Readings for Feb. 25 and March 4

The readings for Feb. 25 and March 4 have been switched, as John Hutnyk will be able to join us on March 4.

Feb. 25 Chinese Film
Readings:
1) Stephen Teo "Promise and perhaps love: Pan-Asian production and the Hong Kong-China interrelationship" Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2008, p.341-358
2) Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar "The National in the Transnational" from China On Screen: Cinema and Nation, NY: Columbia University, 2006, p.195-222 (Goldsmith Library: 791.430951 BER)
-inviting Chris Berry to speak to us (or at a later date?)
Film Screening: Peter Chan's "Perhaps Love" (2005) 107 min.

March 4
Readings:
1) Re-visit John Hutnyk's "Culture" + another Hutnyk text. John will (hopefully) be joining us for questions
2) Allen Chun "The Postcolonial Alien in Us All: Identity in the Global Division of Intellectual Labor" positions: east asia cultures critique, Vol. 16, No. 3, Winter 2008, p.689-710 (link)

Hall "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms"

Hall, Stuart (1980). Cultural Studies: two paradigms

- there is no absolute beginnings

1. “Culturalism”

- Richard Hoggart

o “Uses of Literacy’

o ‘culture debate’ : high/low culture distinction

o Leavis “Scrutiny, Culture and Society”

o Practical criticism : to “read” working class culture as if it is a ‘text’

o Rejection of high/low cultural divide

o Culture and Society as one and the same (unity) movement

- Raymond Williams

o “Culture and Society”

o “The Long Revolution”

§ Against empirical, particularist thought

§ The experiential ‘thickness’

- E.P. Thompson

o “Making of the English Working Class”

o English Marxist historiography

o Economic and ‘Labour’ history

§ Took culture seriously: culture as the site of politics

§ Culture : Changes in industry, democracy, and class (Williams)

§ New Left

- ‘Culture’

o IDEAS

§ R. Williams: “the sum of the available descriptions through which societies make sense of and reflect their common experiences

§ Culture = Society (community of common meanings)

§ No longer the best, highest values but all conventions, common meanings,

§ “The art is there, as an activity, with the production, the trading, the politics, the raising of families” (59)

o PRACTICES

§ One must study ‘the relationship between these patterns’

§ Patterns are lived and experienced as a whole (structure of feeling)

o Against

§ “Idealist” tradition of culture, elitism

§ Vulgar materialism, economic determinism

· Base/superstructure

· => R.Will : radical interactionism (interactions between all practices in and with one other)

· => no distinctions between practices, because they are all variant forms of praxis, of general human activity and energy

- Revisions

o Lucien Goldmann (Lukacs)

§ ‘Genetic structuralism’

o E.P. Thompson’s ‘Base and Superstructure’ ( critique of “The Long Revolution” )

§ There are different ‘dimensions’ of struggle and confrontation between opposed ‘ways’ of life

2. “Structuralism”

- Ideology, as opposed to ‘culture’

- Levi-Strauss’s culture

o Culture as the categories and frameworks in thought and language through which different societies classified out their conditions of existence, especially human and natural worlds

o Ideology: unconscious categories through which conditions are represented and lived

- Experience:

o Culturalist: experience as the ground where consciousness and conditions intersected

o Strucuralist : experience as mere effect of categories, classifications, and frameworks of the culture (unconscious structures)

o Althusser: ideology is a system of representations, but it has nothing to do with consciousness. imaginary relations (For Marx)

- Structuralist advantages

o 1. Difference, rather than of unity

o 2.

o 3. decentering of experience (ideology): not a central idea for the culturalist

- Culturalist advantages

o 1. affirmative moment of the development of conscious struggle and organization as a necessary element in the analysis of history (agency)

§ Gramsci

3. the Alternatives

- Lacanian psychoanalysis

o Filling the empty spot of the “subject”

o (Weakness) Subject= transhistorical, universal character

- Return to the Political Economy of culture

o Restoring base/superstructure

- Foucault

Random Notes

-to organize film festival, eg. music-themed where we could screen Randall Stevens documentary "Made in Queens" and John Pirozzi's documentary on rock band Dengue Fever entitled "Sleepwalking Through the Mekong"
-peer-review each other's writing

Tentative Schedule

Feb. 25 Chinese Film
Readings:
1) Stephen Teo "Promise and perhaps love: Pan-Asian production and the Hong Kong-China interrelationship" Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2008, p.341-358
2) Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar "The National in the Transnational" from China On Screen: Cinema and Nation, NY: Columbia University, 2006, p.195-222 (Goldsmith Library: 791.430951 BER)
-inviting Chris Berry to speak to us (or at a later date?)
Film Screening: Peter Chan's "Perhaps Love" (2005) 107 min.

