Fourth Year

Culture Course Notes

Ain Shams University

Faculty of Arts

Programme(s) on which the course is given:

English Literature

Major or minor element of programmes:

Major

Department offering the programme:

English Language and Literature

Department offering the course:

English Language and Literature

Academic year / Level:

Fourth Year / First Term

A- Basic Information:
Title: Culture (Module 2)
Total: 2 hrs. (1-3) Tuesday (Room: 315)
Instructor: Ahmed Gamal
Email: dr_ahmed_gamal@hotmail.com
B- Professional Information:
1 Overall aims of course

The course is a survey of cultural studies and literary theory in the modern and
contemporary ages.
2 Intended learning outcomes of course (ILOs)
When you have completed this course, you will be able to:
a. Knowledge and understanding

a1- define the basic significance and features of modern culture

a2- outline the different cultural features of modern and postmodern English
literature and culture;
a3- describe the differences between modern and postmodern philosophies;
a4- point the fundamental features of cultural and literary trends such as
modernism, postmodernism, globalization and Orientalism.

b.

Intellectual skills
b1- classify literary texts according to their cultural and historical context;
b2- discover the differences between various cultural trends as represented
in literary texts;
b3- analyse the cultural parameters of modernist and postmodernist literary
texts.

c- Professional and practical skills

c1- determine the cultural significance of any type of text;
c2- interpret events in terms of their location of culture;
c3- assess the cultural weight of any product or process;
c3- write essays on aspects of modern and contemporary criticism;
c4- write commentary applying such critical notions.

d- General and transferable skills

d1- use word processing programs;
d2- browse culture and history of ideas web sites and blogs;
d3- use e-mails and e-groups in the learning process;
d4- argue in favour of a critical view;

3- Contents
Culture: Module 2

Lecture

Topic

Introduction

What is Cultural Studies?

Modernity

Modernism

Postmodernity & Postmodernism

Globalization & Cyber-Culture

Orientalism & Counter-Orientalism

4- List of references
4.1- Course notes
Facebook NewEglizy Files
4.2- Essential Articles (Hard/Soft Copies are available)
Lecture 1:
1. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The Philosophy of History.
2. Jrgen Habermas: Modernitys Consciousness of Time and Its need for selfReassurance
3.

Jrgen Habermas: Hegel's Concept of Modernity"

Lecture 2:
4. Clement Greenberg Modern and Postmodern

http://www.paduan.dk/Kunsthistorie%202008/Tekster/CLEMENT%20GREENBERGModern%20and%20Postmodern.pdf
Lecture 3:
5. Ihab Hassan: From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: The Local/Global
Context
http://www.ihabhassan.com/postmodernism_to_postmodernity.htm
6. Martin Irvine: The Postmodern, Postmodernism, Postmodernity:
Approaches to Po-Mo
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/pomo.html
Lecture 4:
7. Donna Haraway: A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
8. Ahdaf Soueif. "Protesters Reclaim the Spirit of Egypt."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12393795
Lecture 5:
9. Edward Said: Shattered Myths
10. Edward Said: On Flaubert
11. Edward Said: Latent and Manifest Orientalism

4.3- Recommended Books

Lecture 1:

Jrgen Habermas. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures.

Lecture 2:
Michael Levenson (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Modernism.
Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse.
http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100101.txt
Ezra Pound. "In a Station of the Metro".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Station_of_the_Metro
Lecture 3:
Linda Hutcheon. The Politics of Postmodernism.
J. M. Coetzee. Foe.
Lecture 4:
Arjun Appadurai. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.

