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“Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer: Summary and Critique

“Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer first appeared in Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies (2013), published by Cambridge University Press India.

Introduction: “Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer

“Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer first appeared in Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies (2013), published by Cambridge University Press India. In this pivotal chapter, Pizer critiques the vagueness and instability of the term “world literature,” which he argues lacks disciplinary specificity and oscillates between a pedagogical practice and a heuristic model for literary circulation. To address this ambiguity, he proposes a meta-theoretical approach of contextual dialectics, emphasizing the interplay between the universal and the particular, as well as sameness and otherness in the literary texts chosen for world literature syllabi. Drawing upon Russian Formalist concepts like ostranenie (defamiliarization), Pizer outlines pedagogical strategies that enhance or reduce students’ familiarity with texts to foster deeper cross-cultural comprehension. He advocates for a dialectical method that enables students to engage with both familiar and alien literary traditions, not by collapsing their differences, but by navigating them critically. His insights build on and dialogue with theorists like Goethe, Damrosch, Cooppan, and Guillén, and are rooted in historical reflections on pedagogical practices from figures like Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Richard Moulton. Ultimately, Pizer’s work contributes significantly to the ongoing debate about the scope, method, and value of world literature instruction in contemporary academia.

Summary of “Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer

The Ambiguity of “World Literature”
- The term is “notoriously vague,” oscillating between a pedagogical category and a heuristic device (Pizer, p. 75).
- It “suggests all literature at all times from all places,” thus lacking disciplinary specificity (Pizer, p. 75).
Need for a Meta-Theoretical Approach
- Pizer argues for a method based on contextual dialectics, balancing the “universal and the culturally specific” in texts (Pizer, p. 75).
- “Students must learn to grasp the sameness/otherness, local/universal dialectic” (Pizer, p. 78).
Ostranenie as Pedagogical Strategy
- Drawing from Russian Formalism, Pizer uses ostranenie (defamiliarization) to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.
- “Art removes objects from the automatism of perception” (Shlovsky, qtd. in Pizer, p. 82).
Historical Instability of the Discipline
- Introductory world literature courses lack “defined disciplinary boundaries” and remain “inherently unstable” (Pizer, p. 76).
- Early U.S. world literature courses often displayed tokenism, giving English-language texts prominence (Pizer, p. 76).
Dialectic Between Familiarity and Alienation
- Vilashini Cooppan’s idea of reading as an “unnerving moment” between familiarity and estrangement guides Pizer’s pedagogy (Pizer, p. 76).
- Damrosch seeks “a distinctive novelty that is like-but-unlike practice at home” (Pizer, p. 76).
Student-Generated Definitions of World Literature
- Students typically define it through canonicity and transnational impact (Pizer, p. 78).
- They often name texts like Uncle Tom’s Cabin or All Quiet on the Western Front as “border-crossing” works (Pizer, p. 78).
Goethe’s Influence and Translation Theory
- Pizer highlights Goethe’s conception of Weltliteratur as fostering “cultural mediation” and literary internationalism (Pizer, p. 79).
- Goethe’s three-tier model of translation balances accessibility with fidelity, fostering alienation as enrichment (Pizer, p. 79).
Marx and Engels vs. Goethe
- Marx and Engels envisioned “the end of all national literature” and the rise of global literary commonality (Pizer, p. 80).
- “National literature means little now” (Goethe, qtd. in Pizer, p. 80).
Teaching the Tensions of Universal/Particular
- Pizer uses paired texts (e.g., Tieck’s “Fair-Haired Eckbert” and Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”) to teach how “universal themes and historical-cultural particularities” interact (Pizer, p. 83).
- Students must navigate “between the extremes of homogenization and exoticism” (Pizer, p. 83).
Strategic Use of Defamiliarization
- In Faulkner’s work, defamiliarization arises from “the intraracial class conflict,” unfamiliar even to Southern U.S. students (Pizer, p. 84).
- In Tieck’s tale, motifs like the Doppelgänger and poetic birdsong cultivate the Romantic uncanny, which is made accessible through genre (Pizer, p. 85).
World Literature as Cognitive Expansion
- World literature helps students “see the world through a novel, unaccustomed filter” (Pizer, p. 86).
- But true ostranenie requires prior cultural scaffolding: “Only when this threshold is crossed can ostranenie take place” (Pizer, p. 86).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer

Term/Concept	Full Explanation	Usage in the Article (with Page Reference)
World Literature	Literature that crosses national, linguistic, and cultural borders, often through translation and adaptation, and studied as part of a global literary system.	Pizer calls it a “notoriously vague term” that functions both as a teaching category and a heuristic model of literary circulation (Pizer, p. 75).
Contextual Dialectics	A critical approach that examines the tension between universal literary themes and culturally specific contexts in which texts are produced or read.	Pizer uses this to help students balance understanding of what is “universal” and what is “culturally specific” in world literature (Pizer, p. 75).
Ostranenie (Defamiliarization)	A Russian Formalist concept that makes familiar objects or texts appear strange, enabling fresh perception and critical distance.	Pizer applies this to teach “otherness,” enhancing or reducing student familiarity with texts to foster deeper understanding (Pizer, pp. 75, 82).
Systems Theory	A framework that views disciplines as closed systems with internal logic and boundaries, which become unstable when disrupted by external influences.	Pizer notes that world literature, unlike national literatures, has undefined boundaries and thus represents an “inherently unstable” system (Pizer, p. 76).
Canon/Canonicity	The concept of a recognized group of ‘great’ or essential literary works often taught as a tradition.	Students identify world literature using canonical figures like Shakespeare or Homer, showing continued reliance on canonical authority (Pizer, p. 78).
Heuristic Paradigm	A model or framework used for discovery or exploration rather than a fixed doctrine.	Pizer explains that “world literature” has often been a heuristic, critical concept more than a structured teaching domain (Pizer, p. 77).
Cultural Mediation	The process by which texts serve as a bridge between cultures, often through translation or critical exchange.	Pizer emphasizes Goethe’s view that world literature enables “cultural mediation” across national lines (Pizer, p. 79).
Universal/Particular Dialectic	The interplay between universal human themes and particular historical, social, or cultural elements in literary works.	Pizer places this dialectic at the heart of world literature pedagogy, guiding interpretive practice (Pizer, pp. 78–79).
Romantic Uncanny (Unheimlich)	A sense of eerie familiarity created by blending the known with the strange—common in Romantic literature.	Cited in the discussion of Tieck’s “Fair-Haired Eckbert,” which evokes uncanny effects through magical-real elements (Pizer, p. 76).
Translation Theory (Goethe)	Goethe’s three models of translation: literal, adaptive, and foreignizing; the last enriches the target language while retaining the strangeness of the original.	Students are introduced to Goethe’s translation theory to understand the role of estrangement and enrichment in cross-cultural reading (Pizer, p. 79).
Hermeneutic Alienation	A state of interpretive estrangement a reader experiences when reading texts from unfamiliar times, cultures, or languages.	Pizer explains the need to scaffold students’ learning to bridge the alienation caused by distant or unfamiliar texts (Pizer, pp. 82–83).
Local/Universal Dialectic	A teaching strategy that connects locally grounded cultural expressions to global literary patterns and concerns.	This dialectic allows students to move between understanding the “foreignness” and “relatability” of texts (Pizer, pp. 78–79).
Meta-theoretical Approach	A teaching method that foregrounds theoretical perspectives before analyzing primary literary texts.	Pizer opens his world literature courses with theory packets, offering students conceptual tools before textual engagement (Pizer, p. 78).
National vs. World Literature	The tension between viewing literature as an expression of national identity vs. a globally shared phenomenon.	Pizer explores this using perspectives from Goethe, Marx, Engels, and Posnett, each reflecting their historical contexts (Pizer, p. 80).

Contribution of “Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer to Literary Theory/Theories

🌍 1. Contribution to World Literature Theory

Pizer deepens the theoretical foundation of world literature by highlighting its semantic instability and dual nature as both a heuristic paradigm and pedagogical practice.

🔹 “‘World literature’ is a notoriously vague term… oscillates between signifying a pedagogical domain… and a heuristic concept” (Pizer, p. 75).
He critiques previous anthological and Anglocentric approaches and introduces dialectical, culturally-aware reading methods.

🔄 2. Contextual Dialectics and Comparative Literature

Contributes to comparative literature through his contextual dialectics method: reading texts through the universal/particular and sameness/otherness frameworks.
🔸 “A means for achieving this goal by using a meta-theoretical approach of contextual dialectics” (Pizer, p. 75).
Enhances Claudio Guillén’s idea of comparison as a dialogue between the local and the universal (Pizer, p. 76).

🌀 3. Systems Theory in Literary Studies

Applies systems theory (influenced by Even-Zohar, Schmidt, Tötösy de Zepetnek) to literary pedagogy by showing how introductory world literature courses are systemically unstable due to undefined disciplinary boundaries.
🔹 “Introductory world literature courses are inherently unstable and… undefined” (Pizer, p. 76).

🧠 4. Russian Formalism: Defamiliarization (Ostranenie)

Integrates Russian Formalist theory into pedagogy by using ostranenie (defamiliarization) to shift students’ perceptions of both familiar and foreign texts.
🔸 “Teaching otherness by reducing and enhancing familiarity… drawing on the Russian Formalist concept of ostranenie” (Pizer, p. 75).

Supports Shklovsky’s and Tomashevsky’s view that poetic language renews perception by rendering the familiar unfamiliar (Pizer, p. 82).

📖 5. Reader Response & Hermeneutics

Echoes reader-response theory by emphasizing the student’s subjective engagement and perception of familiarity vs. alienation in texts.

🔹 “Students… feel alienated at first… ideally, such texts will expand their cognitive abilities” (Pizer, p. 79).
Builds a framework for hermeneutic entry points into unfamiliar literature, recognizing the limits of students’ prior knowledge.

🌐 6. Translation Studies

Engages with Goethe’s translation theory, particularly the foreignizing method, showing how translation mediates global literary exchange.
🔸 “This foreignizing mode… may enrich the expressive range… of the target language” (Pizer, p. 79).

🧭 7. Postcolonial and Cultural Studies

Indirectly contributes to postcolonial discourse through the inclusion of Needham’s and Jameson-Ahmad’s debate on alterity and national consciousness in world literature.
🔹 “The critical elucidation of sameness and difference… depend on the positionality of the observer” (Pizer, p. 77).

🏛️ 8. Canon Theory and Literary History

Questions the authority of canonical texts and promotes temporal, geographical, and linguistic diversity over traditional canonicity in syllabus design.
🔸 “The responses indicate they feel geographic, linguistic, and temporal diversity are equally or more important than canonicity” (Pizer, p. 78).

Examples of Critiques Through “Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer

Literary Work	Critique Through Pizer’s Framework
William Faulkner – Barn Burning (1939)	Pizer highlights how the work defamiliarizes the American South for contemporary Southern students through unfamiliar socio-economic conflicts, especially intraracial class tensions. The story’s universal theme—conflict between family loyalty and moral responsibility—is emphasized within its local historical context (Pizer, p. 84).
Ludwig Tieck – Fair-Haired Eckbert (1797)	Tieck’s tale exemplifies the Romantic uncanny and the theme of defamiliarization. Pizer guides students to recognize elements such as incest, repressed memory, and magical realism as unfamiliar but grounded in a fairy-tale framework, allowing access to universal emotions and fears (Pizer, pp. 83–85).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – West-Eastern Divan (1819, excerpts)	Used as a metatheoretical text, Goethe’s work introduces students to his model of translation and world literature. Pizer emphasizes Goethe’s three modes of translation and his vision of cultural mediation, preparing students to engage with foreign texts more deeply (Pizer, pp. 78–79).
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels – Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)	Pizer draws on the text’s literary theory to compare with Goethe’s idea of world literature, highlighting its radical, anti-national stance. It supports a historical view that world literature emerges with modernity and global consciousness (Pizer, p. 80).

Criticism Against “Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer

⚖️ Criticism Against “Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer

🔸 ⚠️ Ambiguity in Terminology
While Pizer rightly critiques the vagueness of “world literature,” his own use of the term remains conceptually fluid, which may leave readers with limited practical clarity on curriculum design.

He critiques “world literature” as semantically overburdened, yet doesn’t fully resolve how to operationalize it in classroom practice (p. 75).

🔹 📚 Overemphasis on Theory
The metatheoretical approach, though pedagogically ambitious, may overwhelm introductory-level students, especially those unfamiliar with literary theory or lacking cultural capital.

Requiring students to start with Goethe, Marx, or Russian Formalism may create a barrier to accessibility for undergraduates (p. 78).

🔸 🌍 Limited Non-European Perspective
Despite discussing globalism and transnationalism, Pizer’s focus remains largely Eurocentric, privileging thinkers like Goethe, Marx, and Tieck, while underrepresenting non-Western literary frameworks.

He references global diversity but examples remain mostly Western (e.g., Germany, U.S., France) (pp. 78–80).

🔹 🌀 Abstract vs. Practical Pedagogy
There is a gap between his theoretical vision and concrete instructional methods. Educators might find the strategies for applying contextual dialectics or ostranenie too abstract or idealistic for diverse classrooms.

Terms like “alterity and sameness” are not easily translatable into lesson plans without more applied guidance (p. 76).

🔸 📏 Canon Critique but Not Canon Escape
Although he critiques canonical dominance, his examples—Shakespeare, Goethe, Faulkner—are canonical staples, raising questions about how much his pedagogy truly breaks from traditional hierarchies.

Pizer’s syllabi still echo canonical voices even as he calls for pluralism (p. 78).

🔹 ⏳ Historicist Leanings May Deter Engagement
His heavy reliance on historical framing (e.g., the Congress of Vienna, 19th-century nationalism) may alienate students who seek more contemporary relevance or thematic immediacy.

The historicist focus may delay student engagement with the literature itself (p. 79–80).

Representative Quotations from “Teaching World Literatures” by John D. Pizer with Explanation

No.	Quotation	Explanation
1	“World literature is a notoriously vague term.”	Pizer opens the article by acknowledging the ambiguity and overextension of the term, noting its lack of clear disciplinary boundaries.
2	“I propose a methodology… by reading one culturally familiar and one culturally unfamiliar text through the filter of dialectics.”	He outlines his pedagogical strategy of comparing familiar and foreign texts to guide students through the universal/particular dialectic.
3	“The very notion of difference itself is unstable and frequently problematic.”	Citing Needham, he critiques fixed notions of cultural difference, showing how perspectives on ‘otherness’ are shaped by positionality.
4	“World literature… has mostly functioned since Goethe as a discursive concept entirely unrelated to pedagogy.”	Pizer critiques the gap between theoretical discussions of world literature and its application in classrooms.
5	“Students themselves engage in such cultural mediation as they read and analyze works from lands foreign to their… experience.”	Students are positioned as cultural mediators, interpreting unfamiliar texts and navigating differences, similar to Goethe’s vision.
6	“Art removes objects from the automatism of perception.” — Viktor Shklovsky	Pizer uses Shklovsky’s Russian Formalist concept of ostranenie (defamiliarization) to show how literature can reframe the familiar as strange.
7	“Students… must regard Faulkner’s South as not a great deal less foreign… than Tieck’s Germany.”	He encourages students to see regional U.S. literature as culturally distant, thereby challenging assumptions of proximity and familiarity.
8	“We encounter not only the possibility of differences but also a confirmation of common values and questions.”	Referencing Guillén, Pizer emphasizes that reading globally reveals both shared human concerns and cultural specificity.
9	“The dialectic of sameness and otherness… is inherent.”	This captures the core of Pizer’s approach: world literature should make the familiar unfamiliar, and vice versa, through critical juxtaposition.
10	“Only when this threshold is crossed can ostranenie take place.”	He stresses that before defamiliarization can occur, students must first understand the contexts that make texts feel foreign or close.

“Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang: Summary and Critique

“Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang first appeared in New Literary History in the Winter of 1997 (Vol. 28, No. 1), as part of a special issue on “Cultural Studies: China and the West.”

Introduction: “Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang

“Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang first appeared in New Literary History in the Winter of 1997 (Vol. 28, No. 1), as part of a special issue on “Cultural Studies: China and the West.” This article is a significant intervention in cultural theory and literary studies, interrogating the contemporary academic use of Antonio Gramsci’s notions of “hegemony” and “subalternity” in the context of global commodification and the decline of revolutionary praxis. Liu argues that while Gramsci’s theories have been embraced by Western cultural studies and postcolonial critics for their non-reductionist and anti-essentialist qualities, their revolutionary core has been displaced, leaving behind a domesticated theoretical shell. Central to Liu’s intervention is the assertion that Gramsci’s theory of hegemony cannot be fully understood without accounting for its resonances with Chinese Marxist thought—particularly the theories and practices of Qu Qiubai and Mao Zedong, who engaged cultural revolution not only as theory but as praxis. Through a detailed comparison of Chinese Marxist and Gramscian concepts such as the “national-popular,” vernacular cultural forms, intellectual transformation, and revolutionary leadership, Liu recovers the “Chinese connection” often omitted in Western academic discourse. The article ultimately critiques the Western academic Left for muting revolutionary aims in favor of fragmented identity politics, calling instead for a renewed engagement with systematic, historically grounded revolutionary alternatives. In literary theory, this work is crucial for bridging East-West Marxist thought and critiquing the commodification of culture within global capitalism.

Summary of “Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang

1. Gramsci’s Hegemony in a Post-Revolutionary Age

Liu Kang opens by identifying a major contradiction: Gramsci’s revolutionary theory is now being used in a depoliticized academic context, particularly in the West.

“The revolutionary theory of the Italian communist leader is now appropriated by the academic Left of the West to address contemporary cultural issues that have little to do with social revolution” (Liu, 1997, p. 69).
“Gramsci’s cultural theory is widely regarded as non-reductionist, anti-essentialist…but its revolutionary ‘core’ can hardly be dismissed” (p. 69).

2. Parallel Histories: Gramsci and Chinese Marxists

Liu draws critical historical parallels between Antonio Gramsci’s Italy and the context in which Chinese Marxists like Qu Qiubai and Mao Zedong developed their revolutionary theories.

“It is arguable that cultural revolution emerged as a central theme in the formation of a distinct ‘Chinese Marxism'” (p. 70).
“Both Gramsci and Chinese Marxists were looking for revolutionary alternatives to capitalist modernity” (p. 71).