March 4
Readings:
1) Re-visit John Hutnyk's "Culture" + another Hutnyk text. John will (hopefully) be joining us for questions
2) Allen Chun "The Postcolonial Alien in Us All: Identity in the Global Division of Intellectual Labor" positions: east asia cultures critique, Vol. 16, No. 3, Winter 2008, p.689-710 (link)

March 11 Japanese in Film
Readings:
1) Koichi Iwabuchi "Lost in TransNation: Tokyo and the urban imaginary in the era of globalization" Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 9, No. 4, 2008, p.543-556
2) David Morley- either a chapter from Spaces of Identity or something more recent
-inviting David Morley to speak to us (or at a later date?)
Film Screening: Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" (2003) 102 min. + "Lost on Location: Behind the Scenes of 'Lost in Translation'" (2004) 30 min. / OR "Memoirs of a Geisha" (2005) 145 min.

March 18 Self-Orientalism in Music
Readings:
1) Tony Mitchell "Self-Orientalism, Reverse Orientalism and Pan-Asian Pop Cultural Flows in Dick Lee's Transit Lounge" from Rogue Flows: Trans-Asian Cultural Traffic, ed. Koichi Iwabuchi, Stephan Muecke, Mandy Thomas, Hong Kong University Press, 2004, p. 95-118 (Goldsmiths Library- 306.4095 ROG)
2) TBD
Music: Dick Lee's "Transit Lounge", Lee-Hom Wang's "Shangri-la"

March 25 TBA

Spring Break (March 27-April 27) Frankfurt School
Virtual dialogue through blog and Skype conference (Time: Montreal 8am, London 1pm, Tokyo 10pm)
Readings:
1) Adorno Culture Industry
2) Benjamin The Age of Mechanical Reproduction
3) Gramsci Prison Notes
4) Negri Empire + review of Empire (photocopy hand-out)

Other topics of interest: 'samuraisation', 'occidentalism'
* We've got a reading pack with most of the selected texts, so let us know if you can't access articles online

Notes & Minutes from Feb. 11

1. We discussed readings (Richard Johnson's "Post-hegemony? I Don't Think So" and John Hutnyk's "Culture")
2. We would like to invite Prof. John Hutynk (who has agreed to be ASA's academic advisor) to come to a future meeting as we had a few questions regarding his text, and to suggest another text of his to read
3. We would like to invite Prof. Scott Lash, regarding the reading from the previous week ("Power After Hegemony"). Questions: Why are things becoming ontological now? What is ontological? What are some examples?
4. Going to Student Union for forms to formalize ASA as a student association
   
5. Choosing two readings each week
6. Sung- to suggest readings on 'glocal'
7. John had emailed about Allen Chun's recent article in Positions
8. We want to read some material from the Frankfurt School (Adorno's Cultural Industry, Benjamin's The Age of Mechanical Reproduction) as well as Gramsci's Prison Notes
9. What is the definition of materialism/material?
10. Selecting texts from Inter-Asia Cultural Reader
11. Find articles by David Morley and Chris Berry (invite them to future meetings), and articles by Iwabuchi
12. We looked online at InterAsia Journal for articles of interest to us (we stopped at Vol. 9 Issue 1)
    

Feb. 18 Meeting- CANCELLED

We will be canceling the scheduled February 18th meeting (Reading Week). The next meeting will be Wednesday, February 25th.

Encountering Stuart Hall

'Encounters with Stuart Hall' held recently at Westminster consisted of speakers such as Doreen Massey, Larry Grossberg, Martin Jacques, Jonathan Rutherford, Françoise Verges, Angela McRobbie, Isaac Julien, Bill Schwarz, and of course, Stuart Hall. We managed to score some photo opps with Stuart Hall, Larry Grossman, and Isaac Julien.

The Tale of Angels

An exhibition curated by Dr. Jian Jiehong
Showing works by Gao Shiqiang, Jian Zhi, Kwok Ying, Miao Xiaochun, Shi Jinsong, Xiang Jing and Xiao Yu
Thursday 26th February, 2009
Private View at the Red Mansion Foundation
6pm- 8.30pm
Address: 46 Portland Place, London W1B 1NF

Exhibition continues until 24th April 2009 by appointment
Open Monday to Friday 9.30am- 5pm
Please RSVP to ab@redmansion.co.uk

Blades and latex: A Chinese re-imagining of a traditional Christian icon…

Angels are first described in the Bible. Created by God as a separate, higher order of creatures than humans, they possess aspects of intelligence, emotions, and free will. Today, angels are continuously imagined and represented, both in literature and visually, beyond their theological context and biblical origins; at the same time, the image of angels has been utilized for curiosity, communication or faith.