Lecture 5:
Edward Said. Orientalism.
J. J. Clarke. Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western
Thought
E.M. Forster. A Passage to India.
http://www.archive.org/details/APassageToIndia_109
William Butler Yeats. "Sailing To Byzantium".
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1575/

4.4- Internet Resources

General
www.wikipedia.org
www.answers.com
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.iep.utm.edu/
The Dictionary of the History of Ideas
http://etext.virginia.edu/DicHist/dict.html
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/

Lecture 1: Modernity
Modernity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity

Illuminations: The Critical Theory Website. http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/

Max Horkheimer. http://pw1.netcom.com/~bcaterin/horklink.htm

Walter Benjamin. http://www.wbenjamin.org/links4.html

http://www.wbenjamin.org/links3.html#english

Jrgen Habermas. http://www.habermasforum.dk/index.php?type=onlinetexts

Lecture 2: Modernism

Modernism.http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/mar/20/architecture.commu
nities

The Modernism Lab. The Modernism Lab is a virtual space dedicated to collaborative
research into the roots of literary modernism. http://modernism.research.yale.edu/

Lecture 3: Postmodernity & Postmodernism

Postmodernism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism. Lengthy entry with intext links.
Postmodernism. Mary Klages. Apr. 2003.
http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html. Characteristics and
key figures.
Postmodernism and Its Critics
http://anthropology.ua.edu/cultures/cultures.php?culture=Postmodernism%20and%2
0Its%20Critics
Literature Resources: Postmodernism. D.K. Peterson.
http://www.english.wayne.edu/~peterson/Fiction/pomo.html#modernism. Handy
summary.
Some Attributes of Post-Modernist Literature. John Lye. 1999.
http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/2F55/post-mod-attrib.html. Another
introduction.
Postmodernism and its Critics. Shannon Weiss and Karla Wesley.
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/pomo.htm. An anthropological
perspective: extended article, references and links.
Postmodern Literature.
http://www.milforded.org/schools/jlaw/mminichiello/post/postlit.htm. Teaching
Postmodernist poems and novels: approaches and examples.

Postmodernism and the Postmodern Novel. Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin and
Robin Parmar. 2000. http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0256.html. Short article but
useful list of authors.
Paul Auster's Postmodernist Fiction: Deconstructing Aristotle's "Poetics". Dragana
Nikolic. http://www.bluecricket.com/auster/articles/aristotle.html. MA thesis but
readable.
The Genealogy of Postmodernism: Contemporary American Poetry. Albert Gelpi.
1990. http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/gelpi.html. Postmodernism as a final
exorcism of Romantic aspirations.
Postmodernist Poetry: a Movement or an Indulgence? Robert Jacoby. 2000.
http://home.san.rr.com/prjacoby/postmodern.html. A study of Elizabeth Bishop,
Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.
Dueling Paradigms: Modernist v. Postmodernist Thought. Dragan Milovanovic.
1997. http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/papers/drag-pomo.html. A legal view of the
debate.
Postmodernism in Poetry. http://www.textetc.com/modernist/postmodernism.html
Literary Criticism & Critical Theory. T. Gannon. Apr. 2002.
http://www.usd.edu/~tgannon/crit.html. Very extensive listing of sites under main
categories of literary criticism.

The Notebook for Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Scott H. Moore. Nov. 2002.
http://www3.baylor.edu/~Scott_Moore/Continental.html. Good listings for topics and
individual thinkers.

Guide to Literary Theory. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth.

http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/guide/. Johns Hopkins online guide: free access
limited.

Comparative Literature and Theory. Stephen Hock and Mark Sample . Jun. 2003.
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/Complit/Eclat/. Essential listings.

Postmodern Fiction: Secondary Sources. Tim Armstrong and Robert Eaglestone.

http://www.sun.rhbnc.ac.uk/~uhle012/PoMoRg.html. Grouped under novelists: many
in specialist journals.
Lecture 4: Globalization & Cyber-Culture
Globalization. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/globalization/
The Globalization Website, maintained by Frank Lechner (Emory University).
http://www.sociology.emory.edu/globalization/index.html
Global Transformations website (maintained by David Held, Political Science,
London School of Economics, and Anthony McGrew, International Relations,
Southampton University).
http://www.polity.co.uk/global/
http://www.polity.co.uk/global/links.asp
Lecture 5: Orientalism & Counter-Orientalism
Postcolonial Studies at Emory Web Site.
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Contents.html
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Orientalism.html

British Orientalist Literature.

http://www.eou.edu/~nknowles/spring2005/orientalism.html
Edward Saids Orientalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)

