INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL STUDIES

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PROF. DR. C. REINFANDT

UNIVERSITT TBINGEN

Introduction to Cultural Studies

Lecture 4:
Culture as Text Textual Culture

1) Culture as Text
2) Textual Culture
3) The Texture of Modernity
--1) Culture as Text
Ethnography/Anthropology

Literary Studies

Culture as Text ()

() Culture as Text

Clifford Geertz:
an interpretive theory of
culture / thick description

Doris Bachmann-Medick:
the anthropological turn
of literary studies

(Geertz 1973; Schneider 1987;

Hofman 2009)

(Bachmann-Medick 1996/2004, 2012;

Lenk 1996)

the problem of interpretation / social sciences vs. humanities

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Hermeneutics (cf. Berensmeyer 2010)

[C 18: from Greek hermeneutikos expert in interpretation, from hermeneuein to
interpret, from hermeneus interpreter, of uncertain origin]
1. the science of interpretation, esp. of Scripture
2. the branch of theology that deals with the principles and methods of exegesis
[cf. Hermes, the messenger of the Gods and guardian of roads, and herms (hermae),
square stone pillars with Hermes head and frequently phallus marking crossroads in
ancient Greece (cf. image)]

Historical Background:
a) Beginnings:
Catholic dogma monopolizing the interpretation of Scripture
vs.
Protestant insistence on the self-sufficiency of the holy text
(Luther: sola scriptura) > Reformation
understanding parts of the bible is framed by meaning of whole
> hermeneutic circle
(a part of s.th. is always understood in terms of the whole and vice versa)
prerequisite: unified meaning of the whole (Gods word)
> the problem of temporal/historical distance is avoided

What about Greek or Latin Texts?

Friedrich Ast (1778-1841):
the fundamental unity of all things spiritual and intellectual/ the whole is not the
sum of its parts, but the parts unfold and reveal the whole/understanding as a
process of unfolding which can be concluded

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b) Romantic Hermeneutics
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834):
a theory of human understanding which eliminates problems and
misunderstandings by means of strict methodological reflection
(i.e. a general theory of interpretation)
modes of inquiry:
grammatical/philological (comparison)
psychological (divination)
(vergleichende Erhellung und kongenialer Nachvollzug)
congeniality as prerequisite of true understanding
understanding as a deliberate and intentional process of reconstruction which
enables the reader to know a past author better than the author could know
him- or herself because access to a broader historical context than previously
available

c) Wilhelm Dilthey: Natural vs. Human Sciences

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911):
founder of the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften)
Problems:
to understand the human, one must be human
both subject and object are historically bound (historicism)
natural sciences:
observing and describing external facts establishing laws
[nomothetic approach aiming at explanation]
human sciences:
understanding internal realities describing ideas
[ideographic approach aiming at understanding]
internal reality is directly accessible as experience and evolves into a
meaningful whole in time (autobiography: understanding of life as a
necessarily incomplete process which establishes meaning retrospectively)
Nacherleben as the highest form of understanding and model for the process
of historical understanding:
experience/perception as the root of knowledge

external phenomena can best be understood by means of analogy plus induction

(experience > general conclusion)

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Model of Understanding:
subject

the objective mind

[the general order of
cultural expressions]

object

>perceive>

expression/text <chooses<

the other

>understand>

The Generalization of Hermeneutical Knowledge:

the problem of temporal distance: types/human nature
experience(s) historical consciousness knowledge
objectivity can be achieved through a complete acknowledgement of
subjectivity which results in a distancing
complete understanding is possible

Basic Problems of the Hermeneutical Method:

1) Epistemological Optimism:
the hermeneutic circle presupposes the results of its operation
who guarantees the meaningfulness of the whole?
2) Epistemological Relativism:
how exactly do scientific method and creative imagination go together?

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d) Hermeneutics in the 20th Century

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (1960)
hermeneutics as a universal aspect of philosophy which reaches beyond
scientific aspirations
aesthetic model of realizing truth
the hermeneutic circle is not a method but an ontological structural feature and
thus the form of understanding (Heidegger: Existenzial = ursprngliche
Vollzugsform des Daseins)
three dimensions:
prejudgements
n
text
part
n
whole
subject
n
object
understanding as conversation (Gesprch):
openness as prerequisite, unity in the process of understanding,
the text as a partner in conversation, albeit of different make-up
works of art realize themselves (vollziehen sich) time and again in the
process of understanding, there is no final interpretation
temporal distance is not a problem, but enriches the possibilities of
understanding
tradition as a normative mediating element which helps to avoid solipsism
the merging of horizons (of text and reader)
understanding art as play and experience
Critical Points:
there is no autonomous sphere for the human sciences
dangerous subjectivization of thinking
conservative/affirmative approach which simply confirms time-honoured
modes of seeing the world
social influences on language and knowledge are ignored
(vs. Kritische Theorie, insb. Jrgen Habermas:
conversation bound up in language as a medium of power, critique of
ideology is necessary to uncover systematically distorted communication
kritische Tiefenhermeneutik following the lead of psychoanalysis)
fundamental change of attitudes in the 1960s
(cf. Schulenberg 2012)
The Hermeneutic Method:
1) Reflect upon your presuppositions, prejudgements and prejudices
2) Formulate your expectations explicitly
3) Check your expectations against the text, but be open for modifications
(Gesprch!)

