Johnson's feedback

各位好,

針對幾位於上週六提出的問題,江森的回應如下,見轉寄信,
http://richardjohnsonreadinggroup.blogspot.com/

抱歉,如我有誤讀及錯譯你們的問題,請包涵。我們十一月要閱讀的文章是"Really Useful Knowledge": Counter Education - The Early Working-Class Tradition (批判教育學)(文章請見第一頁是Preface的那份,可以全看,或只看如題的部份),將由巨擘導讀,開會地點再議。

Kind regards,
Yu-Hsuan Lee
宇軒



From: richard.johnson61@btinternet.comTo: blue95_7399@msn.comSubject: Re: reading group 10/25Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:18:55 +0000Dear Lee,
Many thanks for this. Again interesting questions are asked. I attempt outline replies now - much more later on my visit.


1. Yes, perhaps the sociologist is right to say most CS focuses either on the text or on everyday life - though often only on the text, including the texts of great theorists! The key linkages here are of course reading and production and their connections with everyday life, because these are the moments that mediate the textual form (abstracted for examination by the analyst) and the everyday life of both readers and producers. In many ways, as argued in The Practice of Cultural Studies reading -refiguration in Ricoeur - is the most important integrative moment. If we look at readers and reading in their social setting we can often get to how texts are used and made to signify, therefore their life in the world.. Well known older studies on these lines include the work of Ien Ang and Janice Radway but feminist research on media which approaches texts through readers is reviewed more generally in Charlotte Brunsdon's book on Soap Opera research..


2. 'Form'. this is stolen in part from Marx who talks all the time about 'social forms'. Maybe it is another way of talking abpout regularities or even structures (though I prefer forms/formations today because these are more dynamic categories which can express movement as in change of form ). Form also borrows from literary work and art criticism - especially from Barthes perhaps. This expresses the ways in which particular cultural forms - say narrative- exercise a particular kind of pressure on readers - e.g. the desire to know what happens next! Or the identification with characters etc. Other forms, e.g. visual images, work differently, according to their specific form. So text really influences reader - partly through form, partly of course through content. The analogy is with economic forms' e.g. the commodity form in economic analysis - though commodity is in fact often a link between economy and culture.


3. Yes, space is absent, so for that matter is time except in a limit sense of time around the circuit. The model is abstract. It is not a concrete description of how things in particular are! Only of SOME relations within the concrete.(Compare the discussion in The Best Marx about concrete and abstract) BUT you might be able to think space and time in relation to the model however, because the space of production is almost always - especially in commodified culture - removed spatially from the place of consumption or reading. On time, some people have suggested a spiral would be a better way to understand the circuit - but sometimes diagrammatic forms just have limits!! For me, some versions of the circuit are so complex, and try to be concrete, but they don't really aid our thinking.
Sources of the circuit:


Marx's circuit of capital and a reading of the Grundrisse is central to both Hall and me. I first read Stuart's account of the Grundrisse in a CCCS stencilled paper, and of course the encoding/decoding model. But I did my own reading of Marx in the early 1980s, and I have always differed from decoding and decoding in stressing - with Gramsci - the importance of everyday life and common sense as the ground for reception and production. This also corresponds to cultural studies older interest in ordering culture as it is lived by particular social groups. I tend to disagree with those who see all this in terms of discursive fields, or even texts and readings, because this is not materals enough for me, and it has limits politically, unless you address very concretely what is happening in the lives of ordinary people.
Much later i discovered Ricoeur and his hermeneutics, and was interested in the parallel - though there are also some major differences


Hope this helps. The sides and commentary are very good - and most useful.

I will reply to your query about two months, when I have talked to the household.

Good questions!
Richard


On 25 Oct 2008, at 16:24, Lee Yu-Hsuan wrote:
Dear Richard,

We had the 2nd reading group today (what is cultural studies anyway?). The meeting was very successful and there are more and more participants from different disciplines and walks of life. Some scholars can be organisers in the future. As usual, I summarize some following questions for your reference. We are planning that you may be can attend the last one in the early April next year.

1. The gap between the model and reality. - In terms of general knowledge, a sociologist takes the moment 2 (text) and 4 (lived culture) as the more common areas in relation to cultural studies. But, in practice, he has a puzzle of how to really make the two work together. (or even including the other moments)

2. The definition.- A media-based scholar has a question of the term "form", which seems to reemerge throughout the paper. What is the form anyway?

3. Subjectivity and space.- A educational scholar wants to know more about how the role of authors/readers can be foreground in the circuit. He is also interested in an issue of "space" related to the circuit, which seems to be absent from the paper.

Anyway, I attach a powerpoint file for your reference. I first pose three (might be bad) questions regarding this paper. I have a puzzle of sources of this circuit, which seems to come from different works (Marx, Hall, du Gay et al...).

Despite slow procedure of the university, we still plan for the future. In the community university's national assembly 2009, you will be invited to give a keynote speech. Time is already confirmed on 12 April 2009. We also organise some seminars regarding social movements, community education, environmental protection and antinuclear movement, and the like. As we need to negotiate with groups that are involved in these issues. Would you be possible to consider some of your articles related to these issues, especially community education? Do you have any specific works that are not too thick/dense to read? As the readers might be the general public or community workers. We want to translate these articles and edit that with the results of seminars.

Cheers,

Lee