The Edward Said Archive: ( Articles by and about Edward Said and his
works) http://www.edwardsaid.org/?q=node/1

5. Academic Activity

Webinars:
1. Modernity
2. Globalization & Cyber-Culture

Introduction
What is Cultural Studies?
1. What is Cultural Studies?
Cultural Studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary
criticism. Characteristically interdisciplinary, it concerns the political dynamics of
contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts and defining
traits. Researchers concentrate on how a particular medium or message relates
to ideology, social class, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality and/or gender, rather than
investigating a particular culture or area of the world. Cultural studies approaches
subjects holistically, combining feminist theory, social theory, political
theory, history, philosophy, literary theory, media theory, film/video
studies, communication studies, political economy, translation studies, museum
studies and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies.
Thus, cultural studies seeks to understand the ways in which meaning is generated,
disseminated, and produced through various practices, beliefs and institutions.
We understand Cultural Studies not just as an academic discipline, a particular
approach within the wider field of the study of culture; it is also a political project that
seeks to construct what Larry Grossberg calls somewhere a "radical political history
of the present."
2. History of Cultural Studies
The term was coined by Richard Hoggart in 1964 when he founded the
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. It has since become
strongly associated with Stuart Hall, who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Many
cultural studies scholars employed Marxist methods of analysis, exploring the
relationships between cultural forms (the superstructure) and that of the political
economy (the base).
3. Significance of Cultural Studies
Cultural Studies can account for the specificities of the current historical conjunctures,
where changes in culture are being likened to a new Industrial or Information

Revolution. The Global North recognizes that its economic future lies in finance
capital and ideology rather than agriculture and manufacturing, and the Global South,
too, is seeking revenue from intellectual property to supplement its minerals and
masses.
The US, for instance, sells feelings, ideas, money, health, insurance, and law. The
trend is to harness the cultural skills of the population to replace lost agricultural and
manufacturing employment with jobs in music, theatre, animation, recording, radio,
TV, architecture, software, design, toys, books, heritage, tourism, advertising, the
web, fashion, crafts, photography, gaming, and cinema. PriceWaterhouseCoopers
estimates that the US culture industries generated US$428 billion in 2009, putting
them ahead of aerospace, automobiles, and agriculture in monetary value. They boast
an expected compound annual growth rate of 3.8% through 2014. In 2003, culture
accounted for 2.3% of Gross Domestic Product across Europe, to the tune of 654
billionmore than real estate or food and drink, and equal to chemicals, plastics, and
rubber. Annual global growth of 10% is predicted (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2010;
Miller, 2009).
4. Methodology of Cultural studies
So how do we to study the culture industries? And what kind of methodological and
epistemological assumptions should inform our analyses? There may appear to be
resonances between comprehensive studies of how texts are made and produced, how
they signify, and how they are understood (for instance, Tulloch and Alvarado, 1983)
and communications studies' sender-message-receiver model (Weaver and Shannon,
1963). But whereas the latter accords coeval status to the three points of the chain in a
pragmatic quest for the best means of getting one's point across, we favor a much
more radical position than this separation of production, meaning, and circulation
allows.
Our analyses must therefore juggle multiple determinations and overdeterminations
and keep the interrelationships of state, capital, pedagogy, ideology and discourse in
tension, working with the recognition that ''ideology' is not an entity which can or
cannot be disseminated through a medium, for that medium is itself part of an
ideology' rather than 'a transparent channel through which meanings pass' (Alvarado,

1981). According to this logic, the significance of a cultural event or phenomenon

be it ideological, political, economic, or culturalcannot be properly assessed outside
a dialectical understanding of its place in society as a whole. We must learn to
examine the cultural industries in the context of their social whole, that is, by pursuing
their hidden interactions and interconnections in real life. This way we are in a better
position to understand how social, economic, and political forces act on cultural
production, distribution, and reception; and how cultural forces, in turn, act on the
social, economic, and political.
In the context of Cultural Studies, the idea of a text, not only includes written
language, but also films, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of Cultural
Studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline
widens the concept of "culture". "Culture" for a cultural studies researcher, not only
includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups) and popular
culture, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two have become the main
focus of Cultural Studies.
5. Samples of Cultural Critique
5.1. Marlboro Man Image