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2) Textual Culture
Problem:
The Culture as Text-Paradigm does not fully take into account the medial turn
outlined in Lecture 3 (or at least it did not do so initially).
signs/texts never allow us to access real reality through them,
they are never transparent, but they generate their own version of reality
(which we construct and accept as reality, cf. Lecture 2)
behind them there is no world as a transcendental signified
(Jacques Derrida), but only the transcendence (Kenneth Burke)
of their very own dynamics
the mediatized world around us is established by a textual culture which
should be analysed in terms of its materiality and mediality and not interpreted
along hermeneutic lines
a new mode of making sense is necessary

Literacy:
the autonomous vs. the ideological model (cf. Street 1984)
Literacy in a New Media Age (cf. Kress 2003):
literacy = the ability to read and write all kinds of texts

to order and interprete

to create and communicate
(to think, assess, deconstruct, critically analyze, synthesize)
multimedial literacy = literacy + visual literacy
media literacy
cultural literacy

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Main points in Kress's argument:

writing
book
telling
logic of time
(linearity, causality)
fixed reading path
'empty' meaning
imagination focused on
'meaning'

>
>
>
>
>
>
>

image
screen
showing
logic of space
(simultaneity, co-presence)
flexible reading path
'filled' meaning
imagination focused on
'order'

Reading according to Kress 2003:

"[T]he shape of what there is to read has its effects on 'reading'. Reading
practices, and the understanding of what reading is, develop in constant
interaction between the shape of what there is to read and the socially located
reader[s] and their human nature." (140)

makers of meaning:
telling the world

showing the world

remakers of meaning:

interpreting the world

ordering the world (140)

"As the screen becomes the dominant site of communication even if (still)
only in its social and mythic impact rather than actually in quantitative terms
'reading', as the process of getting meaning from a textual entity, will need to
deal with more than just writing and image. A CD, or a web-page, may make
use of music, of speech, of moving image, of 'sound-track', as well as of (still)
image and of writing. All these need to be 'read' together and made into one
coherent text in 'inner' representation." (142)

Reading as Design:
"At this moment in history the force of convention does not press as heavily on
makers of image or on viewers, perhaps in part because images have
remained outside the very close control of social and cultural power which has
been applied to writing in particular." (154)
"While the lexis of a language, in speech or writing, consists of (relatively
speaking) a fixed number of available elements, each element is relatively
open in meaning. In visual lexis, however, there is no fixed number of available
elements, but each element, which is each time newly produced, is fixed, in
terms of being specific about what it represents." (154)

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Reading Paths and Multimedial Texts:

"this matter of the reading path is a cultural decision" (157)
1) modal 'scanning': blocks of writing and of image
2) integration of non-dominant modes into dominant mode
3) assessment of functions: complementary or supplementary
> decisions based on the look/organization of the page and the reader's
already existing disposition as a reader (159)
> social and semiotic conditions (160)

A New Kind of Reading:

"Linearity is certainly not a useful approach to the reading of these screens it
is visual clues such as salience, colour, texturing, spatial configurations of
various kinds, the meanings of specific kinds of element either natural of
human-made, which allow the player to construct a reading path, which tracks
the path of the narrative. The strategies for successful reading are every bit as
complex as those of the written page one might be tempted to say, more
complex, given the pre-established reading path of the page but in any case,
and certainly, different." (160)

Old and New Reading Paths:

"But here lies an absolute and I think profound difference between the
traditional page and its reading path and the new page derived from the
principles of the organization of the screen and its reading path. The former
coded a clear path, which had to be followed. The task of reading lay in
interpretation and transformation of that which was clearly there and clearly
organized. The new task is that of applying principles of relevance to a page
which is (relatively) open in its organization, and consequently offers a range
of possible reading paths, perhaps infinitely many." (162)
Changes:
orientation towards 'completed texts'
vs.
orientation towards 'information as it is supplied' (163)

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The Semiotics of Framed Space:

inductive vs. deductive approaches (164):
"The written text calls forth the work of 'filling' relatively vague lexis with the
meanings of the reader or hearer. The lexis of the visual is in that respect
precise, not open, and does not call forth that work. There is a paradox here in
that the traditional view had been that the image needed the precision of the
word, to give it, in the words of Roland Barthes, anchorage." (166)
Consequences:
> "reading will increasingly proceed in terms of the application of the logic of
the image to writing" (166)
> "the always present visuality of writing will become intensified" (167)
> "Reading of written texts is becoming simpler, for instance in the decreasing
causal complexity of sentences, and it is becoming specialized. At the same
time, reading of the multimodal message/text is becoming more complex...
with the dominance of the new media, and with the 'old' media ... being
reshaped by the forms of the new media, the demand on readers, and the
demands of reading, will if anything be greater, and they will certainly be
different." (167)