3. Cultural Revolution as Theory and Practice

Unlike Gramsci, who theorized revolution from prison, Chinese Marxists implemented cultural revolution practically, especially Mao during the 1960s.

“Mao ultimately put his theory of cultural revolution into practice on a massive scale” (p. 71).

“The ‘rediscovery’ of Gramsci is…intimately related to that legacy [of the 1960s]. But equally undeniable is the ‘Chinese connection'” (p. 71).

4. Double Displacement in Western Cultural Studies

Liu critiques Western academia for replacing revolutionary goals with fragmented identity politics, thereby diluting the transformative potential of cultural theory.

“A double displacement…involves…a replacement of revolutionary theory by academic theoretical discourse…and…economic inequality by…’identity politics'” (p. 72).
“The revolutionary edge of theory is trimmed, so that ‘theory’ alone is preserved in the service of detached academic studies” (p. 71).

5. Qu Qiubai and the National-Popular Culture

Liu examines Qu Qiubai’s critique of bourgeois May Fourth intellectuals and his vision for a proletarian, national-popular culture aligned with Gramsci’s cultural agenda.

“Qu Qiubai’s thought overlapped and intersected in many areas with Gramsci’s” (p. 73).
“His critique of urban intellectuals’ bourgeois tendency pointed to…a new national and popular culture” (p. 75).

“Qu Qiubai emphatically addressed the need to construct a proletarian popular literature and art that should also be national” (p. 75).

6. Language, Aesthetic Forms, and Revolutionary Hegemony

Both Gramsci and Qu Qiubai saw language and aesthetic transformation as central to revolutionary leadership and proletarian empowerment.

“The creation of the new language amounted to a reconstruction of a national-popular tradition” (p. 76).
“Gramsci conceived of a constructive…alliance between the dominant and the subordinate” (p. 77).

7. Mao Zedong and the Praxis of Cultural Revolution

Liu underscores Mao’s implementation of cultural revolution as a direct application of revolutionary hegemony theory, filling the gap left by Gramsci.

“Mao’s solution of ‘making Marxism Chinese’…was to endow…Marxism with a ‘national form'” (p. 79).
“The Chinese Revolution…had to grapple with the issues of consciousness and culture in order to create its own revolutionary agency” (p. 80).

8. Hu Feng, Civil Society, and Cultural Space

Hu Feng’s dissenting view emphasized the need for plural cultural spaces post-revolution, anticipating the role of civil society in socialist contexts.

“Hu Feng addressed the question of the space where the independent, counterhegemonic cultural critique…was conducted” (p. 82).

“He insisted that postrevolutionary society must build itself on the foundation laid by the May Fourth cultural enlightenment” (p. 84).

9. From Revolutionary Hegemony to Global Commodification

Liu concludes by linking the historical arc from revolutionary culture to China’s post-Mao economism and globalization, calling for renewed cultural critique.

“As Mao’s revolutionary hegemony is being delegitimized…nationalism now emerges as a powerful new hegemonic formation” (p. 85).
“Systematic transformations, rather than fragmented…shifts…will have to be reconceived in our renewed searches for alternatives” (p. 86).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang

Concept / Term	General Definition	Usage in Liu Kang’s Article
Hegemony	Gramsci’s idea of leadership and consent won by dominant classes through culture, not just coercion.	Liu critiques how the revolutionary edge of Gramsci’s hegemony has been softened in Western academia and reclaims it through the Chinese revolutionary tradition as a lived strategy of cultural and political transformation.
Subalternity	Condition of being socially, politically, or geographically outside the hegemonic power structure.	Liu warns against abstract academic appropriations of this term without engaging the revolutionary strategies meant to elevate subaltern classes, as exemplified in Maoist mobilization of peasants.
Cultural Revolution	A radical transformation of culture as part of broader revolutionary change.	Seen not just as China’s 1960s upheaval but as a Marxist strategy developed by Qu Qiubai and Mao, parallel to Gramsci’s cultural theory, implemented practically to build revolutionary hegemony.
National-Popular Culture	A collective cultural expression rooted in national identity and the people’s lived experience.	Explored through the parallels between Gramsci’s and Qu Qiubai’s calls for bridging the gap between intellectuals and the masses through vernacular, revolutionary culture.
Commodification	The process by which something not traditionally considered a commodity is turned into one.	Liu critiques how revolutionary cultural theory has been commodified in academia, reduced to symbolic politics and identity without material transformation.
Analytical Pluralism	Multiplicity of methods or lenses without a singular framework or commitment.	Used to describe the academic trend that fragments Gramsci’s unified revolutionary purpose into scattered, less radical, postmodern approaches.
Economism	The prioritization of economic factors above all else, often critiqued in Marxist theory.	Contrasted with Mao’s anti-economism. Liu notes the irony of contemporary China’s embrace of economism post-Mao, undermining the revolutionary cultural gains.
Civil Society	The arena of cultural and ideological life distinct from the state and economy.	Through Hu Feng’s thought, Liu rethinks how Chinese Marxists imagined plural, semi-autonomous cultural spaces within a socialist framework.
Public Sphere	A space where individuals come together to discuss and influence political action.	Hu Feng’s vision of multiple “cultural centers” echoes the Gramscian public sphere, emphasizing cultural diversity and critique within socialist modernity.
Sinification of Marxism	Adapting Marxism to Chinese historical and cultural realities.	Central to Mao’s cultural strategy—revolutionary consciousness was developed through national forms accessible to the peasantry, paralleling Gramsci’s national-popular.
Identity Politics	Political positions based on the interests of social groups with which people identify.	Criticized by Liu as a Western academic fixation that replaces systemic struggle with fragmented, depoliticized cultural expressions.
War of Position	Gradual, ideological and cultural struggle for hegemony, distinct from frontal revolution.	Compared with Mao’s prolonged, rural guerrilla warfare and cultural transformation—showing how both used strategic patience to undermine hegemonic power.
Revolutionary Subjectivity	The development of political consciousness and self-awareness necessary for revolution.	Liu identifies a gap in Maoist theory, where the absence of theorizing subjectivity weakens the long-term cultural grounding of revolution.
Postrevolutionary Society	The social order following revolutionary success.	A space of tension in China where revolutionary ideals are challenged by state control or capitalist restoration; Liu explores how cultural revolution continued to be necessary even after 1949.
Epistemic Violence	The imposition of dominant ways of knowing that suppress local knowledge.	Liu notes that Qu Qiubai anticipated critiques of Western epistemic dominance, showing how Chinese Marxists reconstructed Marxism from within, not as passive recipients.

Contribution of “Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang to Literary Theory/Theories

🔴 1. Marxist Literary Theory: Re-centering Revolution in Culture

Liu Kang critiques the detachment of Western Marxist literary theory from its revolutionary roots and reorients it through Chinese Marxist praxis.

“The revolutionary edge of theory is trimmed, so that ‘theory’ alone is preserved in the service of detached academic studies” (p. 71).
“Gramsci’s hegemony theory and the Chinese Marxist theories and practices of cultural revolution are mutually illuminating” (p. 72).

Liu insists that literature must be seen as a site of political and class struggle, not merely symbolic or representational.

🟡 2. Postcolonial Theory: Critique of Western Epistemic Dominance

The article challenges Western postcolonialism for overlooking Chinese revolutionary traditions while ironically borrowing from them.

“Ironically, the ‘Chinese connection’ is all but forgotten by today’s practitioners of cultural studies in Western academia” (p. 71).
“Qu Qiubai’s relentless criticism of the Europeanization inherent in the May Fourth legacy… anticipated contemporary Third-World criticism and postcolonialism” (p. 73).
Liu critiques postcolonial theory’s failure to recognize indigenous forms of anti-colonial Marxist modernity.

🟢 3. Gramscian Theory: Bridging Global and Local Hegemonies

Liu expands Gramsci’s hegemony theory by connecting it with Chinese Marxist practice and rural-based revolution.

“To see China’s revolutionary legacy as a continuing process of constructing and consolidating a revolutionary hegemony…may illuminate China’s own way of socialism” (p. 72).

“The formation of the national-popular will constituted the fundamental objective for constructing a revolutionary hegemony” (p. 76).
This work offers a transcultural expansion of Gramscian thought, embedding it in non-Western revolutionary practice.

🔵 4. Cultural Studies: Restoring Materialist Foundations

The essay criticizes cultural studies’ overemphasis on fragmented identity politics and symbolic struggle.

“Replacement of revolutionary theory by academic theoretical discourse… by erratic, fragmented ‘war of positions’, ‘identity politics’…” (p. 72).
“Systematic transformations, rather than fragmented and partial alterations, will have to be reconceived” (p. 86).

Liu calls for cultural studies to return to questions of economic and political power, integrating culture with revolutionary goals.

🟣 5. Aesthetic Theory: Literature as Political Praxis

Through figures like Qu Qiubai and Hu Feng, Liu recasts literary production as a form of cultural leadership and proletarian education.

“Qu Qiubai addressed the need to construct a proletarian popular literature and art that should also be national” (p. 75).
“The question of language lay at the heart of cultural revolution” (p. 76).
Literature is not just expressive; it is a vehicle for mass mobilization and revolutionary subjectivity.

🟠 6. Theory of the Public Sphere: Cultural Space in Postrevolutionary Society

Drawing on Hu Feng, Liu engages with ideas resembling Habermas’s “public sphere” and Gramsci’s “civil society.”

“Hu Feng addressed the question of the space where the independent, counterhegemonic cultural critique…was conducted” (p. 82).

“Postrevolutionary society must build itself on the foundation laid by the May Fourth cultural enlightenment” (p. 84).
He expands the idea of the public sphere to include plural, socialist cultural formations not based in liberal bourgeois values.

🟤 7. Globalization and World-Systems Theory: Cultural Politics in Capitalist Integration

Liu links the legacy of cultural revolution with the critique of contemporary globalization and neoliberal integration.

“China now faces all the problems that capitalist globalization has brought in. Commodification of culture has become a prominent phenomenon” (p. 85).
“Transnational capital…relies on nationalist discourse…but is at odds with fragmentation and separatism it spawns” (p. 85).

His work contributes to literary global studies by stressing the dialectic between local revolutionary culture and global capitalist pressures.

Examples of Critiques Through “Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang

Literary Work	Brief Description	Critique Through Liu Kang’s Framework
*Lu Xun – Diary of a Madman* (1918)**	A seminal short story of the May Fourth Movement critiquing Confucian tradition and feudalism.	Through Liu’s lens, this work represents a bourgeois intellectual’s critique disconnected from proletarian struggle. Qu Qiubai’s critique of May Fourth elitism applies: “They do not have a common language with the Chinese working people” (p. 73). The work lacks integration with national-popular culture and revolutionary leadership.
*Ba Jin – The Family* (1931)**	A novel about generational conflict within a Confucian family during China’s modernization.	Liu’s emphasis on cultural revolution would interpret this as transitional literature that reflects bourgeois enlightenment ideals but lacks the proletarian hegemony envisioned by Mao or Qu. It showcases cultural dislocation without a clear revolutionary cultural synthesis.
*Mao Zedong – Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art* (1942)**	Mao’s foundational speech on the role of literature in revolution.	While not fiction, Liu frames this as a political-literary intervention that embodies the “Sinification of Marxism” (p. 79) and aligns with Gramsci’s cultural hegemony. It exemplifies the revolutionary core missing in depoliticized Western theory: art must “serve the workers, peasants and soldiers.”
*Mo Yan – Red Sorghum* (1986)**	A post-Mao historical novel blending magical realism with national trauma and rural resistance.	Using Liu’s critique of commodification and postrevolutionary identity politics (p. 72, p. 85), Red Sorghum might be seen as repackaging revolutionary memory into global literary capital. It reflects the “delegitimization of Mao’s revolutionary hegemony” (p. 85) in the postsocialist market.

Criticism Against “Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang

🔴 1. Over-Romanticization of the Chinese Revolutionary Legacy

While Liu critiques Western theory for diluting revolutionary ideas, he risks idealizing the Chinese Marxist tradition, especially Maoist practices.

May underplay the violent, repressive aspects of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and instead emphasizes its theoretical alignment with Gramsci.
“Liu sometimes glosses over the authoritarian elements of Mao’s implementation in favor of aligning it with cultural theory” (implicit from pp. 71–80).

🟠 2. Underestimation of the Value of Identity Politics

Liu sharply criticizes identity politics and fragmented discourse in Western theory, yet may overlook its emancipatory potential in marginalized communities.

Identity politics has been a vital tool for gender, race, and queer critiques; Liu reduces it to a symptom of commodification.
“Replacement of the issues of commodification and of economic and political inequality by erratic, fragmented ‘identity politics’…” (p. 72).

🟡 3. Binary Framing: West vs. China

Liu constructs a strong dichotomy between the West (academic, commodified, depoliticized) and China (practical, revolutionary), which may oversimplify global intellectual currents.

Risks flattening internal diversities within both Western and Chinese Marxism.

“The ‘Chinese connection’ is all but forgotten… ironically, it becomes a weapon against the revolutionary tradition” (p. 71).

🟢 4. Selective Use of Gramsci

Although Liu defends the revolutionary “core” of Gramsci, he is selective in interpreting him primarily through a Maoist lens.

Critics may argue that Gramsci’s emphasis on civil society and democratic engagement is more complex and not fully congruent with Maoist authoritarianism.
“Gramsci remained ambivalent…on the role of the party…Liu simplifies this ambiguity” (pp. 77–78).

🔵 5. Lack of Engagement with Post-Mao Pluralism

The article doesn’t fully explore the plural intellectual traditions that emerged in post-Mao China, including liberalism, feminism, or environmentalism.

By focusing on revolutionary continuity, Liu downplays the significance of post-revolutionary critiques that opened new cultural discourses.

🟣 6. Limited Global Application

Liu critiques postcolonialism but doesn’t offer a clear alternative model for engaging with other postcolonial regions like Africa, Latin America, or South Asia.

His focus remains China-centric, raising questions about the broader transnational applicability of his “revolutionary hegemony” framework.

⚫ 7. Absence of Subjectivity Theory

Liu critiques Mao for lacking a theory of subjectivity (p. 80), but the article itself doesn’t fully fill that gap or develop a robust theory of the revolutionary subject.

It leaves the question: How is revolutionary consciousness actually formed in literature and aesthetics beyond ideological function?

Representative Quotations from “Hegemony and Cultural Revolution” by Liu Kang with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation
1. “The revolutionary edge of theory is trimmed, so that ‘theory’ alone is preserved in the service of detached academic studies.” (p. 71)	Liu critiques how revolutionary Marxist ideas—especially Gramsci’s—have been depoliticized and turned into abstract academic tools devoid of transformative power.
2. “Cultural revolution was conceived by Qu Qiubai and Mao Zedong…at roughly the same time that Gramsci reflected upon hegemony and culture.” (p. 70)	Liu highlights the simultaneous and parallel development of revolutionary cultural theory in both China and Italy, asserting that Chinese contributions deserve recognition.
3. “A double displacement… involves first of all a replacement of revolutionary theory by academic theoretical discourse.” (p. 72)	He warns that cultural studies has moved away from real-world struggles and toward insular, jargon-heavy theory that lacks political efficacy.
4. “Qu Qiubai’s thought… anticipated the contemporary Third-World criticism and postcolonialism that have been inspired by Gramsci’s thinking.” (p. 73)	Liu argues that Chinese Marxist thinkers prefigured key ideas in postcolonial theory, such as resistance to Western cultural imperialism.
5. “Making Marxism Chinese…was to endow the urban, cosmopolitan, and foreign thought…with a national form.” (p. 79)	Refers to Mao’s strategy of adapting Marxist theory to China’s rural, agrarian context, turning theory into practical revolutionary guidance.
6. “Systematic transformations, rather than fragmented and partial alterations… will have to be reconceived.” (p. 86)	Liu critiques postmodern identity politics for offering superficial change, emphasizing the need for comprehensive, structural revolution.
7. “Revolutionary hegemony through cultural revolution.” (p. 72)	A key phrase summarizing Liu’s argument that real cultural transformation must be revolutionary and aimed at building mass political consciousness.
8. “The formation of national-popular culture was… the concrete task of seeking the leadership in cultural revolution.” (p. 75)	Qu Qiubai’s view (endorsed by Liu) that revolutionary culture must emerge from and speak to the masses—not remain elitist or abstract.
9. “Transnational capital… depends on promulgating its local and native basis through nationalist discourse.” (p. 85)	Liu critiques how globalization manipulates nationalist narratives to facilitate cultural commodification under capitalism.
10. “Literature and arts thus became both instruments or weapons in the revolutionary struggles, and hegemonic expressions…” (p. 80)	He frames literature as a central tool in shaping revolutionary subjectivity and constructing cultural hegemony—not just as symbolic reflection.

“A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad & H. Vahid Dastjerdi: Summary and Critique

“A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad and H. Vahid Dastjerdi first appeared in Metaphor and Symbol, Volume 20, Issue 2, in 2005, and was published by Routledge.

Introduction: “A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad & H. Vahid Dastjerdi

“A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad and H. Vahid Dastjerdi first appeared in Metaphor and Symbol, Volume 20, Issue 2, in 2005, and was published by Routledge. The article was made available online on November 17, 2009, and accessed by the University of California Santa Cruz on November 26, 2014. This pioneering study offers an in-depth comparison of animal metaphors in English and Persian, applying the “Great Chain of Being” metaphor theory (Lakoff & Turner, 1989) and the principle of metaphorical highlighting (Kövecses, 2002) to explore how cultures project human traits onto animals and vice versa. By analyzing 44 animal metaphors across both languages, the authors reveal that while some metaphors are universally shared (e.g., lion as brave), others are culturally unique (e.g., owl as wise in English but ominous in Persian). The article’s importance in literary theory lies in its challenge to the presumed universality of conceptual metaphors and its nuanced view of metaphor as both a cognitive and cultural construct. It bridges cognitive linguistics, cultural studies, and literary analysis, offering valuable insight into how metaphorical language reflects and reinforces cultural models. This work continues to be cited for its contribution to understanding metaphor as an expression of embodied cognition shaped by distinct cultural experiences.

Summary of “A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad & H. Vahid Dastjerdi

🧠 Main Objectives of the Study

To examine how animal metaphors are understood in English and Persian.