A. Context: TV Commercials and Print Ads

Message: Masculinity, Toughness, Freedom, Transcendence of work-a-day
life.
B. Context: Anti-Smoking Campaign
Message: Threat, Illness, Cancer.
5.2. Beating of Female Protesters in Tahrir Square Image

A. Context: Revolutionary Media

Message: Abuse of Human Rights, Female Physical Humiliation
B. Context: Anti-Revolutionary Media
Message: Violation of Female Chastity Ideal and Eastern Petrarchan
Traditions

5.3. Revolutionary Slogans Text

A. The French Revolutionary cry: 'libert, galit, fraternit' [liberty, equality,

solidarity].
Message: Political Rights, Social Rights

B. The Argentine lefts contemporary version: 'ser ciudadano, tener trabajo, y

ser alfabetizado' [citizenship, employment, and literacy].
Message: Political Rights, Material Interests, Cultural Rights
C. Egyptian Revolution Chants: "[ bread, freedom, social
justice"].
Message: Material Interests, Political Rights, Social Rights

6. Key Concepts of Cultural studies

6.1. Cultural Hegemony
In Marxist

philosophy, cultural

hegemony describes

the

ruling-

class domination of a culturally diverse society by one social class, who

manipulate

the

culture

of

the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values,

the

society

and mores

so

that

their ruling-class Weltanschauung becomes the worldview that is imposed and

accepted as the cultural norm; as the universally valid dominant ideology that
justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and
inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social
constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
6.2. Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitute one's goals, expectations,
and actions. An ideology is a comprehensive vision, a way of looking at things
(worldview), or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to

all members of this society (a "received consciousness" or product

of socialization).
Louis Althusser proposed a materialistic conception of ideology and the
concept of the Ideological State Apparatus (e.g. forms of social control in
public institutions such as media, education, etc.) to explain his theory of
ideology. For his theory of ideology, individuals are constructs of ideology,
where ideology means not beliefs we disapprove of (as in racist ideology) but
the set of discourses and images which constitute the most widespread
knowledge and values common sense.

6.3. Agency
Agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make
their own free choices. By contrast, structure is those factors of influence
(such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, customs, etc.) that determine
or limit an agent and his or her decision. This line of thinking opened up
fruitful work exploring agency, a theoretical outlook which reinserted the
active, critical capacities of all people. Notions of agency have supplemented
much scholarly emphasis on groups of people (e.g. the working class,
primitives, colonized peoples, women) whose political consciousness and
scope of action was generally limited to their position within certain economic
and political structures. In other words, many economists, sociologists,
political scientists and historians have traditionally failed to acknowledge that
everyday people do indeed play a role in shaping their world or outlook.

Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies
http://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/
http://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/lateral/issue1.html
http://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/lateral/issue1/cultureindustries.html#chart
http://www.gold.ac.uk/cultural-studies/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(sociology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

Lecture 1 - Part 1
Modernity
1. Definition
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical
period, one marked by the move from feudalism (or agrarianism) toward
capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state
and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance (Barker 2005, 444).
Conceptually, modernity relates to the modern era and to modernism, but
forms a distinct concept. Whereas the Enlightenment invokes a specific
movement in Western philosophy, modernity tends to refer only to the social
relations associated with the rise of capitalism. Modernity may also refer to
tendencies in intellectual culture, particularly the movements intertwined with
secularization and post-industrial life, such as Marxism, existentialism, and the
formal establishment of social science. In context, modernity has been
associated with cultural and intellectual movements of 14361789 and
extending to the 1970s or later (Toulmin 1992, 35).
2. Phases of Modernity
According to one of Marshall Berman's books (Berman 1983), modernity is
periodized into three conventional phases (dubbed "Early," "Classical," and
"Late," respectively, by Peter Osborne (1992, 25):

Early modernity: 15001789 (or 14531789 in traditional

historiography)

