redlich, Namier's forebears had been assimilated for several generations, although they had assimilated to Polish rather than German culture. What Namier's and Redlich's ancestors shared was the desire to assimilate to Western high culture. Namier showed interest in the British empire, which necessarily led to a critical look at the empire of which he was a subject — Austria. It is true that in later times Namier's antipathy towards the Austrian empire increased, and that he tried to dissociate himself from it as much as possible. Still, the evidence from the beginning of World War I suggests that Namier looked at the Austrian empire not so much with hostility as with a kind of contemptuous affection.Less

“Lustrous behind Glass”: Woolf, Window Shopping, and Authentic Display

Elizabeth Outka

in Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodified Authentic

This chapter moves from the department stores discussed in the previous chapter to the individual consumer gaze, examining the rapid growth and cultural importance of carefully constructed displays ... More

This chapter moves from the department stores discussed in the previous chapter to the individual consumer gaze, examining the rapid growth and cultural importance of carefully constructed displays of “authentic” goods. The early writings of Virginia Woolf, including her novel Night and Day, structure the analysis of window shopping and self-fashioning before and after World War I. Both the fictional and the actual displays left behind the crowded, though often lavish, arrangements of the Victorian store window to present less cluttered exhibits with clean lines and single objects. The chapter explores how Selfridges, Woolf, and the new window displays satisfied in different ways some of the contradictory desires of the modern subject: the longing for the noncommercial, the pleasure in distinguishing between high and low culture, and a modern wish to acknowledge and even celebrate the constructed nature of this satisfaction. These very desires became a critical part of the modernist project, as such strategies promised to transcend distinctions between the “authentic” and the mass-produced, between an aesthetic modernism and a commercial modernity.Less

A Revaluation of Values: Keeping Politics In Its Place

Anthony Quinton

in Of Men and Manners: Essays Historical and Philosophical

Chapter 19 described various directions from which the high culture component of the traditional content of education is under attack. The canon of supposedly supreme works of literature, the ... More

Chapter 19 described various directions from which the high culture component of the traditional content of education is under attack. The canon of supposedly supreme works of literature, the intellectual values that are most concentratedly pursued in the higher theoretical disciplines, the linguistic skills needed for effective study of the canon and the higher disciplines are all repudiated from the point of view of a militant egalitarianism which seeks to undermine their respective claims to superiority as compared with rock videos, women's or gay studies, and the discourse of Derrida, Dave Spart, or Raymond Williams. This chapter takes a critical look at the objections raised against high culture. Before doing so, it first reflects on possible explanations for this violent cultural insurrection. Secondly, it considers what might be the consequences — for education and for culture, and, therefore, for the community at large — of the revolution's success.Less

From High Culture to Popular Culture and Film

Jonathan Brant

in Paul Tillich and the Possibility of Revelation through Film

This chapter provides a theoretical justification for the application of Tillich’s theology to the medium of film. This work is necessary because Tillich was very much a theologian of high culture ... More

This chapter provides a theoretical justification for the application of Tillich’s theology to the medium of film. This work is necessary because Tillich was very much a theologian of high culture and had very little interest in popular culture. The first section argues that one common approach to Tillich’s theology fails to distinguish between two senses of the word ‘religion’ in his writings and, therefore, wrongly assumes that his method of correlation is too positivist with respect to revelation, doctrine and religious institutions. A more nuanced reading is then offered. The second section of the chapter begins with a survey of religion-film scholars’ approaches to Tillich’s thought before offering an extended thought experiment drawing on the works of Bazin and Kracauer suggesting that the unique characteristics of film give it precisely the kind of breakthrough potential that Tillich associated with his most-favoured art-form, expressionist painting.Less

French television: negotiating the national popular

Lucy Mazdon

in Imagining the popular in contemporary French culture

This chapter notes that television presents an interesting case of a relatively young medium whose function and forms had to be defined within a context of already developed debates over the ... More

This chapter notes that television presents an interesting case of a relatively young medium whose function and forms had to be defined within a context of already developed debates over the high/popular divide. It shows that the possible contradiction in television's aims to disseminate national values and ‘high’ culture and to entertain a mass audience was posed with particular acuity in France, where the democratisation of high culture had long been central to national identity and to what the State perceived as its duty. The chapter concludes that television exemplifies the twin threads of allegiance to French exceptionalism and market-driven alignment with Western norms which characterise French cultural life.Less

The Postmodern Transformation of Art: From Production of Beauty to Consumption of Signs

Richard Harvey Brown

in Culture, Capitalism, and Democracy in the New America

Traditionally associated with craft production of beauty, art is now about mass consumption of signs. It is purchased as a sign of status and identity, and has become an investment in an increasingly ... More

Traditionally associated with craft production of beauty, art is now about mass consumption of signs. It is purchased as a sign of status and identity, and has become an investment in an increasingly fragmented selfhood, rather than simply being aesthetic, political, or commemorative. This chapter argues that postindustrial social structures and postmodern ideological orientations have played a role in promoting the intrusion of capitalistic behaviors and attitudes in the cultural sphere. It first looks at the earlier conflict between commerce and high culture before showing the commodification of art in the postindustrial and postmodern period despite the artists' refusal to be reduced to commodities. The chapter then discusses the impact of postmodernity on American cultural scenes in the major artistic disciplines and considers the role of corporations, dealers, auction houses, museums, and critics as commodifiers of art.Less

Modernist Abstraction and the Abstract Art: Four Saints and the Queer Composition of America's Sound

Nadine Hubbs

in The Queer Composition of America's Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity

