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The Study of the Politics in Popular Culture 大众文化政治研究, Doctoral dissertation, Literature and Art, Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China 2007 [application of Fromm's theories to art].

  • 在经过十多年的发展后,中国的大众文化研究逐渐走向成熟,许多深层次的理论问题一一暴露出来,大众文化政治问题就是其中的一个。可以说,>政治<一直是大众文化研究或隐或显的主题之一,这个主题需要思考的是:大众文化问题是在什么意义上成为政治问题的?它的内涵是什么?应该怎样认识和评价这种内涵?在某种意义上,研究大众文化政治不仅是一个理论探讨的问题,它还是一个思想解放的问题。然而目前关于这个问题的系统的研究还比较缺乏。本文将从这种问题意识出发,分别从商品、语言和美学三个维度入手对大众文化政治进行研究,以求达到理论探讨和实践分析的双重突破。本文共分四章:第一章梳理大众文化研究的基本概念和理论范式。>大众文化<本来是一个西方语境中的概念,但在文化研究成为前沿显学的时候,中国学界常常把大众文化当成一个不言自明的概念在使用。然而任何一个社会的词语都不是纯粹中性和客观的知识,它背后都隐藏着政治利益和权力斗争。西方大众文化研究在选择用popular culture(褒义)还是mass culture(贬义)来命名大众文化的时候,更多地是出于立场与评价方面的考虑。例如阿多诺使用的是mass culture,甚至是culture industry(文化工业),洛文塔尔则是mass culture和popular culture混用,而到了当前的费斯克等人则完全舍弃mass culture而使用popular culture。这个用语的转变体现的是对大众文化认识和评价的转变,即从否定大众文化(法兰克福学派主流)到肯定大众文化(英美文化批评)的转变。大众文化这个西方概念在进入中国语境时不可避免地与民间文化、通俗文化、革命性大众文化等概念发生语义上的纠缠,为了捍卫大众文化的独立性,肯定其积极的政治潜能,一些学者有意识地把大众文化与其它相似概念区分开来,并且对大众文化进行了现代意义上的界定。接下来,本章着重梳理了大众文化研究范式转换的历史,总体来看,它表现为从注重政治经济学批判的社会分析向注重符号解读的文化研究转换的过程。不同的研究范式对应着不同的政治立场。当前大众文化研究所处的困境之一是批判的弱化和政治关怀的空洞化,学界有种观点认为这种不良状况是由社会分析的退场和符号解读的兴起导致的,由于政治经济学范式可以做到对文化和社会进行细致深入地分析,并且将这种分析建立在坚实的社会实践基础之上,因此它能够在很大程度上弥补当前文化研究的某些不足。这种观点可以说切中当前大众文化研究的弊端,但是我们认为,如果社会分析的再出场就意味着符号解读的退场,那么我们又将失陷在另一种历史话语的迷宫之中。要解决这些复杂的问题,在学科上必须实现政治经济学与文化研究的统一,在研究范式上必须实现社会分析与符号解读的统一。本章最后本着这种范式理想,以改革开放后的中国社会为个案分析了社会结构与大众文化功能之间的对应关系:如果说现代社会的中间层是整个社会的政治稳压器,那么中间层所代表的大众文化也是文化意识形态领域的稳压器,稳压器的作用就是削峰填谷,所以大众文化既反对保守,也反对盲目的激进。第二章从商品维度入手分析大众文化政治。与传统文化形式相比,大众文化具有一种赤裸裸的商品性,它力图通过大众对批量化生产的文化产品的消费与其它商品一样实现利润最大化,并且大众文化从来都不否认自己与资本的紧密联系,然而正是因为大众文化所具有的商品性这个特殊属性才使得它与传统文化形式区分开来。从这个意义上看,文化商品化是大众文化研究首先需要面对的问题。文化商品化到底是导致了艺术堕落和专制统治还是促进了文化普及和民主自由,这是学界争论的焦点。法兰克福学派正统思想认为艺术向商业屈服甚至献媚是艺术最大的堕落,这种堕落的结果就是负载着资本主义统治意识形态的大众文化的制造与流行。我们之所以要把精力首先集中在文化商品化的历史考察上,其中一个重要原因就在于法兰克福学派对文化商品化的批判深深地影响了中国知识分子对于文化商品化的认识,进而左右了中国知识分子对大众文化的判断。单纯的争论是无济于事的,这需要我们对文化商品化的历史进行深入地考察。文化发展的史实表明,文化商品化促进了文化公共性的兴起,这主要表现在以下三个方面:其一是作为文化生产者的公共知识分子的产生;其二是作为文化传播者的大众传媒的产生;其三是作为大众文化消费者的市民阶层的产生。文化公共性进一步促进了政治公共性的产生,但是通过商品化而得以暂时逃脱政治束缚的文化却又面临着落入资本圈套的危险。在消费社会语境下,如何正确认识批判精神与消费意识的关系,如何保持公共领域与私人空间的平衡在很大程度上取决于我们能否深入研究并且正确认识大众文化的符号政治经济学。第三章从语言维度入手分析大众文化政治。后现代社会的特征并不仅仅是>经济变成了文化,文化变成了经济<,从某种意义上说,它更表现为>传媒变成了文化,文化变成了传媒<。科技的每一次飞跃都会带来传媒的巨大发展,传媒的巨大发展及其对大众文化的深刻影响则又会反过来促使人们不断地修正对传媒和文化的认识,而每一次这样的修正都是以更为广泛的语言理论变革为思想背景的。法兰克福学派的弗洛姆等人从卢卡奇的总体性思想和弗洛伊德的精神分析理论出发,把语言定位为社会意识的过滤器,这个比喻暗示了语言的单向度特征。马尔库塞进一步揭示了单向度语言得以实现的秘密,即抽掉历史和反对抽象,他认为唯一能有效对抗单向度语言的办法就是重新引入历史维度和辩证法。单向度语言已经渗透到日常生活和大众媒介的领域,阿多诺就对广播和电视等单向度媒介进行了批判。这个历史阶段是马克•波斯特所谓的第一媒介时代,它的语言理论背景是结构主义语言学。随着语言理论从结构主义向后结构主义的转向,互文性理论对大众传媒的研究产生了深远影响,受众研究被推向了前台。以霍尔为代表的理论家们逐渐认识到文本的意义并不是编码者单向决定的,它取决于编码者与解码者之间的对话,文化和传媒是一种活动、一种过程和一种意识形态斗争的场。再后来,作为第二媒介时代之标志的互联网的发明使互文性在文化实践中真正得以实现,文本进一步发展为超文本,超文本不仅解构了逻各斯中心主义,更重要的是它赋予了大众更多的表达政治诉求的话语空间。尽管学界对于大众传媒的民主性存有争议,然而不可否认的是,随着传媒技术的日益发展,大众获得了越来越多的知情权和话语权,我们不能苛求大众传媒,因为绝对的民主和平等只是遥远的乌托邦。第四章从美学维度入手分析大众文化政治。美学在诞生之初是关于感性的学问,它自启蒙运动以来一直是哲学竭力进入生活世界的途径。审美一直被界定为普遍与特殊、理性与身体冲动在>心灵法则<之下发生潜在冲突的领域,这样美学就不得不关涉到意识形态,从这个意义上讲,现代美学在根本上就具有了政治性。身体快感作为一个与艺术美感相对的范畴,从某种意义上说就是大众文化的美学。随着身体美学的兴起,快感在大众文化时代日益成为一个政治问题。从阶级政治的角度看,在什么情况下快感会被知识分子视为>革命的<?而又是在什么情况下快感会被革命的知识分子视为>统治的<?在商品这个粘合剂的作用下,作为美学的快感如果与政治合谋,即所谓的>政治美学化<,快感被张扬甚至泛滥,那么快感就倾向于成为统治的工具。而在>艺术政治化<情况下,即在极权社会中,快感被压抑甚至被否定,那么快感则往往倾向于成为革命的工具。再从性别政治的角度看,大众文化到底是女性反抗男权的斗争场,还是男权统治女性的新领域?或者说女性对自己性别特征的充分表露到底是女性权利的张扬还是仅仅满足了男性的窥淫癖?各方观点争执不下。然而问题的关键并不在此,因为任何性别政治都必然关涉到民族国家和阶级政治,性别问题的解决不可能脱离民族国家和阶级问题的解决而单独进行。中国的大众文化研究发展到现在,面临的问题不是越来越少而是越来越多。对这些问题的研究要求我们摆脱非历史的和非语境化的研究模式,强调文化生产和知识生产的历史性和地方性,大众文化政治也只有放在具体的时间和空间维度中才能被准确地定位。从某种意义上说,对大众文化政治的分析不仅有利于把大众文化研究推向深入,还有利于打开一扇探究现代性问题的窗口。
