Dear participants, welcome to the fourth module
of this week.
In the previous modules, we have discussed
how the understanding of the word culture
has changed and grown and how different theoretician
have address this issue.
In this module, we would look at how the differentiations
between the high and the low culture or high
and the low or popular culture erupted in
the beginning of the 20th century owing to
various socio- economic changes which were
taking place in the contemporary world.
What are the reasons behind these categories,
were there any particular agendas for the
creation of these 2 different types of cultural
understandings.
Were these agendas social economic, political
or is it simply a manner of a historical analysis
or do we at these categories merely as being
aesthetic concerns?
We have also seen how cultural forms, forms
which determine and try to define culture
and institutions of power are inextricably
linked and high culture and popular or low
culture are often posed against each other
as being oppositional categories.
Later on we find that the critics also started
to question the straight jacket positioning
and differences within these 2 types of cultures
and people started to think in terms of these
boundaries being blurred.
Later on the theoreticians also looked at
the possibilities whether the blurring of
the boundaries is acceptable as a cultural
form or not.
As a cultural studies started to take shape
as an independent discipline and they started
to study different kinds of text.
And the textualities has as a particular way
of a studies became popular, we find that
the distinctions between high and low culture
is started to collapse.
When we further shift from modernism to post-modernism,
we find that an entirely new sensibility was
being born where these differentiations become
more or less redundant and obsolete.
However, we find that the first half of the
20th century was dominated by these distinctions
between high and low culture or the popular
culture as it also came to be known.
So, today we would discuss what are the ways
to define them, how they could be a part of
the power play which goes on in our cultural
institutions.
We have seen that culture has been a process
of human development in different ways.
It can be material as well as products of
intellectual work and art itself.
High culture is often defined as the best
that has been thought and written in the world
so far.
This word is extended to include cultural
products which may have very high aesthetic
value.
It is commonly incorporated into particular
social structures from time to time for example,
the universities or prior to the universities,
the church was considered to be a repository
of high art.
They also incorporate different types of cultural
texts, artefacts, ideas, literary forms which
are expressive, normally of the ideology of
the dominant class.
They often reflect, glorify and preserve the
status quo because this is how the institutions
of power want to retain the power equations.
It is also normally associated with the sophisticated
people, the aristocratic gentry, the social
elite.
The notion of high culture is associated with
the tastes and preferences of the social elite
as well as of the ruling classes.
So we can automatically understand that a
natural corollary of this association is to
base this distinction on exclusion and selections.
So we can also say that what constitutes high
art or high culture functions through a process
of exclusivity.
High culture is high as it excludes the cultural
forms which are practised by the masses.
Those people who do not possess the similar
affordability in terms of money, so we find
that high culture retains a certain highness,
certain haughtiness as certain critics have
also said because it excludes the masses and
then focuses only on including the certain
classes of elite.
It also incorporates consumption patterns,
laser activities, beliefs and mannerisms as
well as what gives us pleasures, what are
our perceptions and inclinations.
And high culture is based on the perceptions
of the social elite only.
People who have been born into money, people
who hold certain rank and of late people who
have been enabled by their education to transcend
the stratified social structure and can come
close to the elite.
Bourdieu in his famous book which was published
in 1979, Distinction; A Social Critique of
the Judgement of Taste suggest that we as
very young children internalise our class
positions.
And it also structures our tastes and preferences
for our little age.
High culture has a certain class character
because it is controlled, defined and produced
by a small section of the people only being
a prerogative of the elite.
So, ultimately high culture becomes a question
of value and worth.
It is also associated with a certain prestige,
high culture is associated with better prestige
and low culture is automatically associated
with somewhat lower prestige.
Similarly in the social structures we find
that the popular culture or the low culture
is normally denigrated, it also becomes a
signifier of what is known as cultural capital.
The educational assets which promote the social
mobility of a person in an otherwise the stratified
social order.
So this definition of Bourdieu remains significant
even today, proponents of high classes and
high culture normally suggest that the high
culture is in danger now and the reasons which
they came are related with the widespread
availability of education and also better
accessibility of means of communication.
And they say that high culture is being replaced
by the popular culture.
Andreas Huyssen has considered this concept
of high and low culture as being a great divide
which becomes a divisive force between different
sections of the society.
The high culture automatically somehow assumes
an official and authorise status.
It upholds the dominant and hegemonic views
about several issues which are related with
our day to day life.
It also creates and sustains those conditions
which perpetuate the cultural hegemony of
a particular class and it being a system of
exclusion and inclusion tries to ensure it
by taking the help of different types of systems
of patronages.
High culture is designated as being somehow
aesthetically superior.
And therefore, it is considered to be worthy
of preservation and therefore, our understanding
of what constitutes the national art, the
national literature, the national works of
art and artefacts ultimately is dependent
on how we understand this concept of high
culture.