3) The Texture of Modernity

John Crowe Ransom:
the prose core to which a reader or critic can violently reduce the total object
vs.
the differentia, residue, or tissue, which keeps the object poetical or entire
(The Worlds Body. New York/London: Scribners, 1938: 349)
A poem is a logical structure having a local texture [] The paint, the paper,
the tapestry on the wall are texture. It is logically unrelated to structure.
(Criticism as Pure Speculation (1941).
M.D. Zabel, ed., Literary Opinion in
America. 3rd ed. New York: Harper,
1962: 639-54, 648)

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Moritz Baler, Die Entdeckung der Textur: Unverstndlichkeit in der Kurzprosa der
emphatischen Moderne 1910-1916. Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1994.
Moritz Baler et. al., Historismus und literarische Moderne. Tbingen: Niemeyer,
1996.
Moritz Baler, Textur. Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, 3. Aufl.
Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007: 618f.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity.

Durham/London: Duke UP, 2003:
Texture [] comprises an array of perceptual data that includes repetition, but whose
degree of organization hovers just below the level of shape or structure. [] If texture
and affect, touching and feeling seem to belong together [] [w]hat they have in
common is that [] both are irreducibly phenomenological. To describe them
primarily in terms of structure is always a qualitative misrepresentation. (16/21)

Michael Warner, Uncritical Reading. In: Jane Gallop, ed., Polemic: Critical or
Uncritical. New York/London: Routledge, 2004: 13-38.
Stephen Best & Sharon Marcus, Surface Reading: An Introduction. Representations
108.1 (2009): 1-21.
Hans-Georg von Arburg et al., Hrsg., Mehr als Schein: sthetik der Oberflche in
Film, Kunst, Literatur und Theater. Zrich/Berlin: diaphanes, 2008.

Peter Stockwell, Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading. Edinburgh:

Edinburgh UP, 2009:
The focus is on texture the experiential quality of textuality but the discussion
ranges into the aesthetic senses of value, attractiveness, utility and their opposites as
well. These are all part of the textural experience of reading literature. (14f.)
from feeling to meaning
literary impact
(resonance and intensity, sensation and empathy, voice and mind,
identification and resistance)

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Richard H. R. Harper, Texture: Human Expression in the Age of Communications Overload. Cambridge/London: The MIT Press, 2010:
Communicative practices create a texture a complex weave of bonds that tie
together those who are communicating. This texture has various forms and strengths:
some bonds are instant and others slow, some ephemeral and others more
permanent. These bonds vary according the type of act in question and in terms of
the technologies that are used to enable acts. (196f.)

Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York/
London: Norton, 2011.
John Hartley, The Uses of Digital Literacy. St. Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2009.
Sussman, Henry, Around the Book: Systems and Literacy. New York: Fordham UP,
2011.

(cf. Reinfandt 2011/2013)

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Bibliography Lecture 4:
Bachmann-Medick, Doris, Hrsg., Kultur als Text: Die anthropologische Wende in der
Literaturwissenschaft (1996). 2. akt. Auflage mit neuer Bilanz. Tbingen/
Basel: Francke, 2004.
Bachmann-Medick, Doris, Culture as Text: Reading and Interpreting Cultures. In:
Birgit Neumann/Ansgar Nnning, eds., Travelling Concepts for the Study of
Culture. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter 2012: 99-118.
Berensmeyer, Ingo, Methoden hermeneutischer und neohermeneutischer Anstze.
In: Vera & Ansgar Nnning, Hrsg., Methoden der literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Textanalyse. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2010: 29-50.
Geertz, Clifford, Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. In:
The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973: 3-30.
Hoffman, Katherine E., Culture as Text: Hazards and Possibilities of Geertz
Literary/Literacy Metaphor. The Journal of North African Studies 14.3/4
(2009): 417-430.
Kress, Gunther. Literacy in the New Media Age. London/New York: Routledge, 2003.
Lenk, Carsten, Kultur als Text: berlegungen zu einer Interpretationsfigur. In:
Renate Glaser, Matthias Luserke, Hrsg, Literaturwissenschaft
Kulturwissenschaft:
Positionen,
Themen,
Perspektiven.
Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996: 116-128.
Reinfandt, Christoph, Reading the Waste Land: Textuality, Mediality, Modernity. In:
Hannes Bergthaller, Carsten Schinko, eds., Addressing Modernity: Social
Systems Theory and U.S. Cultures. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2011: 6384.
Reinfandt, Christoph, 'Texture' as a Key Term in Literary and Cultural Studies. In:
Rdiger Kunow, Stephan Mussil, eds.,Text or Context: Reflections on Literary
and Cultural Criticism. Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2013: 7-21.
Schneider, Mark A., Culture-as-Text in the Work of Clifford Geertz. Theory &
Society 16.6 (1987): 809-839.
Schulenberg, Ulf, Hermeneutics and Critical Theory. In: Martin Middeke et al., eds.,
English and American Studies: Theory and Practice. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2012:
186-190.

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