  • After ten years’ development, popular culture study in China has entered a mature stage, with many in-depth questions coming out, one of which being the political problem in popular culture. >Politics<, whether explicitly or implicitly has always been an issue in popular culture study, which deals with the following questions: For what purpose popular culture study become political? What is its connotation? And how should we understand it and evaluate its connotation? In a certain way, political study in popular culture is not only a theoretic matter, but also a matter of idealistic liberation. Yet, at present there is scarcely any systematic study on this issue. Therefore, this paper approaches this issue from three dimensions of commodity, language, and aesthetics, in order to make breakthrough both in theoretic discussion and practical analysis. This paper consists of four parts. Chapter one sorts out the basic concepts and theoretic paradigms of popular culture study. >Popular culture< is a concept in western context, but Chinese scholars have often used it as a self-evident concept since Cultural Studies became a trend in china. However, no social word is entirely neutral and objective knowledge, behind which hides political interests and power struggles. The choice of whether commendatory wording >popular culture< or derogatory >mass culture< depends on the user’s standpoint and evaluation of it. For instance, Adorno uses mass culture or culture industry; Löwenthal, a combination of mass culture and popular culture; Fiske and others, only popular culture. The change of the wording indicates the change of attitudes towards popular culture, i.e. from negative attitude of Frankfurt school to positive attitude of British and American criticism. When the concept >popular culture< was introduced into China, it entangled with other concepts as folk culture, popular culture, revolutionary mass culture. In order to main the autocephaly of popular culture and affirm its positive political potential, some scholars distinguished it from other concepts and gave it a modern definition. Then this chapter goes on to sort out the shifting history of the paradigms of popular culture study, which changed from social analysis focusing on political and economical criticism to cultural studies centered around semeiotic explanation. The different paradigms of study correspond to different political positions. At present, one of the difficulties facing popular culture study is the weakening of criticism and the emptiness of political concern, which according to some scholars, was caused by the absence of social analysis, and the rising up of semeiotic study. As political and economical paradigm carries out a thorough analysis of culture and society which is based on the solid social practice, it can make up to the deficiency of the current cultural study. While this view hits the point, it does not mean the recovery of social analysis requires the refuse of semeiotic explanation. On the contrary, to solve the present problem, we must realize the unification of both political economics and semeiotics in disciplinary, and the unification of social analysis and semiotic study in paradigm. According to this