And therefore, we find that the idea of Western
canon or let us say the canonisation of literature
later on is also deeply linked with these
2 divisions of culture into high and low or
popular forms.
If we try to look at the definition of canon,
we find that most of the definitions are related
with the clergy.
I have cited from the American Heritage dictionary
in which we find 10 possible meaning of the
word canon.
Out of these 10, we find that 6 are related
with different aspects of clergy.
It can be an ecclesiastical law or code of
laws established by a church council, the
calendar of saints which has been accepted
by the Roman Catholic Church.
A member of a religious community living under
a common rules and bound by vows etc., Later
on it also came to be associated with music
particularly, the classical music and we find
that a particular meaning is deleted with
the way we understand music.
A particular meaning is also related with
the idea of canon being a secular law rule
or code of law.
The last 2 meanings are based with the way
we judge phenomena outside these two realms.
So, it can be a basis for judgement, standard
and criterion and the next meaning is related
with the way we look at the works of an author
or an authoritative list which has been prepared
to indicate a certain phenomenon.
The word canon etymologically has been borrowed
from an ancient Greek word kanon which means
a measuring tool or standard.
As we have seen in the way different meanings
and connotations have been structured of this
word, the history of Western literary canon
goes back to the history of the Bible, the
authorise and the official versions of the
Bible.
It also refers to the body of text and narratives
which has seen as worthy of being preserved
studied and disseminated.
We can say that it is a compilation of the
best, the most important and the most representative
works of literature.
So we find that matters of critical and aesthetic
judgement are central to what is included
in this perception of what constitutes canon.
Canonisation is also related with a certain
understanding of sophistication in terms of
a work of literature or a cultural artefact
and at the same time.
Once a work has been included in the canon,
there are enhance possibilities of it being
studied more seriously.
So, it does provide certain stardom to a work
if it is included in a literary canon.
It also entails that cannon forms a close
tradition and any ideas of changing the canon
or any ideas related with changing the way
we look at cannon and interpret it are automatically
resisted.
So it ultimately hands up as being a bastion
of the privileged few, earlier it used to
be to the learned few, the ecclesiastical
clergy later on we find that it was dominated
by certain universities, intellectuals, critics
etc.
This exclusion was possible because literacy
was historically a prerogative of the privileged
few in the society.
The illiterate and the poor and particularly
women were excluded from this facility.
At the same time we find that the commoners
also did not have this privilege of being
highly educated or literate and therefore,
what Behrendt has suggested becomes doubly
meaningful to us.
The canons are value determining lists which
are ingrained in our education system and
the process which determines inclusion in
canon is essentially political, so what Behrendt
has suggested here; makes a correct sense
evident today's world and he says that the
Western literary canon has historically been
dictated by economically secure, traditionally
educated and socially privileged white men.
So, in that idea we find that the forces which
have dominated the social scenario since certain
centuries have been hinted at.
People who economically belong to a better
class, people who have the privileges of being
educated and people who are in a favourable
position as far as our understandings of gender
and race are concerned.
Inclusion in canon, therefore also offers
certain status It is related with recognition
and how our credentials are established and
how it becomes a matter of privilege.
It also becomes automatically a sign of the
superior quality of work, we can say that
the canon are being included in the canon
becomes ultimately a benchmark for everything
which is related with literature and culture.
As we have said it has been dominated earlier
by the ecclesiastics later on by the teachers
of the Oxford and Cambridge circle etc. so,
the remnant of class based exclusionary thinking
is visible in today's society as Beherendt
as said, “in the disdain with which the
cultural elite usually, greet, popular art”,
so there is a way in which we look at the
popular art in a manner of condensation and
this is exactly the idea which Beherendt wants
to suggest here.
The idea of the Western literary canon has
come into a lot of criticism by different
schools of feminist thought as well as by
the Black scholars because it was being exclusionary
and it was not objective.
The view of Arnold of literature and culture
being the best of what has been written has
now also been abandoned because the best becomes
a representative and enduring category but
at the same time it is open to different interpretations
by different people.
This idea that the canonisation we also be
reviewed, somehow has an earliest reference
in T.S.
Eliot, famous essay on “The Tradition and
the Individual talent” in which he is suggested
unconventional definitions of what constitutes
talent and how we should look at this idea
of tradition in fact.
I got Beherendt again because he has ultimately
been able to make very pertinent points.
Questions he has raised are highly relevant
to how this distinction could take place and
has continued since then, he says that “the
sad irony of changing cannons is that doing
so merely replaces one set of narrow and privileged
judgements with another which are equally
narrow but different set of standards by which
to decide who gets in and who does not and
sadder cannon revision and canon substitutions
are usually vindictive”.