Classical modernity: 17891900 (corresponding to the long 19th

century (17891914) in Hobsbawm's scheme)

Late modernity: 19001989

Some authors, such as Lyotard and Baudrillard, believe that modernity ended in the
mid or late 20th century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity,
namely Postmodernity (1930s/1950s/1990spresent). Other theorists, however,

consider the period from the late 20th century to present to be merely another phase of
modernity; this phase is called "Liquid" modernity by Bauman or "High" modernity
by Giddens.
3. Modernity Typology
3.1.Modernity as an Epochal/Temporal Paradigm:

According to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History, the

discovery of the "new world," the Renaissance, and the Reformation
(around the year 1500) constituted the threshold between modern times
and the middle ages.

Hegel understands "our age" as the most recent period and as the last
stage in history dating from the Enlightenment and the French
Revolution.

3.2.Modernity as a Cultural Paradigm:

For Max Weber, the intrinsic relationship between modernity and

"Occidental rationalism" was self-evident.

The dynamic concepts that emerged together with the expression of

"modern age" or "new age" in the eighteenth century were words such
as revolution, progress, emancipation, development, crisis, and
Zeitgeist.

The Zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, one of the words that inspired Hegel,
characterizes the present as a transition that is consumed in the
consciousness of a speeding up and in the expectation of the
differentness of the future.

Hegel sees that the principle of the modern world is freedom of

subjectivity. In this context, the term "subjectivity" carries four
connotations: a- individualism (singularity without limit); b- the right
to criticism; c- autonomy of action (responsibility for what we do);
d- idealist philosophy (self-conscious Idea)

The key historical events in establishing the principle of subjectivity

are the Reformation (subjective insight), the Enlightenment, and the
French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man (a
fundamental document of the French Revolution) and the Napoleonic
Code (French civil code established under Napolon I in 1804. The
code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion,
and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified.).
Expressive self-realization becomes the principle of art; modern art
reveals itself in romanticism.

3.3.Modernity as an Aesthetic Paradigm:

The In the realm of aesthetic criticism, the "moderns" called into question the
meaning of imitating the ancient models, and in opposition to the norms of
timeless and absolute beauty, they elaborated the criteria of a relative or timeconditioned beauty.

Charles Baudelaire attempts to reconcile the absolutely beautiful and the

relatively beautiful by stating that eternal beauty shows itself in the guise of
the costume of times. The modern work of art is marked by a union of the real
or true with the ephemeral. The dandy represents such union by combining the
fashionable with the pleasure of causing surprise in others by provocative
means. In the essay "The Painter of Modern Life" (1864), Baudelaire gives
a literary definition of modernity: "By modernity I mean the transitory, the
fugitive, the contingent" (Baudelaire 1964, 13).

For this reason art history keeps the term "modernity" as a discrete "term
applied to the cultural condition in which the seemingly absolute necessity of
innovation becomes a primary fact of life, work, and thought".

4. Modernization:
Theory of modernization was introduced in the 1950s: formation of capital development of production establishment of centralized political power formation of national identities proliferation of rights of political

participation secularization of values - urbanization industrialization - the

spread of education - an overarching process of rationalisation.

Resources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernization
3. Jurgen Habermas: "Modernity's Consciousness of Time and its Need for
Self-Reassurance"

Lecture 1 - Part 2
Modernity
1. Geographies of Modernity
1.1.Eurocentric Modernity
The frame of Eurocentric modernity formulates the phenomenon of
modernity as exclusively European, developing in the Middle Ages and
later on diffusing itself throughout the entire world. According to this
paradigm, Europe had exceptional internal or inherent characteristics
that allowed it to supersede, through its rationality, all other cultures.
Philosophically, no one expresses this thesis of modernity better than
Hegel: "The German Spirit is the Spirit of the new World. Its aim is the
realization of absolute Truth as the unlimited self-determination of
Freedom-that Freedom which has its own absolute form itself as its
purport." For Hegel, the Spirit of Europe (the German Spirit) is the
absolute truth that determines itself without owing anything to anyone.
The chronology of this frame has its geopolitics: modern subjectivity
develops spatially from the Italy of the Renaissance to the Germany of
the Reformation and the Enlightenment, to the France of the French
Revolution; throughout Europe is central.
1.2.Planetary/Alternative Modernities
Consequent to debate about the post-colonial perspective of
"alternative modernities," Shmuel Eisenstadt introduced the concept of
"multiple modernities" (2003; see also Delanty 2007). Modernity as a
"plural condition" is the central concept of this sociologic approach
and perspective, which broadens the definition of "modernity" from
exclusively denoting Western European culture to a culturally
relativistic definition, thereby: "Modernity is not Westernization, and
its key processes and dynamics can be found in all societies" (Delanty
2007).