In the history of Western art, there have been numerous images representing angels, usually winged in appearance, implying their nature as God’s heralds and flying creatures. In China, these spiritual beings have always been deemed as Western, yet, to many, the contemporary imaginings of angels do not necessarily derive from the original source, (their description in the Bible), but instead depend on the visual interpretations of Western art. This exhibition, The Tale of Angels, aims to set up a framework for discussion, and to encourage and invite Chinese artists to expand their boundaries, and develop new ideas for visual response. It intends to re-examine not only the theoretical notion of an angel, but also, more significantly, the ways in which angels, particularly in the context of Western culture, could be re-imagined. To the artist Shi Jinsong, the beauty of angels has an innocent quality. At an initial glance, his recent stainless steel installation of a Christmas tree has a glorious metallic shine, but it a closer look reveals some fearsome sharpened blades. This work exposes the balance between the beauty of angels and their potentially wrathful nature, and more importantly, the conflict between the amiability of ‘imagination’ and the injuriousness of ‘realisation’. Jiang Zhi has imagined another chilling visualization; that of the flayed flesh of an angel, vulnerable in its nakedness and desolation, like a discarded skin.

Two lectures by the curator will be given during the course of the show, dates and topics tbc. Dr Jiang Jiehong is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Birmingham City University.

The Red Mansion Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, which promotes artistic exchange between China and the UK through a programme of lectures, exhibitions, The Red Mansion Art Prize and Building Bridges, an exchange programme for established artists. The Red Mansion Foundation was co-producer and co-sponsor of "China Power Station" (held at Battersea Power Station), "The Real Thing" at Tate Liverpool, the Chinese Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale and the 10th Istanbul Biennale, 2007.

For further information and images please contact us.
Email: ab@redmansion.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7323 3700
www.redmansion.co.uk

Professor Tomiko Yoda- Feb. 18

From Folklore to Märchen: Fashion, Fashion Media, and Proto-Cute Culture in Japan

Professor Tomiko Yoda (Duke University)

Date: 18 February 2009 Time: 6:30 PM
Venue: Russell Square: College Buildings Room: G2
Type of Event: Lecture
Series: JRC Annual Tsuda Lecture

Enquiries
Dr Angus Lockyer (Centre Chair) al21@soas.ac.uk
or Rahima Begum rb41@soas.ac.uk

Speaker
Professor Tomiko Yoda (Duke University)
She specializes in Japanese literature, intellectual history, gender, and feminist studies.

Recent Publications
*T. Yoda (co-edit). Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life From the Recessionary 90s to the Present. Duke University Press, Summer, 2006.
*T. Yoda. "First-Person Voice and Citizen-Subject: The Modernity of Ogai's Maihime." Journal of Asian Studies 65:25 (May, May, 2006).
*T. Yoda. "Heian bungaku no joseika to juhasseiki kagaku no kindaisei [Feminization of Heian Literature and the Modernity of Eighteenth-Century Poetics]." Genji kenkyû :10 (2005).
*T. Yoda. Gender And National Literature: Heian Texts and Constructions of Japanese Modernity. Duke University Press, May, 2004.
*T. Yoda. "Kogyaru and the Political Economy of Feminized Consuer Culture." Zappa: the Social Space and Movements of Contemporary Japan (Accepted, forthcoming).

Organised by: Japan Research Centre , Centres and Programmes Office

(Thanks John!)

Next meeting: Feb. 11 (time change)

The next ASA meeting will be held Wednesday, Feb. 11 from 3-5pm (changed from 2-4pm) as a number of us will be attending the Bernard Stiegler seminar earlier that day. We will be discussing the agreed readings: Richard Johnson's "Post-hegemony?: I Don't Think So."(link), and John Hutnyk's "Culture" (link). We will decide on readings and activities we would like to organize for the rest of the semester. Let us know if you have trouble downloading the PDF files.

"Hollywood Chinese" screening

Documentary by Arthur Dong
UK Premiere at BFI Southbank
Date: Thu 5 Feb 18:20
Book: BFI



A fascinating documentary about a little-known chapter of cinema: the Chinese in American feature films. From the first Chinese American film, produced in 1916, to Ang Lee's triumphant Brokeback Mountain almost a century later, Hollywood Chinese brings together a fascinating portrait of actors, directors, writers, and iconic images to show how the Chinese have been imagined in movies, and how film-makers have and continue to navigate an industry that was often ignorant about race but at times paradoxically receptive.