paradigm, the end of this chapter analyzes the corresponding relation between the social structure and the function of popular culture study based on the case study of China after the reform and opening policy: if the middle sphere of a modern society is the regulator of the whole society, then popular culture which is the representative culture of the middle sphere will be the regulator of cultural ideology. Hence, popular culture is against both conservative and blindfold radicalists. Chapter two analyzes the politics in popular culture from the perspective of commodity. It is undeniable that the nature of popular culture is to make the most benefits by mass production of cultural products, just like other commodities, which distinguishes popular culture from traditional forms of culture. In this sense, the merchandising of culture is one of the priorities for popular culture study. Whether the merchandising of culture leads to the degeneration of art and the autocratic domination or promotes popularity of culture and freedom and democracy remains the focus of argumentation for scholars. One of the important reasons for us to put emphasis first on the historical survey of the merchandising of culture is that the criticism of the merchandising of culture by Frankfurt school has had such great influence upon Chinese scholars that it resulted in their negative judgment about popular culture. However, the history of cultural development shows that the merchandising of culture promotes the publicity of culture, which includes the birth of public intellectuals as cultural producers the birth of mass media as cultural transmitter and the birth of middle class as cultural consumers. While the publicity of culture promotes the birth of political publicity, the merchandising of culture faces the danger of falling into the trap of capital. To well understand the relation between critical spirit and consumption consciousness, and balance public sphere with private space requires a deep understanding and a thorough investigation of semiotic political economics. Chapter three studies the politics in popular culture from the perspective of language. The feature of post-modern society is not only >economy becoming culture and culture becoming economy<, but also >media becoming culture and culture becoming media<. Every leap of science and technology has resulted in great development of media, whose profound influence upon popular culture in turn has led to better understanding of media and culture, in which the change of linguistic theory always plays the background. Based on Lukacs’s collectivity and Freud’s psychoanalysis, Fromm and other scholars of Frankfurt School defined language as the filter of ideology which implies language’s one-dimensional feature. Marcus pointed out that the secrete of one-dimensional language is its breaking away from history and its objection against abstraction, hence the only way to fight one-dimensional language is to restore history and dialectics in language. One-dimensional language has spread over everyday life and mass media, the latter was one of the critical topics of Adorno’s. This is the first era of media with the structural linguistics as its background. Then as linguistic theory shifted from structuralism to post-structuralism, inter-textuality began to exert great influence upon the study of mass media. Consequently, reception study