2. Key Terms: Modernity Subjectivity Modernization Eurocentric

Modernity Alternative Modernities
3. Presentations: South Asian Modernity Egyptian Modernity
4. Webinar: Modernity - Eurocentric Modernity Alternative Modernities South Asian Modernity Egyptian Modernity
Resources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity
2. Enrique Dussel: "Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits of
Modernity"
3. Georg Hegel. The Philosophy of History.

Lecture 2
Modernism
1. Definition
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More
specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural
tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from widescale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries.
Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Arguably the most
paradigmatic motive (motif) of modernism is the rejection of tradition and its reprise,
incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms.
Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking in favor of the
abstract, unconventional, largely uncertain ethic brought on by modernity, initiated
around the turn of century by rapidly changing technology and further catalyzed by
the horrific consequences of World War I on the cultural psyche of artists.
In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who
felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, social organization and daily
life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of
an emerging fully industrialized world. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to
"Make it new!" was paradigmatic of the movement's approach towards the obsolete.
Modernism's stress on freedom of expression, experimentation, radicalism, and
primitivism disregards conventional expectations. Another paradigmatic exhortation
was articulated by philosopher and composer Theodor Adorno, who, in the 1940s,
challenged conventional surface coherence and appearance of harmony typical of the
rationality of Enlightenment thinking. A salient characteristic of modernism is selfconsciousness. This self-consciousness often led to experiments with form and work
that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of
abstraction).
2. The Metaphysics of Modernism

2.1. Deconstructing Tradition

Nietzsche's philosophy involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's
expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. Marx was
heavily critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism, which he
called the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", believing it to be run by the wealthy
middle and upper classes purely for their own benefit. Freud developed theories
about the unconscious mind and deconstructed the mechanism of repressive
consciousness.
2.2. Scientific Relativity
Einstein's theory of relativity overturned the concept of motion from Newton's day,
by positing that all motion is relative. Time was no longer uniform and absolute.
Physics could no longer be understood as space by itself, and time by itself. Instead,
an added dimension had to be taken into account with curved spacetime. Time now
depended on velocity, and contraction became a fundamental consequence at
appropriate speeds. When first published, relativity superseded a 200-year-old theory
of mechanics elucidated by Isaac Newton. Relativistic consciousness is a defining
characteristic of modernism. Within modernist literature, relativity was concretized
through the recurrent act of fragmenting unities (unities of plot or character or spce or
lyric form).
2.3. History and Myth
Modernist writers were almost obsessively concerned with history in a double sense:
they were concerned both about what was happening in their world and with the
nature of historical understanding as such. Myth was taken to be a transhistorical or
superhistorical spirit that transcends historical time. Mythic timelessness is found in
Joyce's Homeric parallel of Ulysses.
2.4. The Linguistic Turn
The pervasive concern with the construction of meaning helps explain the emphasis in
all the modernist arts on the nature of their own medium; and in the case of literature
this means language itself. Rather than describing or reflecting the world, language

was now seen to form it. Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics
(Cours de linguistique gnrale) (1916) showed how the linguistic turn stands in an
arbitrary relation to its external referent while meaning is created relationally within
the system of language.
2.5. Primitivism
As a literary convention primitivism allows the civilized to inspect, or to indulge itself
through an imaginary opposite. In the modernist period a radical questioning of the
present civilization along with the close study of the tribal peoples gave a new edge to
the primitivist impulse. Primitivism gained a new impetus from anxieties about
technological innovation. During the early 20th century, the European cultural elite
were discovering African and Native American art. Artists such as Henri Matisse and
Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles
of those cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse and other artists in Paris had
acquired an interest in primitivism, African art and tribal masks.
2.6. The Colonial Other
By the early twentieth century the tradition of European Enlightenment was thrown
into question and the colonial other was coming to be seen more honorifically.
Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) recognized that the darkness lies not in Africa but
in the human, and specifically European, heart.

