I don't know if this is helpful to anyone (I know I have a hard time reading other people's notes), but here are my notes from class last week if it helps fill in any gaps for anyone.....
Marx & Hall
-language- complex/ contradictory
-nothing directly about media studies
-thinking about context, content, etc
-he’s performing intellectual critique; not looking for rioting in the streets
-materialist concept of history (historical materialism) – how man organizes society to produce things matters; affects other things (economics)
Basic thesis:
1. who owns means of production matters, enough that it can be considered above all else
2. social consciousness affects individual thought (seen as opposite before)
-broad interdisciplinary approach – philosophical, economic, political science, etc...
Theory of History (the history of economic struggle; history of class struggle): each successive moment in history is defined by who owns the means of production (factories, fields) & modes of production (capitalism, feudalism) – understand how economics are organized
How organized ultimately yields political
- history is a progression of economic systems - evolution
- tribal
- feudal
-capitalism – most concerned with this, this is where he is writing from.
What will come from capitalism? Will make a case for what will be fourth. Key to answer the end of capitalism – struggle between producers (laborers) and those who own the means of production (exploit laborers – have to in order to make capitalism work)
-exploitation- we produce $10,000 worth of stuff, but we cant take home all of this. We get portion and owner takes portion. Justify this by saying owner takes risks, puts forth capital, Marx does not argue with this. Says: fundamentally operates through exploitation. More exploiting, more profit for capitalist. Motivation to exploit more.
-classes develop. For Marx – bourgeoisie and proletariat. More and more people get put in labor class. Only thing proletariat can sell is their labor. Divide gets larger and larger – class struggle. Large pool of labor unhappy – have revolution, take over factory. Take away their labor. For the 1st time in history, large collection of exploited people who are networked together. Industrialism – cities. They can fight back for the first time.-in this mode of production, people feel more free. Get to chose where they work, who they vote for, etc. part 4 pg 3. “thus, in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before, because their conditions of life seems accidental; in reality, of course, they are less free, because they are more subjected to the violence of things.”
-history is not series of accidents and not driven by individual choice or nature (not natural) – history is a machine than operates according to its technological logic. Part 2, pg 8.
-This means we cant understand the internet separate from the global capitalism that fosters its growth and feeds off of it. Huge corporations that can be more powerful than countries.
-doesn’t mean internet is global capitalism.
-our interests on economic level affect interests on cultural level. Copyrights – Disney.
- base (economics) determines field of play – rules, structures.
-by looking at superstructure, we can better understand rules & terms.
-with division of labor, comes division of power. One class does not control the other, but one class benefits more from the structure. But class that benefits is not free to change the rules. Both classes are Equally subject to the rules. Difference of power can be seen in the media and art. Media reflects cultural logic of time and reproduces power relations – can sometimes see as transparent.
HEGEL –
history is progression on prior – progressing toward spiritual perfection. Young Hegelians were championing this idea.
-thesis – a way of thinking
-antithesis- the reverse of that way of thinking
synthesis – the conversation between these two things. Produces new thesis, then new antithesis, etc….
Marx: “Bullshit.” part 1, pg 2: all they young Hegelians are saying they are pursuing spiritual perfection but they are not actual getting there. They don’t know gravity.
-part 2, pg 3. Society works on man, not man on society. “circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances”
- there is no such thing as natural; only historical. They are developments of cultural. Applies way beyond economic.
- example: male homosexuality – men are effeminate. That seems natural, they are weaker version of men. But this is historical. But can imagine other world – “you are more effeminate because you sleep with women. I’m more masculine because I fuck men.”
- revolution not to change ideas but have one to change social relations. Marx makes fun of Hegelians because they are worried about ideas. Broader issue – individual thought is determined by social consciousness. Section 1, page 8. Consciousness is determined by the material conditions in which you live. (also a McLuhan argument).
-Adam Smith (wealth of nations) idea – people have natural moral ideas. People have natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. Marx goes the other way: because people live in capitalist structure, they develop the idea that its good to truck, barter and exchange. – the culture in which you live, determines the way you think. You end up with a contradiction though in capitalism – so many people still remain poor. The see this discrepancy, we have to look at superstructure (cultural) layer to understand base layer. Charles dickens comes to rise during industrial revolution.
-This means – everything is political. Sec 1, pg 12. – Marx focuses on language because artistic medium of time is the novel.
-ideology – part 2, pg 10. Doesn’t mean ruling class imposes their ideals, but rather that these ideals are taken as universal. Both classes participate in this universality.
- cultural is idea of politic rather than aesthetics (Benjamin) preferences about aesthetics are manifestation of stuff at economic level. Those that think are studying aesthetics sans politics are mistaken (critic of Bolton and Grusin).
- can not separate content from the way content circulates.
- no universal meaning. Must pay attention to historical moment.
- capitalism – demographic culture, rather than politics. Art is determined by economic implication.
Hall-
- hall is late Marxist theorist.
- look at how cultural context of message shapes its meaning.
-discursive production.
-can think of media as a question of consumption and production. But not as simple as saying how produced and consumed.
Media – production, circulation, distribution, and consumption.
-basic thesis – language or other media do not operate as transparent (coding of messages in art and decoding on other end) so message isn’t guaranteed. Get many different meanings.
- there is a range of interpretation from which we operate. Pg 164.
-166 – miscommunication happens, and is part of communicative exchange. Encoding moment and decoding moment are not the same moment. Absolute purity of message is never received. For an audience to understand message, it has to be within range of their understanding.
- violence in media? – media is not a way of programming people. Violence on television is not violence but a message of violence. Pg 166.
–to what degree can encoding and decoding be controlled. Advertisers would love to control decoding.
- pg 167. no such thing as connotative and denotative. Denotative (what everyone agrees upon – pass off as natural) is actually connotative that we have to investigate. Stuff we think is natural are the things that have to most power over us.
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