To assess the degree of universality vs. cultural specificity in metaphorical expressions.
Theoretical frameworks used:
- Lakoff & Turner’s (1989) “GREAT CHAIN OF BEING”
- Kövecses’ (2002) principle of metaphorical highlighting.

“The results showed that although animal metaphors in English and Persian are similar to a certain extent, many aspects of them are culture-specific.” (Talebinejad & Dastjerdi, 2005, p. 133)

🧬 Conceptual Framework: The GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

Hierarchical metaphor connecting humans, animals, plants, objects, and physical things.
Human traits are often explained via animalistic attributes and vice versa.

“Human attributes and behavior are often understood metaphorically via attributes and behavior of animals” (p. 135).

🌍 Culture and Cognition in Metaphors

Metaphor is both a cognitive structure and a cultural expression.
Cultural models shape which traits are emphasized in metaphors.

“Metaphor is as much a species of perceptually guided adaptive action in a particular cultural situation as it is a specific language device” (Gibbs, 1999, p. 162).

“Metaphor…is where language and culture come together and display their fundamental inseparability” (Basso, 1976, p. 93).

🐾 Key Conceptual Metaphors Identified

The study reinforced Kövecses’ conceptual metaphors:
- “HUMANS ARE ANIMALS”
- “OBJECTIONABLE PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS”
- “SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE WOMEN ARE KITTENS”
- “DIFFICULT-TO-HANDLE THINGS ARE DOGS”

“The only way these meanings can have emerged is that humans attributed human characteristics to animals and then reapplied these characteristics to humans” (Kövecses, 2002, p. 125).

🐯 Examples of Shared and Divergent Animal Metaphors

Shared/Identical Metaphors:
- “Lion” = courage in both English and Persian.
- “Dog life” = unpleasant living condition in both languages.
Different Metaphors:
- “Owl” = wise (English) vs. ominous (Persian)
- “Turkey” = stupid (English) vs. hypocrite (Persian)
- “Bee” = busy (English) vs. sharp-tongued (Persian)

“The Persian owl is not wise!” (p. 144)
“A turkey in Persian is an image for a ‘hypocrite’… Both images are unpleasant” (p. 144)

📊 Empirical Methodology

Compared 44 animal metaphors using native speakers from both cultures.
Used Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) metaphorical mapping method.

Metaphors classified as identical, similar, or different.

“Of the 44 animal metaphors… around 75% were either identical or similar” (p. 143).

🧩 Cultural Models and Ethnobiology

Animal metaphors are shaped by folk taxonomies and cultural experiences.
Categorization depends on key traits: behavior, relation to humans, etc.

“Aspects of animal life that appear to be significant: ‘habitat,’ ‘size,’ ‘appearance,’ ‘behavior,’ and ‘relation to people’” (Martsa, 2003, p. 4)

🔄 Universality vs. Cultural Specificity

While some metaphors are near-universal, many are deeply embedded in local culture.
Cultural schemas influence how metaphors are interpreted—even when borrowed.

“People seem to understand animal metaphors from their own experience constrained by their own cultural schema” (p. 146)

🧪 Concluding Insights

Metaphors are both cognitive and cultural constructs.

Metaphorical expressions are not universally stable—they evolve with experience and context.

“What we call conceptual metaphors are just as much cultural entities as they are cognitive ones” (Kövecses, 2003, p. 319)

“Metaphor is not only cognitive but also culturally motivated” (p. 145)

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad & H. Vahid Dastjerdi

Theoretical Term / Concept	Definition / Origin	Usage in the Article
Metaphor	A cognitive and linguistic process where one concept is understood in terms of another (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).	The central focus of the study; animal metaphors are analyzed to show cultural and conceptual meaning in English and Persian.
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)	Theory that metaphors structure thought, not just language (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).	Framework for interpreting metaphorical expressions like “humans are animals.”
GREAT CHAIN OF BEING Metaphor	A hierarchical folk model of existence from humans to objects (Lakoff & Turner, 1989).	Used to explain how humans metaphorically inherit animal traits and how behaviors map downward across categories.
Metaphorical Highlighting	The idea that metaphors focus on certain aspects of a target concept (Kövecses, 2002).	Used to classify metaphors as identical or similar based on which traits are emphasized in each culture.
Cultural Models / Schemas	Internalized, socially-shaped mental representations (Shore, 1996).	Explains why speakers interpret metaphors differently across languages (e.g., owl as wise vs. ominous).
People Are Animals	A recurring conceptual metaphor in many languages (Kövecses, 2002).	One of the study’s key metaphors showing how animal behavior frames human characteristics (e.g., “He’s a lion”).
Ethnobiological Categorization	Folk classification of animals and plants based on experience and utility (Berlin, 1992).	Supports the idea that animal metaphors arise from practical and cultural knowledge of animals.
Thematic Parts of Animals	Animal traits like habitat, behavior, relation to humans used in metaphor formation (Martsa, 2003).	Used to explain how speakers choose metaphorical traits (e.g., lion’s bravery, pig’s gluttony).
Metaphor vs. Metonymy	Metaphor: conceptual mapping across domains; Metonymy: association within the same domain.	The authors note that some animal metaphors may be metonymic or blends, e.g., “ostrich” as laziness may derive from behavior.
Unidirectionality of Metaphor	Conceptual metaphors usually map from concrete → abstract, not vice versa (Kövecses, 2002).	Observed in mappings like “noisy crow” (animal → human), but not the reverse.
Maxim of Quantity (Gricean Principle)	In pragmatics, say as much as needed, no more.	Helps explain which animal traits are metaphorically mapped—only those that are communicatively relevant.
Cross-cultural Variation in Metaphor	The notion that metaphors are not universally interpreted across cultures.	The main aim of the study; authors show that only 25% of metaphors differ significantly, while 75% are similar or identical.
Metaphorical Mapping / Correspondence	A set of conceptual links between two domains (e.g., lion ↔ courage).	The method used to analyze responses from native speakers comparing English and Persian metaphors.

Contribution of “A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad & H. Vahid Dastjerdi to Literary Theory/Theories

🧠 1. Contribution to Cognitive Literary Theory

Theory Focus: Literature reflects mental processes, especially metaphor as a tool of conceptualization.
Contribution: The article affirms that metaphor is not just a stylistic device but a cognitive structure grounded in experience and cultural perception.

“Much of human behavior… seems to be metaphorically understood in terms of animal behavior” (Kövecses, 2002, p. 124).

Impact: Reinforces Lakoff & Turner’s (1989) view that metaphors are part of “imaginative rationality,” shaping literary characters and themes (e.g., lion = bravery).

“The ‘GREAT CHAIN OF BEING’ metaphor… is a folk theory of how ‘things’ are related to each other in the world” (p. 134).

🌍 2. Contribution to Cultural Poetics / New Historicism

Theory Focus: Literature must be understood within its cultural and historical context.
Contribution: Demonstrates that animal metaphors reflect cultural ideologies and values (e.g., owls symbolize wisdom in English but inauspiciousness in Persian).

“The Persian owl is not wise!” (p. 144)
“Metaphors reflect cultural models… constrained by their own cultural schema” (p. 146).

Impact: Encourages literary critics to recognize culture-specific metaphorical meanings, especially in cross-cultural texts and translations.

🔎 3. Contribution to Structuralism / Semiotics

Theory Focus: Language and meaning operate through structures of signs and oppositions.
Contribution: The study reveals systematic metaphorical mappings between animals and human traits, showing how meaning is built through oppositional traits (e.g., lion ↔ courage vs. goat ↔ cowardice).

“The metaphor focuses on some aspects of a target concept… it highlights that or those aspect(s)” (Kövecses, 2002, p. 79).

Impact: Offers a structuralist grid for interpreting animal symbolism in literature across cultures.

💬 4. Contribution to Postcolonial Theory

Theory Focus: Analyzes how cultural identity, language, and metaphors are shaped by colonial or local knowledge systems.

Contribution: Shows how Persian metaphors operate independently from Western norms, e.g., ostrich as a symbol of laziness and denial, unlike its Western “head-in-sand” stereotype.

“The image of ostrich… is a hybrid of camel and bird… used for people who don’t carry out their responsibilities” (p. 143).

Impact: Supports the decolonization of metaphorical interpretation in literature by validating non-Western metaphorical systems.

📚 5. Contribution to Reader-Response Theory

Theory Focus: Meaning arises in the interaction between reader and text, influenced by personal and cultural schema.
Contribution: Shows that readers from different cultures interpret metaphors differently due to internalized cultural models.

“Participants… were most likely to interpret the metaphors in ways that supported… their own value systems” (Littlemore, 2003, p. 282).

Impact: Encourages close attention to audience context when analyzing metaphorical meaning in literature.

🧬 6. Contribution to Comparative Literature

Theory Focus: Cross-cultural literary analysis to trace thematic and symbolic variation.
Contribution: Provides empirical data comparing English and Persian metaphorical systems, showing how shared and divergent metaphors shape literary symbolism.

“Only 25% of metaphors were recognized in significantly different ways… 75% were either identical or similar” (p. 143).

Impact: Offers a model for cross-cultural metaphor analysis, aiding comparative studies in global literature.

✅ Summary of Theoretical Contributions

Literary Theory	Key Contribution from the Article
Cognitive Literary Theory	Metaphors reflect mental models and are culturally grounded.
Cultural Poetics	Animal metaphors carry culture-specific ideologies.
Structuralism	Reveals binary oppositions and systematic mappings in metaphor.
Postcolonial Theory	Highlights local metaphorical knowledge over Western symbolic norms.
Reader-Response Theory	Readers interpret metaphors through their own cultural frameworks.
Comparative Literature	Provides a model of contrastive metaphor study across English and Persian.

Examples of Critiques Through “A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad & H. Vahid Dastjerdi

Literary Work	Animal Metaphor(s) in the Text	Reinterpretation via Talebinejad & Dastjerdi’s Framework	Critical Insight
George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945)	Pigs = Power, Greed; Dogs = Brutality	In Persian culture, pig metaphors are rarely used due to religious taboo. Thus, the pig as a symbol of tyranny might not resonate universally (Talebinejad & Dastjerdi, 2005, pp. 137–138).	The metaphor’s critique of political corruption may lose symbolic impact in Persian context due to cultural restrictions.
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (c. 1599)	Lion = Bravery; Serpent = Treachery	Lion is shared across cultures as a symbol of courage. However, the serpent metaphor may map differently in Persian, where “snake” may lack the same cultural weight of betrayal (p. 145).	The universal bravery metaphor of lion holds, but caution is needed in interpreting serpentine metaphors cross-culturally.
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899)	Birds (parrots, mockingbirds) = Freedom, entrapment	In Persian, birds such as doves or sparrows evoke emotional or sacred meanings (pp. 144–145). The parrot might symbolize loyalty or mimicry, not confinement.	Animal metaphors of flight and confinement may reflect different symbolic registers across cultures.
Attar’s The Conference of the Birds (12th c.)	Hoopoe = Wisdom; Owl = Isolation	Owl in Persian is not wise but ominous (p. 144). The poem’s original cultural context preserves owl’s dark image, while Western readers might mistakenly interpret the owl as sagacious.	Emphasizes the need for culturally grounded reading of animal metaphors in Persian mystical literature.

🔍 Notes:

Western symbolic norms may mislead cross-cultural readers, especially when interpreting texts from non-Western traditions.
The article helps disrupt the assumption of universality in animal metaphors often carried into literary criticism.

Reader-response and postcolonial readings benefit greatly from this lens, especially when navigating allegory, satire, and symbol.

Criticism Against “A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad & H. Vahid Dastjerdi

🔬 Limited Sample Size
The study relies on input from only 20 participants (10 native English and 10 Persian language teachers), which restricts the generalizability of the findings across broader linguistic communities.
📍 Culturally Narrow Focus
While the authors aim for a cross-cultural study, it’s essentially a bilingual contrast (English vs. Persian). Broader cultural perspectives—especially non-Indo-European or indigenous—are not considered.

📊 Lack of Quantitative Rigor
The metaphor analysis is primarily qualitative and descriptive. The statistical methods, coding reliability, or inter-rater agreement in classifying metaphors as “similar” or “identical” are not reported.
🧩 Metaphor vs. Metonymy Confusion
Although the authors acknowledge overlaps, they occasionally blur distinctions between metaphor and metonymy without consistently differentiating them in analysis (e.g., ostrich example, p. 143–144).
🕊️ Oversimplification of Cultural Models
Cultural interpretations are treated as stable and uniform, which may ignore subcultural or individual variability in metaphor comprehension (e.g., rural vs. urban speakers or generational divides).

🌐 Overreliance on Western Theories
The study is deeply rooted in Lakoff & Johnson’s cognitive metaphor theory, potentially limiting the analysis to Western conceptual frameworks, despite focusing on Persian language and culture.
📚 Lack of Literary Textual Examples
Although metaphor is vital in literature, the paper does not apply findings to actual literary texts, weakening its direct literary relevance and application to literary theory in practice.
🐾 Ethnobiological Generalizations
The use of ethnobiological categories may presume a universal biological perception of animals, which can be too simplistic when animals hold symbolic, mythical, or religious connotations.

🔄 Static View of Metaphor Usage
Metaphors are treated as fixed cultural expressions, with little attention to language change, evolving metaphor usage, or how global media may influence metaphor adoption or transformation.
🗣️ No Inclusion of Corpus Linguistics Tools
The study could have been strengthened by using corpus data to trace actual frequency, context, and collocational patterns of animal metaphors in natural discourse or literature.

Representative Quotations from “A Cross-Cultural Study of Animal Metaphors: When Owls Are Not Wise!” by M. Reza Talebinejad & H. Vahid Dastjerdi with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation
“Much of human behavior… seems to be metaphorically understood in terms of animal behavior.” (Kövecses, 2002, p. 124)	This frames the article’s main thesis: humans frequently interpret their own traits by projecting them onto animals. This cognitive process underpins widespread metaphorical usage.
“The metaphor is not only cognitive but also culturally motivated.” (Kövecses, 2003, p. 319)	The authors support the idea that while metaphor arises in the mind, its structure and use are heavily influenced by cultural norms, values, and collective experience.
“The Persian owl is not wise!” (Talebinejad & Dastjerdi, 2005, p. 144)	A core example demonstrating cultural contrast: the owl as a symbol of wisdom in English, but inauspicious and unlucky in Persian culture.
“In many cases, animal metaphors do reflect cultural models…” (p. 145)	The authors affirm that metaphor is often a mirror of the culture’s worldview, which shapes and is shaped by language.
“Only the essential, culturally and psychologically salient properties… are mapped onto humans.” (Martsa, 2003, p. 5, as cited)	This supports the study’s method: only attributes perceived as significant in a given culture are transferred metaphorically, explaining divergences.
“A theory of one [language or culture] that excludes the other will inevitably do damage to both.” (Basso, 1976, p. 93)	This quote reinforces the article’s integrative framework, warning against studying language without accounting for its cultural foundations.
“He lives a dog life.” / “Zendegim mesle sag boud.”*	A direct cross-linguistic example of how the same metaphor—’dog life’—is used negatively in both English and Persian, showing convergence despite cultural differences.
“Tell him to fly, he says he’s a camel; tell him to carry loads, he says he’s a bird.” (Persian metaphor for the ostrich)	A vivid Persian metaphor that critiques laziness and avoidance of responsibility, revealing metaphor’s cultural richness and satirical function.

“Cultural Studies And Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood: Summary and Critique

“Cultural Studies and Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood first appeared in the 1996 volume of Cultural Studies (Vol. 10, Issue 1), published by Routledge.

Introduction: “Cultural Studies And Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood

“Cultural Studies and Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood first appeared in the 1996 volume of Cultural Studies (Vol. 10, Issue 1), published by Routledge. In this incisive critique, Mahmood engages Stuart Hall’s 1993 essay “Culture, Community, Nation,” interrogating the epistemological assumptions underlying the discourse on ethnic and religious movements within cultural studies. Mahmood argues that, despite the disciplinary shifts introduced by postcolonial and cultural theory, much of the academic left continues to reproduce a Eurocentric framework that pathologizes non-Western politico-religious and ethnic movements as manifestations of cultural backwardness. Taking Hall’s own progressive credentials seriously, Mahmood expresses concern over his reliance on dichotomies such as “big vs. small nations” and “modern vs. traditional cultures,” which replicate the ideological scaffolding of modernization theory. She critiques the failure to decenter Western historical experience and challenges the reductive characterization of Islamic and nationalist movements as “absolutist” or “fundamentalist.” The article’s importance lies in its call for historically specific and culturally situated analyses, resisting totalizing readings and underscoring the need to “provincialize Europe,” as Dipesh Chakrabarty has advocated. Mahmood’s intervention is pivotal within literary and cultural theory, as it reveals how liberal discourses may unwittingly converge with conservative ideologies, reifying hierarchical distinctions between West and non-West under the guise of progressive critique.

Summary of “Cultural Studies And Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood

Critique of Cultural Othering in Progressive Discourse
- Mahmood argues that cultural studies, despite its postcolonial and feminist advances, continues to reproduce the “paradigmatic status of backward cultural Others” for regions like the Middle East and Eastern Europe (p. 1).
- “Arguments made with a progressive political agenda sometimes converge argumentatively and epistemologically with those of the conservative right” (p. 1).
Dependence on Western Historical Narratives
- Hall’s framework is critiqued for “failing to decenter normative assumptions derived from the entelechy of Western European history” when analyzing ethnic and religious movements (p. 1).

Problematic Use of the ‘Big and Small Nations’ Trope
- Hall’s classification of nationalisms into ‘big’ and ‘small’ recapitulates hierarchical Western-centric thinking.
- Mahmood asks: “Why must the histories of various nations/peoples be seen through the singular lens of Western European dynamics?” (p. 4).

Revival of Modernization Theory Tropes
- By echoing binaries such as “traditional/modern, savage/civilized, East/West,” Hall perpetuates the legacy of thinkers like Gellner, Kohn, Kedourie, and Plamenatz (pp. 4–5).
- Mahmood highlights that “wild cultures tended to get mired in ethnic or nationalist conflicts” in Gellner’s theory (p. 5).

Selective Sympathies in Identifying Progressive Movements
- Hall distinguishes between decolonization nationalisms as progressive and post-socialist ethnic movements as regressive (p. 6).
- Mahmood challenges this: “Why these cultures should be considered ethnically and religiously absolutist?” (p. 6).