This chapter examines Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts. It suggests that this opera was a landmark collaborative creation of U.S. modernist artists engaged in ... More

This chapter examines Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts. It suggests that this opera was a landmark collaborative creation of U.S. modernist artists engaged in early-twentieth-century efforts to establish a distinctly and genuinely American voice in transatlantic high culture. It also highlights the queer expressive potential of artistic abstraction within the homophobic context of twentieth-century U.S. culture, and the crucial confluence of queer lives and culture with artistic activity and culture.Less

Consuming High Culture: Allusion and Structure in “The Dead”

Thomas Jackson Rice

in Cannibal Joyce

This chapter focuses on how James Joyce consumes the body of world literary culture to nourish his own works wherein although his works were often cast in the metaphor of cannibalism they remained ... More

This chapter focuses on how James Joyce consumes the body of world literary culture to nourish his own works wherein although his works were often cast in the metaphor of cannibalism they remained well within the traditional readings of the fictions. In this chapter, the focus is on his consumption of classical literature and popular culture. His fondness of consuming “high” culture and his capacity for incorporation is examined in this chapter.Less

Religion and Popular Culture

Philip Goff

in The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History

This chapter explores the relationship between religion and popular culture in America. More specifically, it considers how various schools of thought direct their inquiries at popular culture and ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between religion and popular culture in America. More specifically, it considers how various schools of thought direct their inquiries at popular culture and how, in recent years, those who study religion in America have seized on those models to help us better understand the nature of American religious life. For much of the twentieth century, popular culture was understood to be anything between high culture and folk culture. While nearly all the terms are debatable, specialists generally regarded high culture as unique, difficult to create, and highly individual. The creations of elite culture aspire to break the boundaries of tradition, challenge common beliefs, and validate the experience of the individual. Its formation is an aesthetic act; that is, it seeks truth and beauty. Generally, there are three ways scholars approach the study of popular culture: textual analysis, audience analysis, and production analysis. This chapter also discusses typologies of religion and popular culture and concludes by assessing popular religion and religious culture in American history.Less

Defamiliarizing the Familiar: Conceptualizing Religion and Culture in Turko-Persia

James Pickett

in Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia

This chapter offers a conceptual discussion of Islam in Turko-Persia, providing a model for thinking about the ecologies of elite culture before the nation. The invention of tradition is a ... More

This chapter offers a conceptual discussion of Islam in Turko-Persia, providing a model for thinking about the ecologies of elite culture before the nation. The invention of tradition is a well-established concept, as is the notion that many national identities are of recent provenance. Much of what one might consider timeless or “traditional” was only recently objectified as such within the last century or two. Similarly, numerous studies have established the historical contingency of “secular” culture as separable and distinct from religion. Persian poetry understood as a “cultural” foil to “religious” Arabic texts is burdened by a dichotomy that would not have been appreciated by the original authors. The chapter then explains how Turkic culture related to the Persianate, and how Persian high culture, in turn, related to Islam. Islamic scholars of Bukhara were in different ways representative of a broader constituency of literati whose members were to be also found in western China, Iran, India, and even North Africa. However, because reconceptualizations of culture and religion in the preindustrial era are still in their infancy and often scattered across disparate literatures, the chapter builds on them, combines them, and in some cases critiques or repurposes them.Less

The Political Economy of Popular Culture

Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin

in Regionalizing Culture: The Political Economy of Japanese Popular Culture in Asia

This chapter examines the political economy of Japanese popular culture within East Asia using an analytical model that combines a traditional political economic approach with an approach that takes ... More

This chapter examines the political economy of Japanese popular culture within East Asia using an analytical model that combines a traditional political economic approach with an approach that takes into account characteristics specific to the popular culture market. It first reviews theoretical supports offered in the field and highlights their advantages and limitations. It then considers the relations between “popular culture,” “high culture,” and “cultural industries,” along with the ways in which cultural industries operate. It also explains the meaning of popular culture products and cultural commodities and discusses the differences between cultural industries and other industries. It shows that cultural industries have “special” characteristics—the strong focus on creativity and ease of technological access—that may explain the relative ease with which cultural industries in East Asia have been able to learn from and imitate the Japanese model to develop their own popular culture markets.Less

Totalitarianism, Intentionalism, and Fascism in Cold War Cultural Histories

Pamela M. Potter

in Art of Suppression: Confronting the Nazi Past in Histories of the Visual and Performing Arts

This chapter and those that follow undertake more focused historiographic analyses. Chapter 4 opens with an examination of the origins of the concept of totalitarianism and historians’ debates over ... More

This chapter and those that follow undertake more focused historiographic analyses. Chapter 4 opens with an examination of the origins of the concept of totalitarianism and historians’ debates over the viability of models for framing Nazi history: the totalitarian concept, intentionalism versus functionalism, challenges to the totalitarian paradigm with the alternative concept of fascism, and the historians’ debate (Historikerstreit) of the 1980s. With arts disciplines traditionally focused on high culture and the life and works of individuals, the totalitarian concept was useful for exonerating artists from any voluntary involvement in Nazi cultural production and persisted as a model for cultural histories of the Third Reich, despite losing its usefulness in other historical fields. A form of cultural intentionalism that credited Hitler and Goebbels with personal oversight of all artistic affairs held a similar appeal. As arts disciplines showed signs of taking their first steps away from these older paradigms of structural nazification, however, the Historikerstreit in the mid-1980s, with its warnings against relativizing the Holocaust—as well as simultaneous events in the art world that raised new questions about the pernicious effects of artistic products from the Third Reich—slowed any progress toward placing Nazi culture within broader historical and global contexts.Less