Introducing Cultural Studies

language is a cultural phenomenon; and it generates meaning in a special way. Language produces meaning by a system of relationships, by producing a network of similarities and differences.

There is more than one way to colonize a population!

The most common representation of the Other is as the darker side, the binary opposite of oneself: we are civilized, they are barbaric; the colonists are hard-working, the natives are lazy; heterosexuals are good and moral, homosexuals are immoral and evil.

Within Western society, women, homosexuals and immigrants are often seen as the other.

Cultural studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to power. Its constant goal is to expose power relationships and examine how these relationships influence and shape cultural practices.

Culture is simply the ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Culture is that learned behavior of a society or a subgroup.

Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

What it can do is help us to understand the mechanisms of cultural power and find ways and means to resist them. That’s all.

By being successfully domesticated in the knowledge industry, cultural studies has become too abstract and too technical, divorced from the lives and realities of the people it is supposed to be empowering, and on whose behalf it was to develop strategies for resistance and survival.