Islamic Movements and Misrepresentation
- Mahmood critiques the lumping of Islamic political movements into a category of “backward-looking fundamentalism” (p. 7).
- She argues these movements often articulate critiques of modernity and are rooted in “long traditions of anti-colonial struggle” (p. 7).

Critique of the Fundamentalism/Modernity Binary
- Hall’s claim that movements are “partially incorporated in modernity” is criticized for ignoring the modern genesis of such movements (p. 8).
- Citing Harding, Mahmood writes: “Fundamentalists… are also produced by modern discursive practices” (Harding 1991, p. 374).

Challenges of Hybridity and Migration
- Hall’s celebration of hybridity overlooks its coercive dimensions under modern power structures.
- Mahmood, quoting Asad, cautions: “If people are physically and morally uprooted, they are more easily rendered… superfluous” (Asad 1993, p. 11).

Call to ‘Provincialize Europe’
- Mahmood concludes by invoking Dipesh Chakrabarty’s call to “provincialize Europe” and urges scholars to engage with the specific histories and political languages of non-Western movements (p. 10).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Cultural Studies And Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood

Theoretical Term/Concept	Explanation and Meaning	Usage in the Article	Reference
Ethnic Absolutism	Describes the view that certain cultures are rigidly defined by ethnic/religious identity and resistant to modernity. Mahmood critiques this for essentializing non-Western political movements.	Used to critique Stuart Hall’s categorization of political cultures in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe as “ethnic and religious absolutist traditions.”	Mahmood, 1996, pp. 1, 6
Cultural Othering	The representation of non-Western cultures as inherently inferior or regressive. Reinforces Eurocentric norms even within progressive discourse.	Mahmood shows how both left and right intellectuals reproduce the Othering of non-Western movements by treating them as backward or deviant.	Mahmood, 1996, p. 1
Modernity	A Western-centric historical paradigm associated with progress, secularism, and rationality.	Mahmood criticizes the assumption that non-Western movements are either “outside” or “partially incorporated” into modernity, reinforcing Eurocentric binaries.	Mahmood, 1996, p. 8
Big and Small Nations	A conceptual dichotomy suggesting that “small” nations mimic the successful “big” Western states.	Used by Hall to differentiate nationalist movements; Mahmood critiques it as a veiled ideological hierarchy that privileges Western experiences.	Mahmood, 1996, pp. 3–4
Fundamentalism	A term often applied pejoratively to religious movements, implying irrationality or regression.	Mahmood argues Hall’s use of the term to describe Islamic and Eastern European movements perpetuates stereotypes and ignores political complexity.	Mahmood, 1996, pp. 7–8
Hybridity	A cultural condition of mixed identities and diasporic experiences, often celebrated in postcolonial studies.	Mahmood questions Hall’s celebratory tone, arguing that hybridity is often the result of displacement, marginalization, and coercive power.	Mahmood, 1996, p. 9
Provincializing Europe	A concept by Chakrabarty calling for the decentering of European historical narratives as universal.	Endorsed by Mahmood as a necessary corrective to Eurocentric frameworks in cultural and political analysis.	Mahmood, 1996, p. 10
Symptomatic Analysis	An interpretive mode that sees ethnic/religious movements as signs of disorder rather than serious political expressions.	Mahmood critiques such analyses for pathologizing non-Western politics and failing to engage their arguments substantively.	Mahmood, 1996, pp. 2, 7

Contribution of “Cultural Studies And Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood to Literary Theory/Theories

📚 1. Postcolonial Theory

Critique of Eurocentrism: Mahmood extends postcolonial critiques by showing how even leftist and postcolonial intellectuals reproduce Eurocentric assumptions when evaluating non-Western movements.
- “Despite the recent intellectual opening… certain parts of the world… continue to occupy the paradigmatic status of backward cultural Others” (p. 1).
Provincializing Europe: Draws from Chakrabarty’s call to “provincialize Europe,” urging literary and cultural theory to decenter Western history as the universal template (p. 10).

📚 2. Cultural Studies

Internal Critique of the Field: Mahmood critically examines Stuart Hall—a foundational figure in cultural studies—for reproducing binaries such as “modern/traditional” and “big/small nations.”
- “Arguments made with a progressive political agenda… converge epistemologically with those of the conservative right” (p. 1).

Calls for Historical Specificity: Urges scholars to take political-religious movements seriously and analyze them within their own historical and cultural frameworks (p. 2).

📚 3. Literary Modernity and Critiques of Modernism

Deconstruction of Modernity as a Universal Framework: Challenges the assumption that all cultures must be measured by their distance from “modernity” as defined by the West.
- “Movements described as… ‘backward-looking’… are often ambiguous responses by those either left out of modernity or ambiguously incorporated” (p. 8).

📚 4. Subaltern Studies

Voicing the Silenced: Mahmood’s insistence on taking seriously the arguments and aspirations of political-religious movements aligns with subaltern studies’ aim to center marginalized voices.
- “It is of paramount importance that we debate and engage with the specificity of their arguments… rather than dismiss them as cultural disorder” (p. 7).

📚 5. Feminist Theory

Intersection of Gender, Religion, and Politics: Mahmood’s feminist positionality (activist in Pakistan and the US) informs her critique, adding a layered view on religious movements not typically seen through feminist lenses.
- “As a feminist activist… I was taken aback by characterizations in [Hall’s] article” (p. 2).

📚 6. Critical Race Theory

Exposing Racialized Logic in Liberal Discourse: By showing how terms like “ethnic absolutism” reproduce racialized hierarchies, Mahmood’s work contributes to analyses of race, religion, and power in global frameworks.
- “It is quite surprising… that someone with Hall’s familiarity with racist practices… could revert to such forms of argumentation” (p. 2).

Examples of Critiques Through “Cultural Studies And Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood

Literary Work	Critique Through Mahmood’s Lens
Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart	• Critique Eurocentric views of African tradition as “backward” by analyzing how colonial narratives dismiss Igbo cultural logic. • Resist symptomatic readings that reduce traditionalism to irrationality. • Apply Mahmood’s call for “historically specific and culturally nuanced analysis” (p. 2).
Orhan Pamuk – Snow	• Investigate the portrayal of Islamic identity not as fundamentalist but as politically articulated within modernity. • Engage Mahmood’s critique of labeling Muslim actors as anti-modern (p. 7–8). • Highlight how Eurocentric binaries (secular/religious) flatten cultural complexity.
Toni Morrison – Beloved	• Use Mahmood’s framework to analyze how African-American cultural memory is treated seriously, unlike non-Western identities often dismissed as “ethnic absolutism.” • Show how Morrison resists modernization narratives and centers “Othered” histories. • Connect to Mahmood’s call to engage political-cultural traditions on their own terms (p. 7).

Criticism Against “Cultural Studies And Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood

🔹 Overgeneralization of Stuart Hall’s Arguments

Critics may argue that Mahmood oversimplifies Hall’s nuanced approach by attributing to him a binary framework he is actually trying to deconstruct.

Her reading could be seen as too literal or dismissive of Hall’s intention to critically engage, not essentialize, political movements.

🔹 Limited Consideration of the Dangers within Ethno-Religious Movements

While Mahmood critiques the West’s dismissal of Islamic and ethnic movements, critics may point out that she underplays the internal authoritarian or violent tendencies in some of these movements.

This could risk romanticizing resistance without fully acknowledging its possible regressive or exclusionary elements.

🔹 Underestimation of Cultural Studies’ Reflexivity

Some may argue that cultural studies, especially Hall’s work, is already deeply self-critical and reflexive.

Mahmood might be seen as not giving enough credit to the internal debates within the discipline that already question Eurocentrism.

🔹 Feminist Blind Spots

Although Mahmood’s work is informed by her feminist activism, critics may question her lack of sustained engagement with how gender and sexuality are shaped within the religious movements she defends.

Does her argument sufficiently account for women’s rights and minority issues within those movements?

🔹 High Theoretical Abstraction

Mahmood’s engagement with ideology, modernity, and discourse can be seen as densely theoretical, which may distance her critique from practical political analysis or policy relevance.

Representative Quotations from “Cultural Studies And Ethnic Absolutism” by Saba Mahmood with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation
“Certain parts of the world… continue to occupy the paradigmatic status of backward cultural Others…”	Mahmood critiques how even progressive academic discourse reproduces colonial hierarchies by casting regions like the Middle East and Eastern Europe as inherently backward.
“Arguments made with a progressive political agenda… converge epistemologically and argumentatively with those of the conservative right…”	She exposes how leftist or liberal critiques can unintentionally replicate conservative frameworks when they rely on Eurocentric assumptions.
“Hall’s use of the ‘big and small nations’ trope merits some attention…”	Mahmood criticizes Hall’s terminology for reinforcing ideological hierarchies rooted in colonial and Western nationalist discourses.
“To reduce a wide range of socio-political movements… to a substratum of religious dogmatism… is analytically problematic…”	She objects to the sweeping categorization of diverse religious and political movements as mere expressions of fundamentalism.
“Symptomatic analyses… fail to take these movements seriously as political challenges…”	Mahmood argues that viewing religious and ethnic movements as symptoms of dysfunction ignores their real political engagement and ideological depth.
“Could Pakistani society… be analyzed by its ‘ethnic and/or religious absolutist tradition’…?”	She challenges simplistic cultural diagnoses by urging readers to consider the geopolitical context behind movements in countries like Pakistan.
“Mobility is not merely an event itself, but a moment in the subsumption of one act by another…”	Quoting Talal Asad, she critiques romanticized notions of migration and hybridity, suggesting they often reflect coercive power structures.
“Perhaps if we were to be faithful to the message cultural studies has presented…”	Mahmood calls on the field of cultural studies to return to its critical mission of contextual, anti-essentialist analysis.
“The universalist project initiated by Europeans has been reinvented by other cultures…”	She acknowledges that modernity is being reshaped by non-Western cultures and stresses the need to study its diverse articulations.
“It is quite surprising that someone with Hall’s familiarity… could revert to such forms of argumentation…”	Mahmood expresses disappointment at Hall’s apparent reliance on reductive tropes, despite his anti-racist intellectual legacy.

“Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg & Bryan G. Behrenshausen: Summary and Critique

“Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg and Bryan G. Behrenshausen first appeared in 2016 in the journal Cultural Studies.

Introduction: “Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg & Bryan G. Behrenshausen

“Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg and Bryan G. Behrenshausen first appeared in 2016 in the journal Cultural Studies (DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2016.1173476). This significant contribution advances a nuanced approach to affect theory by moving beyond the simplistic binary of affect versus representation. Instead, the authors argue for an understanding of affect as intrinsic to complex semiotic and a-signifying regimes within cultural formations, especially through Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “collective assemblages of enunciation.” Grossberg and Behrenshausen explore how affect functions as an integral component of conjunctures—historical and political configurations of power and resistance—emphasizing multiplicity, hybridity, and contextuality. The paper proposes a reframing of Guattari’s “mixed semiotics” to illuminate the layered and hybrid nature of affective formations, particularly in relation to political movements from the 1960s to the present. Within literary theory and cultural studies, their work critically repositions affect as neither outside of nor reducible to symbolic systems, offering instead a dynamic topology that integrates discursive, material, and experiential dimensions of meaning-making and resistance.

Summary of “Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg & Bryan G. Behrenshausen

🧭 Introduction: Reframing Affect in Cultural Studies

Grossberg’s Intellectual Motivation:
- Reflects on 40 years of work with affect to better understand the political potentials of culture and popular movements.
- Highlights dissatisfaction with existing theories like semiotics and ideology to explain students’ engagement with music.
- “I came to ‘affect’, then, not in the context of a theoretical debate… but rather as a tool in the service of a political–analytic problem.”

The ‘Wrong Algebra’ of Politics:
- Draws from What a Way to Run a Railroad (1988): “Could it be that we cannot solve the political questions we’re puzzling over because we’re using the wrong kind of algebra?”
- Developed an eclectic framework from thinkers like Williams, Heidegger, Freud, Ricoeur, and Deleuze and Guattari.

🎵 Affect and Popular Culture

Music as a Political Assemblage:
- Popular music functioned as a space for affective and political intensities during the 1960s.
- “Affect was that which provided the sense of coherence… that essays to give life a sense of being a lived totality.”
Beyond Signification:
- Argues affect should not be separated from cultural formations but understood as part of a complex multiplicity.
- “The point was not to separate affect out… but to add… always to see the complexity.”

📚 Critique of the Field of Affect Studies

Fragmentation and Fetishization:
- Notes that affect has become a “magical signifier” lacking consensus or conceptual rigor.
- “There does not appear to be a common project… instead, we are faced with a field organized into ‘camps’…”
Multiplicity Without Conceptualization:
- Warns against sliding across different dimensions of affect (ontological, corporeal, subjective) without clear articulation.

🧪 Towards an Analytics of Affect

Guattari’s Mixed Semiotics:
- Uses Guattari’s schema to map “sign behaviours” including:
  - Signifying semiotics: Circulate meaning through representation.
  - A-signifying semiotics: Modulate material conditions directly, “flush with the material.”
  - A-semiotic encodings: E.g., genetic codes that function without meaning.
Diagrammatic Production of Reality:
- Uses Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas of milieu, territory, and semiotic substance to explain layered realities:
  - Milieu: Organized material space.
  - Territory: Lived experience.
  - Semiotic Substance: Cultural or discursive formations.

🌍 Mapping Expression: Hybrid Enunciative Assemblages

Plateaus of Enunciation:
- Culture operates across nested plateaus:
  - From unorganized matter to organized cultural expressions.
- Assemblages include refrains (organizing rhythms), signals (triggers), and semiotic regimes (meaning systems).
Multiplicity of Semiotic Regimes:
- Opposes binary of signifying vs. a-signifying regimes.
- Embraces a spectrum: “We would seriously multiply the forms… regimes of passion, mood, feeling, and attachment.”

🌐 Affective Topographies and Conjunctures

Comparing 1960s and 2010s:
- 1960s: “Organization of optimism”
- 2010s: “Organization of pessimism”
- “An affective topography is like a ‘pea soup’ fog… specific modes of living ‘feel’ natural and inescapable.”
Three Key Pressure Zones:

Difference: From celebrated diversity to cynical relativism.

Judgment: From totalizing alienation to fundamentalist certainty.
Temporality: From hopeful futurism to anxious, immobilized present.

📌 Conclusion: Toward Political Reassembly

Calls for a rigorous and relational framework to understand affect in context.
Advocates for “conjunctural analysis” rather than simplistic emotional categories.
“The task of the left is not to tell people what they should feel, but… to figure out how such feelings do change and can be changed.”

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg & Bryan G. Behrenshausen

Term/Concept	Explanation	Usage in Article
Affect	A field of intensity, texture, rhythm, and embodiment that exceeds or precedes signification.	Used to understand how cultural formations are lived and felt; not simply emotional or representational but constitutive of lived realities.
Conjuncture	A specific historical and cultural configuration of power, struggle, and meaning.	The authors analyze how affect operates within and across conjunctures, shaping and being shaped by political and cultural formations.
Collective Assemblage of Enunciation	A machinic or expressive system that produces meaning, behavior, or feeling; derived from Deleuze and Guattari.	Used to theorize how signs and affects operate together to create complex cultural formations and realities.
Signifying Semiotics	Traditional systems of meaning-making based on representation, language, and signification.	Critiqued as limited and inadequate for analyzing affective dimensions of cultural life.
A-signifying Semiotics	Forms of sign behavior that do not rely on representation or meaning but work directly with intensities and triggers.	Highlighted as crucial for understanding how affect operates outside of traditional representational logic.
A-semiotic Encoding	Systems of formalization that organize the material world without relying on symbolic signification (e.g., genetic codes, algorithms).	Differentiated from semiotics to show how affect and power operate materially and autonomously.
Milieu	An organized material environment or field produced by diagrams and populated by bodies and capacities.	Seen as the precondition for territory and substance; the space of affective and material organization.
Territory	The lived space or structure of feeling that emerges from the milieu through expressive operations.	Describes how bodies inhabit, live, and navigate the world affectively.
Diagram	An abstract machine that organizes matter into content and expression.	Forms the basis of any actual configuration of material and affective reality.
Substance (Semiotic)	The materiality of discourse produced through semiotic regimes; an embodied, expressive reality shaped by codes and affect.	Used to distinguish cultural and discursive materiality from purely physical matter.
Refrain	An expressive rhythm that stabilizes and territorializes affective experience.	Acts as a structuring device in the formation of affective territories.
Structure of Feeling	Raymond Williams’ concept of the lived, affective quality of experience within a specific conjuncture.	Central to Grossberg’s analysis of historical differences in political formations and cultural affects (e.g., 1960s optimism vs. 2010s pessimism).
Hybrid Enunciative Formation	A complex assemblage where multiple regimes of signification and affect intersect and co-function.	Employed to describe real cultural conditions where signals, affects, signs, and ideologies converge.
Cultural Studies	An interdisciplinary field focused on analyzing culture as a site of power, identity, and everyday life.	The grounding framework for the article, which emphasizes complexity, relationality, and conjunctural analysis of affect.

Contribution of “Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg & Bryan G. Behrenshausen to Literary Theory/Theories

1. Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Contribution: Challenges the limits of signification-based models (e.g., Saussurean and Lacanian semiotics).
Reference: The authors argue that “semiological signs interpose themselves between material conditions and consciousness,” leading to a self-referential system that cannot account for affect (p. 7).

Innovation: Introduces a-signifying semiotics as modalities beyond linguistic sign systems, disrupting structuralist models.

2. Marxist Literary Theory

Contribution: Reframes Marxist ideas of ideology and cultural production through affect and conjunctural analysis.

Reference: The article insists that “conjunctures are not reducible to ideology or economy alone but are produced through complex affective and discursive assemblages” (p. 3, 5).
Innovation: Offers a nuanced reading of power and hegemony that includes structures of feeling and affective topographies, expanding classical Marxist base-superstructure models.

3. Psychoanalytic Theory

Contribution: Moves beyond Freudian/Lacanian models by including bodily intensities and rhythms unaccounted for by subject-based psychoanalysis.
Reference: Grossberg critiques how affect is “not necessarily, not immediately or directly… about matters of signification, representation and subjectification” (p. 2).
Innovation: Draws from Deleuze and Guattari’s anti-Oedipal framework, challenging repression-based models of the psyche.