became popular. The theorists represented by Hall realized that the meaning of text is not decided by the encoder alone, but it also depends on the communication between the encoder and the decoder, and hence culture and media is an activity, a process and an arena for ideological struggle. Later after that, the invention of internet, which marked the beginning of the second media era, helped the realization of inter-textuality in cultural practice, and text turned into hyper text, which deconstructed Logos and provided more discourse space for the mass to express their political views. Although there are disputes over the democracy of mass media, the fact which cannot be denied is that the mass gain more rights to know and speak as the result of the development of media technology, therefore, we should not be too critical towards mass media because absolute democracy and equality is just a Utopia. Chapter four studies popular culture from the perspective of aesthetics. Aesthetics, which was the knowledge about feeling when it came into being, has been taken as the way into life by philosophy since enlightenment movement. As aesthetics has been defined as the field for the struggle between the universal and the particular, reason and physical impulse, it has to be involved with ideology, in which sense, modern aesthetics is involved with politics. The pleasure of body as opposed to artistic beauty is in some way the aesthetics of popular culture. AS the rise of physical aesthetics, pleasure is becoming a political issue in an era of popular culture. Under what circumstances pleasure will be considered as >revolutionary< by intellectuals? If, under the spell of commodities, pleasure as aesthetics joins politics hand in hand, i.e. so-called >aesthetication of politics<, then pleasure will overflow and turn into the instrument of domination. On the other hand, if in a society of dictatorship, pleasure is oppressed or even denied, i.e. >politicalization of art<, then pleasure becomes the tool of revolution. From the perspective of gender, is popular culture the arena for women’s revolt against men’s authority or the new field for men’s ruling of women? Or in other words, does women’s entire exposure of their sexual features speak for women’s rights or only meet men’s desire to peep into women’s privacy? However hot the debate is, the key of this issue is outside it because any gender politics must concern the nation and the class politics. Up till now the development of popular culture in china, the problems facing it is not becoming fewer, but more. To solve these problems, we must pay enough attention to the history and the locality of cultural and intellectual production, and only in specific time and space, can popular culture be properly assessed. In a sense, the analysis of the politics in popular culture will not only deepen popular culture study, but also open a window to the study of modernity.] [Author’s translatio

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Metadaten
Author:Yong Xu
Document Type:Dissertations
Language:Chinese
Year of first Publication:2007
Release Date:2017/11/20
Format:no download and copy possible
IdNo:Xu_Yong_2007
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Dissertations / Dissertationen
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Dissertations / Dissertationen
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