And Beherendt has given a particular focus
on this idea, he says “that the new in group
punishes the old by excluding it, bashing
it and admitting only those whose work reflects
the new agenda that has been set in place”.
So, it becomes clear that the manner in which
literary canon is ultimately selected and
finalised is a highly subjective manner and
it is also highly political.
The origins of these two distinctions can
be found during the modernist era.
It was during the early part of the 20th century
that we find that the distinctions between
high and low moderns started to proliferate.
Later on they were denied by the post-modernist
thought but during the modernist, we find
that the debates about high and low continued,
so we find that in their search for innovation,
the modernist people also went into the debates
of form versus content etc.
And this movement ultimately turn out to be
highly cosmopolitan and eclectic.
There were certain other trends which also
gave rise to this debate of high and low culture
for example, there had been a nostalgia in
this era for the Golden pre capital age, as
if there was an age which existed which had
a rosy phenomena for different sections of
the society.
Modernist writers also relied extensively
on philosophy, on psychology, classical literature
and mythology.
And therefore, they also demanded certain
erudition from readers.
The literature which most of the modern writers
were producing will not meant for the common
masses, they expected some participation on
the part of the audience and readers also.
The openness to mass forms somehow was looked
at in a derogatory manner for example, magazines
as we would later say were reduced to being
a woman place, a woman entertainment, popular
novels and films also in the early days were
not included in one's definition of literature.
So, these popular forms were looked at with
a certain disdain and therefore we find that
it is during this era of modernist belief
that the distinction between high and low
cultures gained grounds and they also became
popular.
The perceptions started to change almost immediately
and we find that the critics associated with
the Frankfurt School started to question these
notions early on.
They question the various status of the canon
and they also emphasised on the existence
of different cultural formations which were
evident at any given moment of human history.
At the same time, we find that various critics
associated with the Frankfurt School started
to theorise on high and low culture, popular
and mass culture and the impact of the media
and the mass culture on the way we understand
and appreciate our culture.
And I would point out particularly Adorno
and Horkheimer in this context.
They also try to understand about the phenomena
which takes place when the boundaries between
high and low cultures become porous and we
cannot segregate them very effectively.
At the same time, we find that the impact
of capitalism and technological development
on traditional forms of cultural expressions
was also studied by these philosophers.
At the same time, we find that with the onset
of a post-modern attitude amongst the critics
which started to celebrate different types
of narratives and texts and was based on the
proliferation of the smaller groups.
The idea of high and low culture was being
continually challenged and opposed.
So, it becomes clear to us that it was in
the beginning of the 20th century that these
two parallel literary cultural structures
came into being and they were often juxtaposed
against each other as markers of aesthetic
positioning.
So the high and low cultures became indicators
of a new historical dialectic which was brought
in by technological and economic modernisation,
urbanisation.
And at the same time, all they related stress
patterns which are associated with it.
It is also pertinent to quote, Andreas Huyssen
here who says that there is a mutual dependence
of high and low cultures as mass culture is
the latent subtext of the modernist project.
We also find that there is a process of gendering
of cultures around this time.
So in political, aesthetic and psychological
discourses, we find that high culture is normally
reclaimed as being patriarchal and therefore
masculine.
High culture was retained, promoted and defined
by the privileged few and since this is a
patriarchal world order, we find that it was
promoted by men only.
So, automatically it came to be associated
with patriarchal forces and was termed as
being masculine.
Notions of cultural inferiority have always
been associated with women throughout the
medieval ages, so the traditions of excluding
women from what can be understood as high
culture now were commented on only in the
beginning of the 20th century, when we have
critics like Virginia Woolf and much later
a critic like Simone De Beauvoir commenting
on the exclusion of women from the production
of culture.
So, mass culture we find was looked at as
being feminine.
From the late 19th century itself we find
that pejorative and feminine characteristics
have ascribed to the mass culture.
Whether they were popular magazines, which
were considered to be a pastime for women
only, whether they were fictional bestsellers
who were normally studied and enjoyed by the
less literate people and also by women.
Whereas in comparison, we find that the true
journal of novel was considered to be pure
and severe and therefore masculine.
Popular novel and popular fiction magazines
etc., came to be termed as having femininity
in built in them.
So cultural demarcation is a problem of capitalist
modernisation and also of patriarchal structures
which support this capitalist modernisation.
In different cultures we find that high culture
is understood as being masculine and mass
culture is understood as being feminine.
It is pertinent to quote, Eric Hobsbawm here
at this point who says that “the polarisation
of high and low culture in modernism had to
be challenged later on and it also accounts
for the widening gap between high and low
culture as a growing divergence between what
was contemporary and what was modern”.
A major philosopher who immediately comes
to our mind when we talk about high and low
culture and these stratification, it is Pierre
Bourdieu.