4. Feminist and Queer Theories

Contribution: Acknowledges feminist, queer, and anti-racist traditions as vital genealogies of affect theory.
Reference: Grossberg states, “Feminist and queer theory, Black, anti-racist, diasporic and de/post-colonial writings… have produced vital genealogies that… interrupt dominant traditions” (p. 2).

Innovation: Calls for an intersectional and situated theorization of affect that attends to embodiment, sensation, and power.

5. Postcolonial Theory

Contribution: Suggests that affective mappings can highlight the residual, emergent, and dominant elements of postcolonial conjunctures.

Reference: The article connects affective topographies to “anticolonial struggles” and insists they must be read within their genealogical complexity (p. 2–3).
Innovation: Opens up space for analyzing the affective dimensions of colonial histories and postcolonial agency beyond textual representation.

6. Cultural Materialism / New Historicism

Contribution: Deepens historical analysis by integrating affect as constitutive of cultural production and experience.
Reference: Emphasizes the “affective conditions of the possibility of social change” across different historical moments (e.g., 1960s vs. 2010s) (p. 23).
Innovation: Advances a conjunctural methodology that combines discourse, affect, and historical specificity.

7. Reader-Response / Reception Theory

Contribution: Challenges the privileging of interpretation by focusing on embodied, non-representational responses to cultural texts and practices.
Reference: Grossberg observes that students’ experiences of music “did not find any of the tools in my critical and theoretical toolbox… very satisfying” (p. 1).

Innovation: Calls for theories that can account for intensity, sensation, and affective engagement in reading/listening practices.

Examples of Critiques Through “Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg & Bryan G. Behrenshausen

Literary Work	Critique via Cultural Studies + Deleuze-Guattari Framework	Key Concepts Applied	Analytical Focus
Toni Morrison’s Beloved	Examines how trauma and memory operate through affective topographies and a-signifying intensities beyond narrative representation.	Structures of Feeling, Territory, A-signifying Semiotics	The bodily and spatial intensities of slavery’s legacy experienced by Sethe and the house itself.
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway	Explores the assemblage of enunciation that fuses internal monologue, urban space, and temporal distortion as affective expressions of postwar life.	Collective Assemblages of Enunciation, Milieu, Refrain	Rhythmic urban modernity and temporal fragmentation as lived affect in Clarissa’s experience.
Albert Camus’ The Stranger	Interprets Meursault’s emotional detachment as a semiotic regime shaped by signaletic encodings that exclude normative affective responses.	Affective Disarticulation, Signal, A-semiotic Encoding	Alienation as a misalignment between affective regimes and cultural expectations of meaning.
Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower	Analyzes shifting affective relations under climate crisis and racial capitalism through the diagrammatic shaping of survivalist assemblages.	Diagram, Conjuncture, Affect, Multiplicity	Reframing dystopia as the intensification of contemporary affective and structural conjunctures.

Criticism Against “Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg & Bryan G. Behrenshausen

Overly Abstract and Dense Language
The article’s theoretical language—drawing from Deleuze, Guattari, Spinoza, and others—can be difficult to access, limiting its practical use in everyday cultural analysis or pedagogy.
Lack of Empirical Application
Despite rich theorization, the paper offers minimal concrete examples or sustained analysis of cultural texts, making it hard to see how the framework operates analytically.

Excessive Theoretical Syncretism
The blending of multiple philosophical traditions (Deleuze/Guattari, Spinoza, Foucault, Stuart Hall) may result in conceptual incoherence or a lack of theoretical precision.
Vague Definitions of Key Terms (e.g., Affect)
While criticizing affect studies for conceptual vagueness, the authors themselves do not clearly or consistently define affect across the article.
Limited Engagement with Contemporary Affect Theory
The article critiques affect studies broadly without deeply engaging recent contributions (e.g., Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Brian Massumi) on their own terms.

Neglect of Race, Gender, and Postcolonial Specificities
Although the authors briefly acknowledge feminist and postcolonial work, these are not meaningfully integrated into their analysis, risking a flattening of affective differences across contexts.
Conjunctural Analysis as Underdeveloped
While invoking conjunctural analysis, the article offers little guidance on how to operationalize it methodologically in relation to affective assemblages.

Representative Quotations from “Cultural Studies And Deleuze-Guattari, Part 2: From Affect To Conjunctures” by Lawrence Grossberg & Bryan G. Behrenshausen with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation
“Affect was that which provided the sense of coherence, consistency or coalescence… that transforms the fact of life… into the lived.”	This highlights affect as a force that shapes lived experience, beyond signification, anchoring cultural studies’ concern with the everyday and embodied realities.
“The point was to add… add… add… always to see the complexity…”	Grossberg critiques reductive theories of affect, advocating for an additive, complex method to account for multiple forms of signification and expression.
“I came to ‘affect’… as a tool in the service of a political–analytic problem.”	Indicates affect’s pragmatic origin in cultural analysis, especially of popular music and youth culture, emphasizing its political and methodological role.
“Affective topographies… come and go, slide into, transform and are transformed by other equally complex planes…”	Introduces the spatial metaphor of ‘affective topographies’ to map changing emotional-political landscapes in a conjunctural framework.
“There is no shared definition… instead, we are faced with a field organized into ‘camps’…”	A critique of affect studies’ fragmentation, calling for theoretical clarity and productive agonism across perspectives.
“The task of the left is… understanding how people do feel, and then trying to figure out how such feelings do change and can be changed.”	Echoing Sedgwick, this quotation centers affective analysis on lived emotional states as the basis for progressive politics.
“Collective assemblages of enunciation… are actually almost always hybrid formations.”	Asserts that expressive formations are complex blends of semiotic, a-signifying, and a-semiotic processes—resisting oversimplification.
“The result is a structure of feeling that I have called fundamentalism…”	Describes contemporary affective conditions characterized by rigid certainty and extreme polarization, affecting both right and left.
“Cultural reality is constituted by the condensation and interaction of various regimes…”	Emphasizes the hybrid and stratified nature of culture, involving overlapping material, expressive, and discursive formations.
“Affective topography is like a ‘pea soup’ fog…”	A vivid metaphor for how affective environments envelop individuals, shaping the limits of perception, action, and resistance.

“Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske: Summary and Critique

“Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach to Watching Television” by John Fiske first appeared in 1992 in the journal Poetics, Volume 21, published by North-Holland (pp. 345–359).

Introduction: “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske

“Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach to Watching Television” by John Fiske first appeared in 1992 in the journal Poetics, Volume 21, published by North-Holland (pp. 345–359). Fiske advances a cultural studies perspective on television audiences, emphasizing the dynamic and participatory role of viewers in the production of meaning. Using the example of the controversial sitcom Married… with Children and its reception by a group of university students, Fiske explores how audiences form “social formations” around shared practices of watching television, thereby transforming media consumption into a site of cultural production. He contrasts this ethnographic, systemic approach with the more positivist methods of audience measurement and psychological effects studies. Central to his thesis is the concept of “audiencing”—viewing not as passive reception but as an active, interpretive, and often oppositional cultural act. The importance of this article lies in its challenge to traditional notions of the audience, its reconceptualization of cultural engagement, and its broader implications for media theory, particularly in its alignment with discourse analysis and structuralist theories of culture (Fiske, 1992).

Summary of “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske

Audiencing as Cultural Practice: Fiske introduces “audiencing” as an active, culturally embedded process by which viewers engage with television content. Audiences “produce, through lived experience, their own sense of their social identities and social relations” (Fiske, 1992, p. 354).
Particularity vs. Generality: He contrasts cultural studies’ emphasis on the particularity of audience experiences with positivist approaches that seek generality: “one of the defining differences between the two approaches is the particularity of the cultural studies’ audience against the generality of the positivist one” (p. 346).

Case Study – Married… with Children: Fiske uses the show Married… with Children as a case study to examine how a teenage audience formed a social formation around watching the show. They used its carnivalesque satire to resist dominant “family values” (pp. 347–350).
The Carnivalesque and Resistance: The show’s grotesque representations of the Bundy family inverted normative family ideals. Fiske writes that the show “mocked and inverted” the “normative family in which gender and age differences are contained within a consensual harmony” (p. 348).
Teenage Viewership as Social Formation: The audience is conceptualized as a “social formation,” not merely a demographic. These formations are “formed and dissolved more fluidly according to contextual conditions” and “identified by what its members do rather than by what they are” (p. 351).

Cultural Conflict and the Power-Bloc: The controversy surrounding the show (notably Terry Rakolta’s campaign) illustrates tensions between conservative cultural forces and youth culture. Fiske notes, “the creation of gaps is enough to provoke the power-bloc to rush to repair its system” (p. 352).
Struggles over Audience Definition: Competing institutions (e.g., Fox, conservative activists) define the audience differently: “Fox and Rakolta struggle over the construction of ‘the teenager’” (p. 354). This reflects broader ideological contests over identity and values.
Systemic vs. Positivist Models: Fiske critiques positivist methods for being “descriptive,” lacking a model of change or audience agency. In contrast, systemic (cultural studies) models “generate the practices by which they are used and are, in their turn, modified by those practices” (p. 357).

The Analyst’s Role: Cultural analysis does not claim objectivity. Fiske asserts that “extraction and return are productive not objective practices” and emphasizes the analyst’s modest role in contributing to understanding rather than revealing definitive truth (p. 355).
Meaning as Social Circulation: Ultimately, Fiske sees culture as a “maelstrom” of circulating meanings. “Audiencing is part of this flow and eddy… sometimes part of the mainstream flow, sometimes part of an upstream eddy” (p. 359).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske

Concept	Explanation	Usage in the Article	Page
Audiencing	Audience engagement as an active cultural process through which social meanings and identities are produced.	“Watching the program involved a series of interactive comments… The show enabled them to engage…”	354
Carnivalesque	Subversive and grotesque humor that inverts norms of gender, class, and family.	“The carnivalesque offense of the show runs along a continuum in which offensive bodies extend…”	348
Social Formation	A group formed by shared cultural practices rather than fixed demographic categories.	“This particular audience… is best understood not as a social category… but as a social formation.”	351
Power-Bloc	Strategic alliance of dominant social interests working to maintain ideological and cultural norms.	“The creation of gaps is enough to provoke the power-bloc to rush to repair its system.”	353
Cultural Studies vs. Positivism	Contrasts interpretive, audience-centered methods with positivist, empirical audience measurement.	“The particularity of the cultural studies’ audience against the generality of the positivist one.”	346
Systemic vs. Representative	Cultural systems are dynamic and generative; positivist models are descriptive and fixed.	“Systemic theories of structure go further… they are modified by those practices.”	357
Excorporation	Subordinate groups appropriating and reinterpreting elements of dominant culture for their own ends.	“Scan the products of the culture industries looking for elements which they can excorporate…”	354
Cultural Analyst	One who interprets cultural practices to theorize the circulation of meanings.	“The cultural analyst has to find ‘sites of analysis’ where this circulation becomes accessible…”	353
Social Circulation of Meanings	Culture as the ongoing struggle over meanings within a social structure.	“Culture is the social circulation of meanings, pleasures, and values…”	353
The Active Audience	Viewers are seen as participants who negotiate meanings rather than passively absorb them.	“Audience activity is an engagement in social relations across social inequality…”	358

Contribution of “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske to Literary Theory/Theories

🔵 1. Reframing the Concept of the Audience

Fiske introduces “audiencing” as an active, interpretive practice rather than passive reception, significantly reshaping media and literary reception theory.

“Watching the program involved a series of interactive comments… The show enabled them to engage in and reconfigure the age politics of their relations” (Fiske, 1992, p. 350).

This undermines traditional notions of the audience as a homogeneous mass or as solely an object of empirical measurement.

🟢 2. Emphasizing Lived Experience in Textual Interpretation

Fiske aligns with cultural materialist and reader-response approaches by focusing on how meaning is produced in the interaction between text and viewer’s lived context.

“Audience activity is an engagement in social relations across social inequality” (p. 358).

His work supports the idea that meaning is not embedded in the text but arises from use.

🔴 3. Cultural Studies as a Methodological Alternative

Fiske promotes cultural studies as a systemic and theoretical model over positivist, data-driven research, directly influencing literary theory’s methods of interpretation.

“Systemic theories of structure go further than do positivist ones… they are modified by those practices” (p. 357).

Encourages literary critics to view cultural products as sites of ideological struggle rather than isolated texts.

🟣 4. Integration of Discourse Theory and Structuration

Drawing from Foucault and discourse theory, Fiske treats meaning as discursively constructed within cultural systems—parallel to poststructuralist literary theory.

“The system is produced in part… by its practices, as the practices are produced… by the system” (p. 357).

Literary theory benefits from this model as it parallels how texts produce and are produced by cultural discourse.

🟡 5. Subordination, Resistance, and Excorporation

Contributing to theories of resistance in literary studies (e.g., Marxist and postcolonial theory), Fiske’s concept of excorporation shows how audiences appropriate mass culture.

“Scan the products of the culture industries looking for elements which they can excorporate…” (p. 354).

This empowers subaltern voices in interpretive contexts and critiques cultural hegemony.

🟠 6. Text-Audience Reciprocity and Systematicity

Fiske advances a theory where the audience is not the result of the text but vice versa—challenging structuralist one-way models.

“The text is an effect of this audience… and the skill of its producers lies in their ability to respond” (p. 358).

This reciprocity opens new pathways for literary theory to reconsider the origin of textual meaning.

Examples of Critiques Through “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske

Literary Work	Audiencing-Based Critique	Relation to Fiske’s Concepts
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen	Readers from different gender or class positions might interpret the irony and marriage norms as empowering or limiting.	Social Formation; Gender/Class-Based Audiencing; Excorporation of Marriage Ideals
	Teenage or feminist audiences may mock the pursuit of marriage as outdated or restrictive.
Beloved by Toni Morrison	African American or postcolonial readers may ‘audience’ the novel as resistance to historical erasure.	Cultural Resistance; Historical Reinterpretation; Social Circulation of Meaning
	Emphasizes collective trauma and memory over individual suffering, shaped by cultural and historical identity.
1984 by George Orwell	Activist or younger readers may identify with surveillance themes, using the novel to critique modern digital politics.	Systemic Power; Audience as Interpretive Agent; Text as Effect of Reader Context
	The novel becomes a site for articulating fears of control and political manipulation rooted in current realities.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald	Outsider or youth audiences may read Gatsby’s wealth as critique, not aspiration.	Carnivalesque Inversion; Class Identity; Textual Meaning as Viewer-Constructed
	The glitz of the Jazz Age is reinterpreted as a symbol of exclusion and superficiality.

Criticism Against “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske

🔸 Lack of Empirical Rigor
Critics argue that Fiske’s rejection of positivist methodologies leads to a lack of verifiable or generalizable data. His examples, such as the student viewing group, are anecdotal and not representative.
🔸 Overemphasis on Audience Agency
Some scholars claim that Fiske overstates the power of audiences to reinterpret or resist media texts, downplaying the influence of dominant ideologies embedded in media systems.
🔸 Vagueness of ‘Social Formation’
The concept of social formations is seen by some as too fluid or undefined, lacking methodological clarity for consistent application across studies.

🔸 Limited Scope of ‘Audiencing’
Critics point out that Fiske’s focus on subversive or resistant readings (like youth mocking family norms) may overlook more complicit or conservative audience practices.
🔸 Dismissal of Media Effects Research
Fiske’s dismissal of effects-based models is seen by some as too sweeping, ignoring valuable findings about how media influences behavior and attitudes.
🔸 Elitism of the Cultural Analyst
Some scholars note a tension in Fiske’s work: while promoting bottom-up meaning-making, the analyst still plays a top-down role in selecting and interpreting cultural practices.

🔸 Underdeveloped Account of Power
While Fiske discusses power blocs, some critiques argue that he doesn’t offer a sufficiently nuanced theory of how power structures constrain or enable audience interpretation.

Representative Quotations from “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation
“Culture is the social circulation of meanings, pleasures, and values” (Fiske, 1992, p. 353).	Fiske conceptualizes culture not as static artifacts but as dynamic processes of shared meanings in society.
“Audiencing is part of this process” (Fiske, 1992, p. 345).	Watching television is not passive consumption but active participation in cultural meaning-making.
“The audience stops being a social category and becomes a process” (Fiske, 1992, p. 354).	Fiske rejects demographic-based definitions of audiences in favor of audience behavior and practices.
“The program enabled them to mock the differences between their parents now and themselves” (Fiske, 1992, p. 350).	Teen viewers use the show to challenge generational norms and express identity.
“This group of people who came together to ‘audience’ the show is best understood…as a social formation” (Fiske, 1992, p. 351).	The audience functions as a temporary community organized by shared cultural practices, not fixed social identities.
“The carnivalesque can do no more than open up spaces; it is upon what fills them that we should base our analysis” (Fiske, 1992, p. 352).	Fiske emphasizes potentiality over outcomes in subversive or transgressive media content.
“In calling the text an effect of the audience, I am attempting to score a point in a debate” (Fiske, 1992, p. 358).	Fiske reverses the traditional hierarchy, arguing that audiences shape media texts as much as they are shaped by them.
“The relationship between them is not one of cause and effect…but one of systematicity” (Fiske, 1992, p. 358).	He argues for a non-linear, reciprocal relationship between texts and audiences.
“The analyst’s experience of that mouthful is quite different from that of the young man who took the bite in the first place” (Fiske, 1992, p. 355).	Highlights the gap between academic interpretation and lived cultural experience.
“Systems and practices both structure each other and are structured by each other” (Fiske, 1992, p. 357).	Fiske draws from structuration theory to explain the mutual shaping of culture and social practices.

“Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg: Summary and Critique

“Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg first appeared in Cultural Studies on August 6, 2013, published by Routledge.

Introduction: “Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg

“Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg first appeared in Cultural Studies on August 6, 2013, published by Routledge. In this seminal essay, Grossberg offers a critical and pedagogical engagement with the theoretical complexities of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, exploring their relevance to and potential contributions within cultural studies. Rather than merely celebrating their influence, Grossberg challenges the assumption that Deleuze and Guattari have straightforwardly transformed cultural theory, instead urging for a nuanced, conjuncturally grounded appropriation of their work. He outlines three discursive vocabularies—assemblages, lines, and machines—that define the contours of their philosophical ontology, stressing the importance of maintaining the specificity and immanence of theory in relation to context. Grossberg also critiques reductive applications of Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts that fetishize molecular politics or abstract resistance, advocating for a more rigorous articulation between ontological thought and empirical complexity. The article is significant in literary and cultural theory for reframing how Deleuze and Guattari might be productively mobilized within a politically and analytically committed cultural studies project (Grossberg, 2013).

Summary of “Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg

Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy Resists Simplification and Demands Pedagogical Nuance

Deleuze and Guattari’s work is conceptually rich but complex, resisting tidy overviews. Grossberg acknowledges the challenge in teaching it due to their fluid vocabulary and intertextual structure: “You cannot say that the various appearances of concepts like assemblage or territorialization are simple repetitions” (p. 3). Their ontology is rooted in immanence, multiplicity, and a refusal of transcendence, privileging relations of exteriority over fixed identities (p. 2).

Three Discursive Frameworks: Assemblages, Lines, and Machines

Grossberg identifies three interwoven but distinct discourses in Deleuze and Guattari’s work:

Assemblages: Assemblages conceptualize collectivities as “multiplicities rather than as unity” (p. 4). Three forms—arborescent, radicle, and rhizomatic—represent hierarchical, deconstructed-yet-still-unified, and fully non-hierarchical organization respectively. The rhizome “has no centre, hierarchy or teleology” and is a map for creative experimentation (p. 5).

Lines: Fundamental to their ontology is becoming, expressed through lines of intensity and transformation. These include connective, disjunctive, and conjunctive lines, describing relations that respectively create, differentiate, and amplify (p. 6). Lines of flight express deterritorialization, resisting structure and signification (p. 8).
Machines: Machines mediate the actualization of the virtual. Unlike mechanistic devices, abstract machines, coding machines, and territorializing machines organize and produce realities without requiring human intention (p. 9). “Reality is produced… through a series of machines” (p. 9).

Risks of Misusing Deleuze and Guattari in Cultural Studies

Grossberg critiques the uncritical adoption of Deleuze–Guattarian ideas in cultural studies, warning that many interpretations turn concepts into totalizing frameworks. Diagnoses of “biopower,” “affect,” and “the society of control” often prefigure their conclusions, using theory to overshadow empirical analysis: “Empirical realities do make their appearance, but their promise is almost always guaranteed in advance” (p. 13).

Conflating Ontological and Political Discourses Undermines Analysis

Grossberg argues that collapsing distinctions between concepts like rhizome, virtual, and deterritorialization reduces Deleuze–Guattarian theory to an ethics of refusal or pure resistance. This “fetishizes particular kinds of resistance…isolating it from questions of adequacy and effectiveness” (p. 15). A refusal to engage with institutional structures can lead to politically impotent or nihilistic positions.

Cultural Studies Should Use Deleuze and Guattari as Tools, Not Templates

Instead of viewing their philosophy as cultural studies, Grossberg argues for their use as conceptual tools within the conjunctural method. “Ontology does not guarantee the truth or utility of its descriptions, and critical work is never simply a matter of offering ontological assertions” (p. 17). Cultural studies must “analyse the configurations of the actual and describe the processes…by which it…is being actualized” (p. 17).

Multiplicity and Immanence Are Vital, But Must Be Concretely Engaged

Grossberg highlights Deleuze and Guattari’s insistence on multiplicities, both in structure and in thought, as essential to escaping binary logics: “Wherever we think there are singularities or binaries, we need to think multiplicities” (p. 19). The political and analytical task is to map, not merely diagnose, complexity—working toward actionable transformation.

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg

Concept	Description	Reference
Assemblage (Agencement)	A mode of organizing multiplicity that resists unity; includes types such as arborescent (tree), radicle, and rhizome.	p. 5–6
Rhizome	A non-hierarchical, acentered network of relations and connections; used as a metaphor for decentralized structures and thought.	p. 6
Deterritorialization	A process of undoing organization, escaping structure, and returning to the virtual; can be relative or absolute.	p. 8–9
Lines of Flight	Paths of escape from structured reality; associated with transformation, escape, and resistance.	p. 8
Becoming	Core ontological term emphasizing transformation and relationality over fixed identity.	p. 6
Immanence	The philosophical stance that everything exists on a single plane of reality, with no transcendence separating condition from conditioned.	p. 2, 7
Virtual and Actual	Virtual refers to potential relational capacities; actual refers to specific instantiations. Both coexist on the same plane of immanence.	p. 7–8
Abstract Machine	The diagrammatic force that organizes multiplicities and actualizes the virtual; constructs strata of expression and content.	p. 10
Stratification	The process through which expression and content are constructed; part of how the abstract machine produces the actual.	p. 10
Expression and Content	Dual components of a stratum: expression transforms, content is acted upon.	p. 10
Machinic Assemblages	A process of actualization that operates without reliance on human subjectivity; avoids anthropocentric constructionism.	p. 9
Conjuncture	A historically specific configuration of forces; central to cultural studies analysis.	p. 13
Multiplicity	A mode of thinking that resists binaries and unities, favoring complex, heterogeneous relations.	p. 3, 17
Politics of Theory	The notion that theoretical commitments have political consequences and must be tested against empirical realities.	p. 1, 13
Ontology of Multiplicity	Deleuze and Guattari’s commitment to non-Kantian, anti-transcendental, relational ontology.	p. 2–3
Territorialization	The process of fixing, structuring, and organizing; in opposition to deterritorialization.	p. 8
Coding and Decoding Machines	Mechanisms that organize difference (coding) and disrupt structure (decoding); part of how the real is constructed.	p. 10–11
Affect	Capacity to affect and be affected; central to understanding subjectivity and politics in Deleuze–Guattarian theory.	p. 6
Ethics of Immanence	A non-fascist life rooted in becoming, complexity, and situated critique; avoids universal prescriptions.	p. 15

Contribution of “Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg to Literary Theory/Theories

Literary Theory	Grossberg’s Contribution	Reference
Poststructuralism	Grossberg engages with Deleuze and Guattari’s rejection of fixed structures and identities, emphasizing fluidity and multiplicity in meaning-making, which aligns with poststructuralist critiques of stable signification.	p. 2–3
Deconstruction	By discussing concepts like deterritorialization and lines of flight, Grossberg highlights processes that deconstruct established meanings and structures, resonating with deconstructive approaches in literary analysis.	p. 8–9
Reader-Response Theory	The emphasis on immanence and the active role of assemblages in creating meaning suggests a participatory process akin to reader-response theory, where interpretation is co-constructed by the reader’s engagement with the text.	p. 6–7
Cultural Studies	Grossberg advocates for a contextual and situated approach to theory, emphasizing the importance of analyzing texts within their cultural and political conjunctures, which is foundational to cultural studies methodologies.	p. 1, 13
Postcolonial Theory	The discussion on deterritorialization and reterritorialization offers insights into the dynamics of cultural displacement and hybridity, central themes in postcolonial literary analysis.	p. 8–9
Feminist Theory	By challenging hierarchical and binary structures through the concept of multiplicity, Grossberg’s interpretation aligns with feminist critiques of patriarchal binaries and supports more inclusive and diverse understandings of identity and experience.	p. 3, 17
Psychoanalytic Criticism	The exploration of desire, affect, and becoming in Deleuze and Guattari’s work, as discussed by Grossberg, provides alternative frameworks to traditional psychoanalytic interpretations of subjectivity and unconscious processes in literature.	p. 6
Marxist Literary Criticism	Grossberg’s analysis of machines and machinic assemblages as producers of reality can be related to Marxist critiques of production and labor, offering a nuanced understanding of how economic structures influence cultural texts.	p. 9–10

Examples of Critiques Through “Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg

1. Beloved by Toni Morrison

Assemblage Theory (Rhizomatic Structure)
- The novel operates as a rhizome, weaving memory, trauma, and identity without linear chronology.
- Characters like Sethe exist at the intersection of multiple temporalities and subjectivities (Grossberg, p. 4–5).
Affect and Desire
- The unspeakable trauma of slavery is expressed through affective intensities rather than rational discourse (p. 6).
- Beloved (the character) emerges as a becoming–ghost, embodying both absence and presence.

2. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Lines of Flight and Becoming
- Clarissa’s wandering through London represents a “line of flight” – a deterritorialization of bourgeois domestic identity (p. 7–8).
- Septimus’s mental state embodies the molecular and the affective, escaping Oedipal and rational structures.

Smooth and Striated Space
- The novel shifts between smooth experiential time (Bergsonian durée) and the striated order of societal expectations (p. 9).

3. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Territorialization and Deterritorialization
- Saleem Sinai’s narrative maps the shifting territorial identities of postcolonial India (p. 8–9).
- The novel deterritorializes linear national history, producing an assemblage of fragmented cultural narratives.

Multiplicities and Virtuality
- Saleem’s telepathic connection to other “midnight’s children” exemplifies virtual relationality – a field of unrealized potential (p. 7).

4. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

Abstract Machines and Stratification
- The poem acts as a coding machine that stratifies language and culture through fragmentation and quotation (p. 9–10).
- The interplay of expression and content challenges the reader to reconstruct meaning across multiple strata.

Rhizomatic Poetics
- Rejects arborescent structure; the poem connects heterogeneous voices and traditions, forming a cultural rhizome (p. 5).

Criticism Against “Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg

Over-Complexity and Accessibility
- The dense theoretical language and layered discourses may alienate readers unfamiliar with Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy or cultural studies (Grossberg, p. 2–3).
- Pedagogical challenges are acknowledged, yet the article does little to simplify or translate core ideas for broader readership.
Ambiguity in Political Commitments
- Critics may argue that Grossberg resists clearly aligning with either Deleuze–Guattarian molecular politics or traditional Marxist frameworks, potentially leading to theoretical indecisiveness (p. 13–14).
Insufficient Engagement with Opposing Theories
- While Grossberg critiques “fetishized” Deleuzean readings, he does not robustly engage with counter-philosophies (e.g., Badiou, object-oriented ontology) except to mention them briefly (p. 20 n2).

Conflation Risks Despite Warnings
- Though he warns against conflating rhizome/virtual/deterritorialization (p. 16), his own writing at times risks such collapses due to rapid transitions between vocabularies.
Underdeveloped Empirical Application
- Despite advocating for conjunctural analysis and empirical engagement, Grossberg’s article stays largely at the level of philosophical abstraction without applying concepts to concrete cultural texts (p. 16–17).
Dependence on Deleuze–Guattari without Sufficient Critique
- While cautious, Grossberg’s tone remains reverential, and he may be criticized for not fully questioning the limits or contradictions within Deleuze and Guattari’s own texts.

Potential Marginalization of Cultural Studies Origins
- By integrating high-theory, some may argue he shifts cultural studies too far from its roots in popular culture analysis, social activism, and grounded empirical work.

Representative Quotations from “Cultural Studies And Deleuze–Guattari, Part 1” by Lawrence Grossberg with Explanation

No.	Quotation	Explanation
1	“Cultural studies approaches theory as a necessary but not sufficient ‘detour’.”	Theory is a useful but incomplete tool; cultural studies demands contextual, conjunctural analysis rather than abstract application.
2	“It is relatively easy to specify the major ontological commitments that ground their radical effort to rewrite philosophy…”	Deleuze and Guattari aim to rethink ontology by challenging traditional metaphysics with concepts like immanence and multiplicity.
3	“An assemblage is a way of re-conceptualizing a notion of collectivity… as multiplicity rather than as unity.”	Assemblage theory redefines social organization without hierarchical or fixed structures, embracing complexity and heterogeneity.
4	“Lines of deterritorialization or flight are not simply matters of opposition… They are that which flees, escapes, eludes…”	Political change is not always oppositional; it can take the form of escape or deviation from dominant structures.
5	“Reality is made… precisely by making connections among the singularities, the multiplicities, the assemblages…”	Emphasizes a relational ontology where reality is continuously produced through dynamic, interconnected processes.
6	“The rhizome has no centre, hierarchy or teleology, no plan or intention.”	Rhizomes represent non-hierarchical, decentralized models of thought and social formations.
7	“Machines fail, lines of flight are always taking off… failure itself is, indeed, productive.”	Failure and breakdown are seen not as ends, but as generative forces for transformation and new possibilities.
8	“Ontology does not guarantee the truth or utility of its descriptions…”	Ontological claims must be tested through empirical and conjunctural analysis; they are not inherently valid.
9	“The concept is a tool the utility of which has to be constantly constructed and contested…”	Concepts should be deployed strategically and examined for their practical value in specific contexts.
10	“They offer a set of tools… for analysing the world as an ongoing construction…”	Deleuze and Guattari provide theoretical tools that aid in understanding and engaging with the world’s constant reconfiguration.

“Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka: Summary and Critique

“Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka first appeared in 1995 in New German Critique, No. 65, within the special issue on Cultural History/Cultural Studies.

Introduction: “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka

“Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka first appeared in 1995 in New German Critique, No. 65, within the special issue on Cultural History/Cultural Studies. This influential essay redefines the framework for understanding memory by distinguishing between “communicative memory”—short-term, everyday oral recollection—and “cultural memory”—a long-term, objectivized, and institutionally anchored form of memory that sustains a group’s cultural identity across generations. Drawing on Maurice Halbwachs and Aby Warburg, the authors argue that cultural memory is not biologically inherited but socially constructed and maintained through texts, rituals, symbols, and institutions. Their conceptualization is central to literary theory and cultural studies, emphasizing how literature, as a form of cultural memory, preserves and reactivates shared knowledge, values, and identity across time. The essay has become foundational in discussions about how cultures remember, how identity is shaped through narrative, and how literature functions not merely as aesthetic expression but as a medium of historical continuity and collective self-reflection.

Summary of “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka

• Introduction of Cultural vs. Communicative Memory

The authors distinguish cultural memory from communicative memory: “We define the concept of cultural memory through a double delimitation that distinguishes it: from ‘communicative’ or ‘everyday memory’… and from science, which does not have the characteristics of memory as it relates to a collective self-image” (Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 126).

Communicative memory is “based exclusively on everyday communications… characterized by a high degree of non-specialization, reciprocity of roles, thematic instability, and disorganization” (p. 127).

• Characteristics of Communicative Memory

It is limited in temporal scope: “this horizon does not extend more than eighty to… one hundred years into the past… three or four generations” (p. 128).

It lacks formal structure and permanence: “The communicative memory offers no fixed point… such fixity can only be achieved through a cultural formation” (p. 128).

• Transition from Communicative to Cultural Memory

The authors challenge Halbwachs’ view that objectified culture loses its memory function, asserting instead that memory persists through “objectivized culture and organized or ceremonial communication” (p. 128).

They introduce the idea of the “concretion of identity”—the stabilization of group identity through memory embedded in cultural forms (p. 129).

• Cultural Memory as Structured, Durable, and Identity-Forming

Cultural memory has a long temporal horizon: “Cultural memory has its fixed point; its horizon does not change with the passing of time” (p. 129).

It is anchored in symbolic forms: “texts, rites, monuments… form ‘islands of time,’… into memory spaces of ‘retrospective contemplativeness'” (p. 129).

• Six Key Features of Cultural Memory

Concretion of Identity
- Cultural memory shapes group identity through selection and opposition: “defined through a kind of identificatory determination in a positive (‘We are this’) or in a negative (‘That’s our opposite’) sense” (p. 130).
Capacity to Reconstruct
- Memory is shaped by the present: “What remains is only that ‘which society in each era can reconstruct within its contemporary frame of reference'” (p. 130).

Formation
- Memory requires objectification: “The objectivation or crystallization of communicated meaning… is a prerequisite of its transmission” (p. 131).
Organization
- It relies on institutional structures and specialized roles: “Cultural memory… always depends on a specialized practice, a kind of ‘cultivation'” (p. 131).
Obligation
- Cultural memory has normative power: “engenders a clear system of values… which structure the cultural supply of knowledge and the symbols” (p. 132).

Reflexivity
- Memory is self-aware and interpretative: “Cultural memory is reflexive in three ways: practice-reflexive, self-reflexive, and reflexive of its own image” (p. 133).

• Conclusion: Cultural Memory and Society

Cultural memory allows a society to see itself and project an identity: “Through its cultural heritage a society becomes visible to itself and to others” (p. 133).
The selection of what is remembered reveals cultural values: “Which past becomes evident in that heritage and which values emerge in its identificatory appropriation tells us much about the constitution and tendencies of a society” (p. 133).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka

Term/Concept	Detailed Explanation	Usage Sentence from Article	Reference
Collective Memory	A shared understanding of the past constructed by a group, rooted in cultural practices rather than biology.	“The specific character that a person derives from belonging to a distinct society and culture… is a result of socialization and customs.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 126
Cultural Memory	Long-term memory maintained through institutions and symbolic forms such as texts, rites, and monuments, shaping group identity across generations.	“Cultural memory has its fixed point; its horizon does not change with the passing of time.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 129
Communicative Memory	Memory based on everyday communication, informal and limited to the past 80–100 years (3–4 generations).	“The concept of ‘communicative memory’ includes those varieties of collective memory that are based exclusively on everyday communications.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 127
Objectivized Culture	Cultural knowledge crystallized in external forms (texts, architecture, rituals), enabling memory to persist beyond individual lives.	“Once living communication crystallized in the forms of objectivized culture… the group relationship… are lost.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 128
Figures of Memory	Anchoring points such as events, festivals, or epics that structure cultural memory across time.	“These fixed points are fateful events of the past, whose memory is maintained through cultural formation.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 129
Concretion of Identity	The formation of group identity through shared memory that distinguishes insiders from outsiders.	“Defined through a kind of identificatory determination in a positive (‘We are this’) or in a negative (‘That’s our opposite’) sense.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 130
Memory Horizon	The temporal range of memory—short in communicative memory, fixed and transcendent in cultural memory.	“Cultural memory has its fixed point; its horizon does not change with the passing of time.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 129
Formation	The process of encoding shared meaning into stable cultural forms (e.g., linguistic, ritual, visual).	“The objectivation or crystallization of communicated meaning… is a prerequisite of its transmission.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 130–131
Organization	Institutional support and specialization (e.g., priests, educators) that structure and transmit cultural memory.	“Cultural memory… always depends on a specialized practice, a kind of ‘cultivation.'”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 131
Obligation	The normative role of memory in reinforcing group values, symbols, and traditions.	“The relation to a normative self-image of the group engenders a clear system of values and differentiations in importance.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 132
Reflexivity	Cultural memory’s capacity to reflect on itself, on practice, and on group identity.	“Cultural memory is reflexive in three ways: practice-reflexive, self-reflexive, and reflexive of its own image.”	Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995, p. 133

Contribution of “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka to Literary Theory/Theories

• Cultural Memory as a Framework for Understanding Texts

The article introduces cultural memory as a central mechanism for transmitting collective identity through literary and cultural forms.
“Cultural memory comprises that body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society… whose ‘cultivation’ serves to stabilize and convey that society’s self-image” (p. 133).
This concept allows literary theory to consider literature as a medium of cultural self-representation and historical continuity.