Bourdieu is primarily concerned with the dynamics
of power in society and at the same time,
he is equally interested in understanding
how power is transferred across and within
generations in ways which are elusive and
diverse at the same time.
He has been influenced by major philosophers
particularly Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Weber,
Mark, Durkheim, Claude Levi-Strauss and particularly
Pascal.
In his views, we find that cultural, social
and symbolic forms of capital have been talked
about as opposed to the simple economic form
of capital in traditional thought.
His book which was published in 1979, Distinction:
A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
as being judged as the sixth most important
work in the 20th century by the International
Sociological Association.
Bourdieu has suggested that there is the close
interrelation between how social stratification
is done and the way aesthetic taste is cultivated
in different generations.
He also says that our social status is depicted
by how we present our social space to others.
In his view children learn aesthetic preferences
of their class fractions at a very young age
and this learning guides them towards appropriate
social positions at a later stage.
It also guides them to adopt behaviours that
are suitable for them and at the same time,
they also develop a certain abhorrence towards
those types of behaviour which are not in
consonance with their not class appropriate
behaviours.
He has also suggested that the meaning of
the term capital should not be equated only
with money.
In his ideas we find that there are 4 types
of capital; economic, cultural, social and
symbolic.
The economic capital is quite clear how much
money do we have.
Cultural capital is important for Bourdieu
because in his opinion, it is related with
what counts good for a social group for example,
who wants to visit Museum during the leisure
hour and who wants to attend a boxing match
on the screen.
So it is related with what type of socialisation
practices we have and also what type of tastes
do we have.
The social capital is related with who we
know, for example the family, political party,
other acquaintances, the circles within which
we move.
A symbolic capital rest on recognition our
understanding of who we can name and we can
define who is who.
So, Bourdieu says that differences in cultural
capital, mark the differences between the
classes, the cultural capital that is the
social assets of a person, the type of education
one gets, the style of a speech which one
learns, the dress material, the symbolic goods,
the social relations within an economy of
practice is associated with cultural capital
which is inherited and cultivated cumulatively
over a passage of time.
A still all these forms of culture are interconnected.
For example, the economic capital is related
with the social capital and social capital
is related with the cultural capital so on
and so forth.
He also says that poor are aligned with low
culture and the rich are aligned with high
culture.
Another interesting concept which Bourdieu
has given is the concept of habitus, that
means that they built-in subconscious manner
in which we perceive things and we learn to
categorise them.
Unconsciously this idea is structures out
taste actions.
So, Bourdieu suggest that our everyday tastes
and our everyday actions are in a way not
arbitrary, they are based on our social status
and on how we perceive our within social stratification.
In surveys related with musical taste, he
suggests how high status people in our economic
strata’s prefer a classical music and how
people who belong to lower economic status
is normally opt for pop music.
He has suggested in a surveys and on the basis
of the surveys that Blue Danube was popular
among manual workers, domestic servants and
craftsman, people who were not exposed to
high education because of their economic class.
Rhapsody in blue on the other hand is preferred
by secretaries, engineers, junior administrative
executives, people who could afford a better
education.
This is also reflected in the food choices.
And Bourdieu survey tell us that the working
class meal is normally characterised by impressions
of abundance.
There is an insistence on filling up our plates
twice and there is also a common reference
for the rich and fatty food.
In comparison to this, a Bourgeoisie meal
has a sequencing of course for example, fish,
meat etc., and the emphasis is on not on shows
of abundance but on healthy and less fatty
food.
In comparison to these 2 classes, the educated
class, teachers for example prefer exotic
food but these distinctions of high and low
culture are arbitrary and they have been designed
and capped to emphasise and conform social
status and power.
A cultural preference according to Bourdieu
may also be legitimate or illegitimate depending
on whether it is endorsed by cultural authority
and the idea of cultural authority as we have
seen in the previous few slides is highly
subjective and therefore, the canonisation
is also controlled and is a political affair.
According to Bourdieu, a legitimate cultural
choice or a preference is authentic or exotic
taste.
On the other hand, illegitimate is normally
understood in terms of being popular, familiar
something which is bland and accessible.
He also says that high class cultural consumption
is omnivorous by temperament, it can be increasingly
diversified and inclusive and can draw from
several cultural forms simultaneously, for
example it may be interested not only in knowing
about classical but it may show interest in
jazz, Bluegrass, Cuban Music for example.
However, the distinction between high and
low culture is still a distinction and overtones
with command and cloud are still present in
this distinction.
In the newer cultural pursuits, we find that
a camouflaged form of the status seeking is
in- built.
So, we end our discussion of high and low
culture at this point, in our next module
we will take up a discussion of what constitutes
popular culture and at the same time, what
are the sub culture and countercultures, thank
you.