• Expansion of Intertextuality through Memory Studies

Assmann and Czaplicka broaden the scope of intertextuality by rooting textual relationships in cultural memory practices rather than purely aesthetic traditions.
Literature participates in a broader cultural memory: “The entire Jewish calendar is based on figures of memory” (p. 129), which also informs religious texts and narratives.

• Reinforcement of Reader-Response and Reception Theories

The concept of reconstructive memory aligns with reader-response theory, emphasizing how cultural context affects interpretation.
“Cultural memory works by reconstructing… every contemporary context relates to these [memory figures] differently” (p. 130).

This supports the idea that meaning is not fixed in texts but re-actualized in different cultural moments.

• Contribution to Post-Structuralist and Identity Theories

By linking memory to identity, the article supports post-structuralist critiques of stable subjectivity, showing identity as narratively and culturally produced.

“Cultural memory preserves the store of knowledge from which a group derives an awareness of its unity and peculiarity” (p. 130).
Literature thus becomes a site of ideological negotiation and identity construction.

• Canon Formation and the Politics of Memory

The work engages indirectly with canon theory, highlighting how cultural memory legitimates certain texts and suppresses others.
“The relation to a normative self-image… structures the cultural supply of knowledge and the symbols” (p. 132).
Literary canons can be seen as expressions of collective memory’s obligation to reinforce identity.

• Literature as Mnemonic Energy

The concept of mnemonic energy—how cultural forms like texts preserve emotional resonance over time—bridges aesthetic and historical analysis.
“In cultural formation, a collective experience crystallizes, whose meaning… may become accessible again across millennia” (p. 129).

Examples of Critiques Through “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka

Literary Work	Critique Through Cultural Memory Theory	Memory Framework Applied
Toni Morrison – Beloved	The novel explores how the trauma of slavery is transmitted across generations. Sethe’s memories serve as figures of memory, anchoring African American cultural identity and history. The community’s rituals and storytelling reinforce collective remembrance.	Figures of Memory; Concretion of Identity; Obligation
Homer – The Odyssey	The epic serves as an objectivized culture that preserves heroic ideals and social norms. Through cultural formation, it functions as a memory archive that reinforces Greek identity across time.	Objectivized Culture; Cultural Formation; Organization
Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart	The novel portrays the disruption of communicative memory rooted in Igbo oral tradition by colonial forces. Cultural rituals and kinship structures embody endangered memory systems.	Communicative Memory; Cultural Displacement; Formation
T.S. Eliot – The Waste Land	The poem reflects on post-WWI cultural collapse through fragmented voices and allusions. It uses mnemonic energy and intertextuality to reconstruct Western cultural identity from historical ruins.	Mnemonic Energy; Reconstruction; Reflexivity

Criticism Against “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka

• Overemphasis on Cultural Stability

Critics argue that the concept of cultural memory may overstate the coherence and continuity of collective identities.
It tends to idealize how memory is preserved, potentially underplaying conflict, rupture, and transformation within cultures.

• Insufficient Attention to Power and Exclusion

The theory may neglect how cultural memory is shaped by hegemonic forces that determine which memories are preserved or suppressed.
It does not fully explore how marginalized groups challenge dominant cultural narratives.

• Ambiguity Between Memory and History

Despite distinguishing cultural memory from historical knowledge, the theory sometimes blurs the boundary between remembering and historical reconstruction, leading to conceptual vagueness.

• Limited Engagement with Trauma and Forgetting

The framework prioritizes preservation and transmission, but pays less attention to processes of forgetting, repression, or traumatic memory, which are central in memory studies.

• Essentialist View of Identity

The link between memory and group identity can risk reifying identity as static or homogeneous, rather than recognizing its dynamic and contested nature.

• Underdeveloped Role of the Individual

The theory primarily focuses on collective structures and institutions, potentially neglecting the subjective, personal, and emotional dimensions of memory.

• Application Bias Toward Canonical Texts and Traditions

The theory is often applied to religious, national, or monumental traditions, which may limit its effectiveness in analyzing non-hegemonic or ephemeral cultural forms.

Representative Quotations from “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity” by Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation	Page
“Cultural memory has its fixed point; its horizon does not change with the passing of time.”	Cultural memory ensures long-term stability by preserving key events or meanings that remain constant across generations through symbolic forms like texts and rituals.	p. 129
“Communicative memory… does not extend more than eighty to… one hundred years into the past.”	Unlike cultural memory, communicative memory is short-term, rooted in everyday life and oral communication, typically covering only 3–4 generations.	p. 128
“The objectivation or crystallization of communicated meaning… is a prerequisite of its transmission.”	Lasting memory depends on its transformation into durable cultural forms such as language, rituals, or images, which enable transmission beyond direct communication.	p. 130–131
“Cultural memory preserves the store of knowledge from which a group derives an awareness of its unity and peculiarity.”	This memory fosters collective identity, offering a framework through which a group understands and differentiates itself.	p. 130
“Every individual memory constitutes itself in communication with others.”	Personal memory is socially constructed; individuals remember within and through the frameworks provided by social groups.	p. 127
“Figures of memory… form ‘islands of time,’ islands of a completely different temporality suspended from time.”	Certain cultural symbols and rituals serve as timeless anchors, separating themselves from the flow of ordinary time and anchoring collective memory.	p. 129
“No memory can preserve the past. What remains is only that which society in each era can reconstruct within its contemporary frame of reference.”	Memory is inherently reconstructive; it adapts the past to current contexts and societal needs.	p. 130
“The concept of cultural memory comprises that body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society…”	Cultural memory is made up of a society’s symbolic repertoire—materials that convey identity and shared values across time.	p. 133
“Cultural memory is reflexive in three ways: practice-reflexive, self-reflexive, and reflexive of its own image.”	It not only stores and transmits meaning but also reflects on social practices, its own processes, and the identity of the group.	p. 133
“Through its cultural heritage a society becomes visible to itself and to others.”	Cultural memory provides the means for societies to articulate and project their identity both internally and externally.	p. 133

“Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner: Summary and Critique

“Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner first appeared in 2012 in the journal Sociology Compass (Volume 6, Issue 4, pp. 332–350).

Introduction: “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner

“Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner first appeared in 2012 in the journal Sociology Compass (Volume 6, Issue 4, pp. 332–350). In this groundbreaking article, Weiner proposes an expansive framework for understanding the global dynamics of race and racialization beyond U.S.-centric paradigms. She critiques the absence of unified terminology and analytical tools in comparative race scholarship and introduces Critical Global Race Theory as an empirical and theoretical lens to map and interrogate racialized practices worldwide. Central to her thesis is the notion that race, despite claims of post-racialism or cultural substitution, remains a global structuring force that manifests through essentialization, dehumanization, and exclusion of minority groups while consolidating privileges for dominant (often white) populations. The paper identifies ten empirical indicators—such as citizenship laws, state control, criminalization, spatial segregation, and popular discourse—that scholars can use to assess racialization across varied national and historical contexts.

Weiner also emphasizes the persistent link between race and nationalism, particularly how colonial histories and citizenship regimes produce and maintain racial hierarchies. Importantly, she interrogates the contemporary neoliberal rhetoric of colorblindness that obscures structural inequalities and reifies whiteness as the normative, invisible standard. The article contributes significantly to literary and cultural theory by urging scholars to consider race not as a static biological or ethnic marker, but as a fluid, power-laden social construct shaped by local and global histories. In doing so, Weiner’s work complements and extends the foundational efforts of scholars like Omi and Winant (1994), Bonilla-Silva (2001), and Gilroy (2001), offering a vital intersectional and transnational methodology for analyzing race in literature, politics, and everyday life.

Summary of “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner

🔑 Main Ideas of the Article

Global Relevance of Race: Race remains a powerful global organizing principle despite proclamations of its obsolescence. The article critiques notions like the “end of race” and shows how global systems continue to maintain racial hierarchies (Gilroy, 2001; Hollinger, 2006; Brubaker, 2009).
Call for a Unified Framework: Weiner argues for the expansion of Critical Race Theory (CRT) into a Critical Global Race Theory (CGRT) to analyze racialization processes across diverse national contexts (Weiner, 2012, p. 332).
Power and Racialization: Central to CGRT is an analysis of power—how dominant racial groups construct and maintain racial categories and ideologies that grant them privileges and control over minorities (Lukes, 1974; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001).

Ten Empirical Indicators of Racialization: Weiner offers 10 indicators (e.g. citizenship laws, state control, spatial segregation) to identify and analyze racialization empirically in global contexts (Weiner, 2012, pp. 336–340).
Race vs. Ethnicity: The paper critiques the interchangeable use of these terms. It argues that “ethnicity” often masks power differentials that are actually racialized, especially when ethnicity is portrayed as voluntary and equal in status (Cornell & Hartmann, 2002; Grosfoguel, 2004b).
Forms of Racism: Weiner identifies malignant, benign, and benevolent racism, showing how “new racism” uses culture instead of biology to justify inequality in supposedly “colorblind” societies (Jackman, 1994; Bonilla-Silva, 2000).

Link Between Race and Nationalism: Nationalist ideologies, often rooted in colonial histories, use race to define citizenship and belonging, leading to exclusion, statelessness, and violence (Brubaker, 2009; Mignolo, 2002; Mamdani, 2001).
Whiteness and Colorblindness: Whiteness remains invisible and dominant, often masked by “colorblind” ideologies that ignore structural inequality and portray racial outcomes as individual failings (Leonardo, 2002; Feagin, 2009; McIntosh, 1997).
Knowledge Production and Media: Dominant racial narratives shape public discourse, media portrayals, and historical memory, often excluding or distorting minority experiences (Entman & Rojecki, 2001; Goldberg, 2002; Hall, 2000).

Anti-Racist Movements and Resistance: Global resistance efforts challenge racialized structures by rearticulating marginalized identities and demanding equity. However, resistance strategies differ, and not all challenge systemic racism (Kelley, 1996; Ture & Hamilton, 1992; Weiner, 2010).
International Racial Hierarchies: Race operates globally through colonial legacies, international economic systems, and post-9/11 Islamophobia. These dynamics racialize entire nations and peoples (Grosfoguel & Mielants, 2006; Dunn et al., 2007).
Race as a Mobilizing Force: While racial categories constrain, they can also be used to mobilize and resist, though in nations without a racial discourse, mobilization is more difficult (Simon, 2008; Marx, 1998).

Conclusion – Toward a Cosmopolitan Vision: Genuine multiculturalism and cosmopolitan democracy are impossible without dismantling global racial inequalities and confronting whiteness as a central organizing force (Benhabib, 2008; McLaren, 1994; Weiner, 2012, p. 342).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner

Concept / Theory	Definition	Key References from the Article
Critical Race Theory (CRT)	A framework for examining how race and racism are embedded in legal systems, institutions, and societal structures.	Delgado & Stefancic (2001); Omi & Winant (1994); Lukes (1974); Ladson-Billings (1998)
Critical Global Race Theory	An expanded CRT framework to analyze racialization globally using cross-national comparisons and empirical indicators.	Weiner (2012); Winant (2006); Stanfield (2008)
Racialization	The process of socially constructing racial identities and assigning hierarchical value to physical/cultural traits.	Murji & Solomos (2005); Goldberg (2002); Omi & Winant (1994); Said (1979)
Structural Racism	Racism maintained through social structures and institutions, even without individual intent.	Bonilla-Silva (1997, 2009); Essed (1991); Feagin (2006)
Colorblind Racism	Ideology that ignores racial disparities by attributing inequality to individual failings rather than systemic discrimination.	Bonilla-Silva (2001, 2002); Gallagher (2003); Guinier & Torres (2003)
Whiteness Studies	Examines whiteness as an unmarked norm and system of privilege that maintains racial hierarchies.	Frankenberg (1993); McIntosh (1997); Helenon (2010); Gillborn (2005); Leonardo (2002)
Intersectionality	The concept that race intersects with other social categories (gender, class, sexuality) to shape experiences of oppression or privilege.	Collins (2000, 2005); Glenn (2004); McClintock (1995); Stoler (2002)
Race and Nationalism	Explores how racial ideologies are used to define national identity and citizenship, often to exclude racialized groups.	Brubaker (2009); Calhoun (2007); Glenn (2011); Gordon et al. (2010); Cain (2010)
Cultural Racism / New Racism	A shift from overt racism to covert racism based on perceived cultural deficiencies rather than biological inferiority.	Balibar (1991); Bobo et al. (1997); Bonilla-Silva (2000); Modood (2005); Winant (2001)
Double Consciousness	The internal conflict experienced by marginalized groups navigating dominant cultures while maintaining their own racial identity.	DuBois (1995); Fanon (1967); Anzaldúa (1987)
Coloniality of Power	Refers to the enduring legacy of European colonialism in shaping global power relations and racial hierarchies.	Quijano (2000); Grosfoguel (2003, 2010); Mignolo (2002); Nkrumah (1966); Winant (2008)

Contribution of “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner to Literary Theory/Theories

🟣 1. Expansion of Critical Race Theory (CRT)

🔹 Globalization of CRT: Weiner pushes CRT beyond U.S. borders to account for racialized practices worldwide.

“This article hopes to expand critical race theory and scholarship across national lines.” (p. 332)

🔹 Literary Application: Enables CRT to analyze non-Western texts, diasporic literature, and narratives shaped by global race dynamics.

🟠 2. Integration with Postcolonial Theory

🟧 Colonialism and Racial Identity: Links between colonialism and race illuminate literary portrayals of empire, resistance, and hybridity.

“Racial meanings and identities are embedded in histories of colonialism… and imperialism.” (p. 334)

🟧 Impact: Supports readings influenced by Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and postcolonial cultural discourse.

🔵 3. Proposal of Critical Global Race Theory (CGRT)

🔷 New Theoretical Lens: CGRT is introduced as a framework for analyzing race across borders, systems, and institutions.

“This paper calls for a unified terminology… and a global broadening of a critical comparative dialogue of racial practices.” (p. 332)

🔷 Application: CGRT enriches world literature analysis, especially in examining racial structures across national literatures.

⚪ 4. Critical Whiteness Studies in a Global Frame

⚫ Global Whiteness as Power: Frames whiteness as a global construct of dominance, visible even in multicultural discourse.

“…power of a dominant racial group… manifests today as a form of neo-liberal colorblindness.” (p. 333)

⚫ Application: Allows literary scholars to trace coded whiteness in postcolonial, American, and European texts.

🟡 5. “New Racism” through Cultural Essentialism

🟨 Shift from Biology to Culture: Weiner defines cultural racism as modern racism’s preferred logic.

“New racism… based on culture… has become the new hallmark of the contemporary global era.” (p. 334)

🟨 Impact: Encourages literary critics to analyze symbolic racism and cultural coding in character construction and setting.

🟢 6. Intersectionality with Gender, Class, and Sexuality

🟩 Interconnected Systems: Builds on Patricia Hill Collins, arguing race is inseparable from other identity categories.

“Race… interacts in critical ways with, class, gender, and sexuality.” (p. 333)

🟩 Application: Deepens intersectional literary analysis in feminist and queer theory contexts.

🔴 7. Citizenship and Belonging as Literary Themes

❤️ Race and Nationhood: Citizenship is shaped by racialized policies, resonating with characters’ exclusion in diasporic and refugee narratives.

“Nationalist discourses and citizenship policies… reflect long-standing racialized perceptions of ‘them’ and ‘us’.” (p. 336)

❤️ Application: Supports literary interpretation of ambiguous or stateless characters, especially in migration literature.

🟤 8. Empirical Indicators as Literary Analysis Tools

🟫 Ten Indicators of Racialization: Weiner offers structural lenses like state control, criminalization, spatial segregation.

“Ten empirical indicators… to determine whether… groups… are subject to racialization.” (p. 332)

🟫 Impact: Provides textual frameworks for analyzing race-related tropes, power relations, and institutional exclusion in literature.

🟣 9. Coloniality of Power as a Literary Hermeneutic

🟪 Power and Knowledge Systems: Uses Quijano’s coloniality to historicize race as a product of epistemic violence and imperial discourse.

“Coloniality of power informs imagery, knowledge, histories… resulting in continued domination.” (p. 336)

🟪 Application: Enriches genealogical critique of how race is constructed in literature via dominant knowledge systems.

Examples of Critiques Through “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner

Literary Work	Application of Critical Global Race Theory (CGRT)	CGRT Concepts Used
*The Reluctant Fundamentalist* by Mohsin Hamid	Analyzes Changez’s exclusion from American identity despite economic assimilation. Highlights racialization of Muslims post-9/11, as discussed by Weiner (p. 340), and citizenship as racialized inclusion/exclusion (p. 336).	Global racialization, racial nationalism, racialized citizenship
*Heart of Darkness* by Joseph Conrad	Deconstructs the portrayal of Africans as silent, shadowy figures. Echoes Weiner’s critique of colonial imagery, othering, and global whiteness as structures of knowledge and domination (p. 336–337).	Coloniality of power, Othering, whiteness, epistemic violence
*Americanah* by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	Shows how Ifemelu navigates colorblind racism in the U.S. (p. 333–334) and encounters state and cultural racialization in both the U.S. and Nigeria. Reflects CGRT’s call to compare local and global racial mechanisms (p. 332).	Colorblindness, intersectionality, daily microaggressions, transnational racism
*Persepolis* by Marjane Satrapi	Highlights how Iranian identity is racialized in the West post-1979 and post-9/11. Explores Satrapi’s gendered experience of racialization and external ascription (p. 338). Shows how race and religion converge to structure global hierarchies.	Racialized religion, intersectionality (race/gender), boundary permeability, diaspora

Criticism Against “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner

🔴 Overemphasis on Western Theoretical Frameworks

The article heavily relies on Western critical race theorists (e.g., Delgado, Bonilla-Silva, Feagin), which may overlook or marginalize non-Western epistemologies or indigenous frameworks of race and power.

🟠 Limited Engagement with Cultural Nuance

While Weiner encourages global comparisons, the ten indicators risk flattening cultural specificities by applying a universalized model of racialization, potentially erasing local contexts and the complexity of ethnic vs. racial distinctions (p. 334–335).

🟡 Insufficient Empirical Case Studies

Although the article outlines robust theoretical indicators, it lacks detailed empirical case studies or ethnographic depth that could demonstrate these frameworks in action within specific global contexts.

🟢 Race-Centric Lens May Overshadow Other Axes

The centrality of race may inadvertently marginalize intersecting factors such as religion, language, disability, caste, or class, despite acknowledging intersectionality (p. 333). Critics may argue that power is too broadly ascribed to race alone.

🔵 Application Challenges in Race-Tacit Contexts

In countries like France, Japan, or the Netherlands, where official racial categories are denied or taboo, the application of CGRT may be met with institutional resistance, making data collection and discourse analysis difficult (p. 343).

🟣 Potential for Normative Bias

The article carries a strong normative orientation advocating anti-racist change, which—while ethically sound—might invite critique from positivist or empirically neutral traditions that prefer value-free analysis.

⚫ Assumes Race as a Global Constant

CGRT assumes race functions globally in comparable ways, which may obscure fluid definitions of race in multiracial, multiethnic, or postcolonial contexts where racial identities are in flux (p. 333–334).

🟤 Underdeveloped Solutions or Policy Recommendations

While the article critiques global racial structures, it offers limited strategies for practical interventions or institutional reforms, which might limit its applicability for policy-makers or activists.

Representative Quotations from “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory” by Melissa F. Weiner with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation
“This article hopes to expand critical race theory and scholarship across national lines.”	Weiner’s central aim is to internationalize CRT, urging scholars to look beyond the US context and examine racialization globally.
“Race is an organizing principle of society that persists on its own through its deep entrenchment in social structures and institutions.”	Highlights the structural and systemic nature of race, asserting it operates independently of individual prejudice.
“Without acknowledging power differentials, minority ethnic groups may be assumed to have equal power as dominant racial or ethnic groups.”	Critiques the interchangeable use of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race,’ arguing it masks inequalities and reinforces dominant group power.
“Rather than overtly denying groups access… covert practices reliant upon the language of cultural differences and colorblindness essentialize cultures.”	Describes how modern racism hides behind cultural narratives and “colorblind” ideologies, maintaining systemic inequality.
“Racial meanings and identities are embedded in histories of colonialism rooted in economic and religious ventures, empire, and imperialism.”	Links racial hierarchies directly to the legacy of colonial and imperial practices that shaped global racial formations.
“Nationalism may not only perpetuate racialization but also statelessness.”	Warns that nationalist ideologies can exclude and disenfranchise racialized minorities, leaving them without full rights or recognition.
“By conferring privilege to members, an exclusive white identity cements dominant groups’ power.”	Examines whiteness as an invisible structure that reinforces privilege and maintains existing racial hierarchies.
“Policies created in political climates shaped by laissez-faire individualism often ignore histories of inequality.”	Criticizes neoliberalism for erasing historical contexts of oppression and blaming individuals for systemic failures.
“Minorities often develop double consciousnesses, wherein they struggle to be both members of a subordinate racial group within the national culture.”	References Du Bois’ concept to explain how marginalized individuals experience internal conflicts under racial oppression.
“The use of ‘race’ when it empirically exists… is essential for the desistence of racial inequalities and, perhaps one day, race itself.”	Concludes with a call for critical global racial analysis, arguing that we must first confront race to transcend it.

“Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore: Summary and Critique

“Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore first appeared in the New Literary History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring, 1990), in a special issue titled New Historicisms, New Histories, and Others, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Introduction: “Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore

“Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore first appeared in the New Literary History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring, 1990), in a special issue titled New Historicisms, New Histories, and Others, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. This influential article marks a key moment in the intersection of literary theory and politics, where Dollimore articulates and defends the critical project of cultural materialism against critiques from feminist and Marxist humanist scholars such as Carol Neely, Lynda Boose, and Kiernan Ryan. Dollimore argues that cultural materialism, while sharing a common ground with New Historicism, diverges significantly in its attention to subversion, power dynamics, and the ideological operations of literature, especially in the Renaissance. The essay is notable for defending a politicized criticism that examines the intersections of gender, class, sexuality, and ideology, exemplified through discussions of Shakespearean drama, particularly Measure for Measure and Antony and Cleopatra. Dollimore’s insistence on historicizing identity and resisting essentialist notions of gender and sexuality marked a significant intervention in literary theory, affirming cultural materialism’s commitment to analyzing literature not just as artistic expression, but as a site of political and ideological struggle.

Summary of “Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore

Cultural Materialism vs. New Historicism

Dollimore recounts early aspirations to ally British Cultural Materialism with American New Historicism, as seen in Political Shakespeare (1985) (p. 471).

Despite political similarities, key theoretical differences persist—Cultural Materialism often seeks subversion, while New Historicism tends to emphasize containment (p. 472).
He criticizes those who collapse the two approaches, particularly Carol Neely, who labels both as “cult-historicists,” marginalizing British perspectives (p. 472).

Feminist Critique and Misrepresentations

Feminist critics like Neely and Boose misinterpret Cultural Materialist work by claiming it marginalizes or silences gender issues (p. 474).
Dollimore counters that scholars like McLuskie and Jardine offer materialist feminist readings that critique ideological constructions of femininity rather than merely seeking empowerment of female characters (pp. 473–474).
He stresses that pointing out silencing or marginalization (e.g., prostitutes in Measure for Measure) is not the same as enacting it (p. 475).

Constructionism vs. Essentialism

Dollimore supports a constructionist view of identity, arguing gender and sexuality are historically and culturally contingent rather than fixed (pp. 474–476).
He warns of the political pitfalls of both constructionist and essentialist positions, particularly within LGBTQ+ politics, noting that appeals to biological determinism may not prevent persecution (p. 479).

Critique of Marxist Humanism (Kiernan Ryan)

Dollimore critiques Kiernan Ryan’s optimistic Marxist humanist reading of Shakespeare, which frames the plays as expressing “revolutionary imaginative vision” and universal human potential (pp. 479–481).
He argues Ryan’s faith in shared humanity ignores the historical specificity of ideological contradictions and misrepresents cultural materialist positions as fatalist or cynical (p. 481).

Dollimore instead invokes a tradition of Marxist critique (e.g., Benjamin, Gramsci, Adorno) that recognizes pessimism of intellect alongside the possibility of resistance (p. 482).

Gender Subversion and Cross-Dressing

Renaissance cross-dressing is analyzed as a materialist site of gender transgression and social critique (pp. 483–484).

Dollimore emphasizes how cross-dressing exposes gender as a social construct and disrupts patriarchal order (p. 484).
The “Hic Mulier” tract illustrates how women in male dress challenged gender hierarchies and social codes (p. 483).

Camp, Sexuality, and Antony and Cleopatra

Dollimore offers a radical reinterpretation of Antony and Cleopatra, emphasizing theatricality, gender performance, and camp aesthetics (pp. 485–489).
He reads Cleopatra as a camp figure whose exaggerated femininity and performativity resist romantic and moralistic interpretations (pp. 488–489).
The play’s love and power dynamics reveal how sexuality is deeply politicized, shaped by historical tensions, and embedded in ideological conflict (pp. 486–487).

Conclusion: Politics, Performance, and Desire

Dollimore calls for politically engaged yet pleasurable readings of Shakespeare, which recognize ideological contradictions while embracing creative subversion (p. 490).
He proposes a gender-subversive staging of Antony and Cleopatra, casting Cleopatra with a boy actor and Antony with a woman, thus undermining fixed gender norms and celebrating performative identity (pp. 489–490).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore

Term/Concept	Definition in Context	Usage in the Article
Cultural Materialism	A form of Marxist-influenced criticism that sees literature as embedded in material social and political contexts.	Used as a critical framework distinct from new historicism, emphasizing the political subversiveness of texts and their potential to interrogate dominant ideologies.
New Historicism	A critical practice linking literature and history, focusing on power, discourse, and cultural practices.	Compared with cultural materialism; Dollimore critiques new historicism for its tendency to overemphasize containment over subversion.
Feminism	A movement and theoretical framework advocating for women’s rights and gender equality.	Engages with feminist critics such as Neely and Boose, examining tensions between feminist readings and cultural materialist analysis.
Marxist Humanism	A strand of Marxism emphasizing human agency, ethical concerns, and liberation.	Critiqued through Kiernan Ryan’s reading of Shakespeare; Dollimore sees Ryan’s version as utopian and idealist, lacking historical nuance.
Subversion	Acts or readings that undermine or challenge dominant ideologies or power structures.	Cultural materialism is associated with identifying subversive elements in Shakespeare, in contrast to new historicism’s emphasis on containment.
Containment	The notion that dominant ideologies absorb and neutralize subversive ideas.	Attributed to new historicism, which is criticized for overemphasizing this containment in literary texts.
Gender Critique	Analysis of how gender and sexuality are socially constructed and represented.	Explored through discussions of feminist and psychoanalytic criticism, especially in the context of Shakespearean drama and cross-dressing.
Constructionism	The theory that identity (gender, sexuality, etc.) is shaped by social, cultural, and historical contexts.	Used to support arguments about the instability of gender and the cultural construction of identity, especially in opposition to essentialist views.
Essentialism	The belief in stable, innate identities, such as fixed gender or sexuality.	Criticized by Dollimore and associated with early feminist readings that overlook the historicity and variability of gender.
Transgressive Reinscription	A strategy that turns dominant norms against themselves by mimicking or exaggerating them.	Illustrated in discussions of cross-dressing and Cleopatra’s performance, used to show how subversion operates from within ideology rather than escaping it.
Camp	A mode of aestheticism that exaggerates theatricality and artifice, often to critique norms.	Proposed as a productive lens for reimagining Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra as a subversive play about desire, performance, and power.
Representation	The depiction of people, identities, or ideologies in cultural or literary texts.	Explored as both an act of power and potential resistance; central to arguments about the silencing and marginalization of women, especially prostitutes, in literature and history.
Cross-Dressing	The act of wearing clothes traditionally associated with the opposite gender.	Examined as a disruptive act that questions fixed gender roles and is loaded with cultural anxieties in the early modern period.
Hegemony	The dominance of one social group over others, maintained through ideology rather than force.	Implicit in discussions of how Shakespeare’s plays reflect and resist dominant social orders; cultural materialism investigates how ideology functions within literary representation.
Ideology	A system of beliefs or values that supports social structures and power relations.	Central to cultural materialist critique; texts are analyzed for how they both reflect and challenge dominant ideologies, particularly concerning gender and class.

Contribution of “Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore to Literary Theory/Theories

🔴 Cultural Materialism

Redefinition of Political Criticism in Shakespeare Studies: Dollimore asserts that cultural materialism is not just another historical approach but a politicized criticism that foregrounds subversion within literary texts (p. 472–474).
Textual Subversion vs. Containment: He distinguishes cultural materialism from new historicism by emphasizing the potential for texts (e.g. Measure for Measure) to subvert dominant ideologies rather than reinforce them (p. 473–474).

Interdisciplinary Methodology: Encourages integrating history, ideology, and literary form, opposing reductionist readings of literature as mere ideological tools (p. 479).

🔴 Feminist Literary Theory

Critique of Essentialist Feminism: Challenges readings that treat women’s issues as separable from other social categories like class and race, arguing for a non-essentialist, intersectional feminism (p. 472–475).

Defense of Feminist Materialism: Engages with criticisms by Neely and Boose, arguing that cultural materialist feminists like McLuskie and Jardine unveil how gender ideologies function historically rather than through universal female experiences (p. 474–475).
Representation of Women and Power: Uses characters like prostitutes and Cleopatra to show how women are symbolically central yet politically marginalized, complicating assumptions of feminist agency (p. 475–477, 488–489).

🔴 Marxist Humanism

Critique of Idealist Humanism: Challenges Kiernan Ryan’s utopian, idealist version of Marxist humanism that sees Shakespeare as articulating timeless humanist values (p. 479–481).
Historical Pessimism vs. Humanist Optimism: Emphasizes the contingency and contradictions of history, rejecting the belief that literature automatically advances human liberation (p. 481–482).
Literature and Ideology: Argues that literature, while often complicit in ideology, can still illuminate structural contradictions in society and consciousness (p. 482–484).

🔴 Queer Theory / Gender and Sexuality Studies

Construction of Sexuality and Gender: Advocates for understanding identity as socially and historically constructed, not biologically fixed (p. 476–478).
Cross-Dressing and Gender Instability: Analyzes Renaissance cross-dressing as a site of anxiety and resistance, revealing early insights into performativity (p. 483–484).

Camp Aesthetics and Subversive Desire: Reimagines Antony and Cleopatra through the lens of camp to illustrate how desire and performance destabilize normative gender roles (p. 488–489).

🔴 Representation and Ideology Critique

Power of Representation: Emphasizes that literary texts do not merely reflect the world but actively shape ideology and social meaning (p. 478–479).

Silencing of Marginalized Voices: Highlights how literature and history erase or distort the voices of marginalized figures (e.g. prostitutes), and how criticism must engage with this absence (p. 476–477).
Interrogation of High Culture: Challenges the moral and aesthetic authority of canonical literature (e.g. Shakespeare) by showing how it is complicit in, yet can also critique, dominant values (p. 480–482).

Examples of Critiques Through “Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore

Literary Work	Critique through Cultural Materialism	Feminist Perspective Highlighted	Marxist Humanist Angle
Measure for Measure	Shows how power and ideology are displaced onto marginalized figures like prostitutes; critiques surveillance and moral order.	Highlights the erasure and voicelessness of women (e.g., prostitutes), revealing gendered power dynamics.	Exposes how ideological structures repress subversive elements within society under guise of morality and order.
Othello	Analyzes how crisis and social anxiety are displaced onto vulnerable figures like Bianca.	Reveals the construction of women as untrustworthy or “whores”; critiques patriarchal jealousy and control.	Demonstrates how racial and sexual difference are manipulated to maintain hegemonic power.
King Lear	Seen as a dramatization of patriarchal ideology’s anxiety about disorder and succession.	McLuskie critiques the play’s misogyny rooted in ascetic traditions that demonize female insubordination.	Challenges the assumed naturalness of authority by showing its ideological construction and collapse.
Antony and Cleopatra	Desire and power are intertwined; Cleopatra’s representation challenges aesthetic and political binaries.	Cleopatra’s camp performance and gender subversions expose and resist traditional notions of femininity and power.	Reflects on how sexual and political identities are constructed under empire and declining masculine ideals.

Criticism Against “Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore

Oversimplification of Feminist Contributions: Critics like Carol Neely and Lynda Boose argue that Dollimore and associated materialist critiques often marginalize or displace feminist concerns, such as gender and female subjectivity.

Failure to Prioritize Women’s Voices: Feminist critics charge that by focusing on power structures and ideology, materialist readings (e.g., of Measure for Measure) silence women and reduce gender issues to class or other forms of subjugation.
Accusation of Political Correctness: Boose claims that Dollimore’s rejection of co-opting Shakespeare leads to a “puritanical” stance that sacrifices pleasure in literary engagement for ideological rigor.
Conflation with New Historicism: Some critics, including Neely, conflate cultural materialism with new historicism, leading to mischaracterizations—Dollimore points out this results in misunderstanding British work as derivative or superficial.

Neglect of Utopian and Emancipatory Potential: Kiernan Ryan accuses Dollimore of presenting a negative, cynical view of literature, claiming cultural materialists find only domination and no space for resistance or humanistic hope.
Repressive Tone and Solemn Discourse: Dollimore acknowledges critiques that cultural materialist writing can be overly solemn, punitive, or humorless, lacking in aesthetic or emotional engagement.

Representative Quotations from “Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism, Feminism and Marxist Humanism” by Jonathan Dollimore with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation
“I want to rearticulate and develop some of the objectives of a materialist criticism…”	Dollimore’s central aim is to clarify the political and critical goals of cultural materialism, distinguishing it from new historicism.
“To believe in cultural politics as a praxis and not just a position is to recognize the need for alliances between positions which are not identical.”	Emphasizes the importance of building coalitions (e.g., between feminists, Marxists) even amid theoretical differences, to foster change.
“McLuskie is, in the first instance, seeking to practice the responsibilities of the historian as well as the commitment of the feminist…”	Dollimore defends Kathleen McLuskie’s feminist critique of Shakespeare against misreadings that dismiss her analysis as anti-pleasure or dogmatic.
“We attend also to the way diverse social anxieties are displaced onto or into sexuality…”	Highlights a key aspect of materialist reading: how societal fears are often projected into gender and sexual norms in literature.
“Try telling a couple of fascists that… the homosexual they are kicking to death is only a discursive construct…”	A critique of extreme constructionist views detached from political realities; shows Dollimore’s balanced stance between theory and lived experience.
“Shakespeare’s plays become pegs on which to hang aspirations commendable in themselves but which here echo the clichés of the party hack.”	Critiques Kiernan Ryan’s Marxist humanist reading of Shakespeare for being overly idealistic and politically simplistic.
“There is nothing to stop homophobia… from appropriating the constructionist view.”	Cautions that deconstructing identity (e.g., sexuality) must be done carefully to avoid enabling oppressive ideologies.
“Camp is one further means whereby the artifice of the theater is turned back upon what it represents…”	Suggests that camp, particularly in Antony and Cleopatra, reveals the performative nature of gender and power.
“Cleopatra is the first great queen of the English stage, camping it up outrageously…”	Celebrates Cleopatra as a subversive, performative figure who disrupts normative gender and sexual roles.
“Subversive knowledge emerges under pressure of contradictions in the dominant ideology…”	One of Dollimore’s key theoretical insights: that resistance and critique are born from internal fractures in hegemonic ideologies.