3. Key Terms: modernism

4. Presentations: Modernist Picasso - Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

Resources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_theory
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietsche
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitivism
8. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Ed. Michael Levenson.

Lecture 2 Presentation
By Ahmed Gamal

The Modernist Picasso Speaking

I was born in 25 October 1881 and passed away in 8 April 1973.

I am a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor,
printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer.
They say I'm one of the greatest and most
influential artists of the 20th century.
Do you know WHY?
Because for nearly 80 of my 91 years, I devoted myself to
an art that paralleled the whole development
of modern art in the 20th century.
From an early age I showed a passion and a skill for drawing. According to
my mother, my first words were piz, piz, a shortening of lpiz, the Spanish
word for pencil. At school I also became preoccupied with art to the
detriment of my classwork.

My trip to Paris in 1900 was a turning point in my professional life.

In Paris I met my great lifelong friend and rival Henri Matisse.
In 1907 I joined an art gallery set in Paris by Kahnweiler, the art collector who
became one of the premier French art dealers of the 20th century.
My work is often categorized into periods as follows:
the Blue Period (19011904), the Rose Period (19051907), the Africaninfluenced Period (19081909),
Analytic Cubism (19091912), and Synthetic Cubism (19121919).
I began as a realist and ended as a cubist.
My style of painting was characterized by an emphasis on formal structure and
the reduction of natural forms to their geometrical equivalents.
My sole objective was to violate the norms of traditional realism by distorting
and abstracting figures.
Of course, that was not because of lack of skill.
My elusive references to recognizable forms and objects cannot always be
precisely identified.
The Museum of Modern Arts founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr. observed,
the mysterious tension between painted image and reality remains.

In my Painter painting (see below), I violated the El Greco's figure of the

painter (see above).

In my greatest artwork Guernica (1937), I show the tragedies of war and the
suffering it inflicts upon individuals in a completely unfamiliar way.

It is all in grey, black and white to express pain and chaos.

It shows suffering people, animals, and buildings
wrenched by violence and chaos.
Flaming buildings and crumbling walls not only express the destruction of
Guernica, but reflect the destructive power of civil war.
The shape and posture of the bodies express protest. The light bulb in the
painting represents the sun. The broken sword near the bottom of the painting
symbolizes the defeat of the people at the hand of their tormentors.
Finally, my art owes much to African art.
In my Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon),
the women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and
disjointed body shapes. Two are shown with African mask-like faces.
In this adaptation of Primitivism and abandonment of perspective in favor of a
flat, two-dimensional picture plane, I make
a radical departure from traditional European painting.

Lecture 3
Postmodernity and Postmodernism

1. Postmodernity as a Temporal Paradigm

Postmodernity (also spelled post-modernity or termed the
postmodern condition) is generally used to describe the economic or
cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after
modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the
late 20th century, in the 1980s or early 1990s replaced by
postmodernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the
developments denoted by postmodernity. The term refers to the same
period described by "globalization", "multinational capitalism", or
"consumer capitalism". It is equivalent to "late capitalism" or culture
dominated by post-industrial, consumerist, multi- and trans-national
capitalism, beginnings of globalization. The idea of the postmodern or
Postmodernity is an historical condition or position
(political/economic/ social), an era we're still supposedly in regardless
of anyone's state of awareness.

2. Postmodernity as a Cultural Paradigm

The postmodern as a historical/cultural "condition" based on a
dissolution of master narratives or metanarratives (totalizing narrative
paradigms like progress and national histories), a crisis in ideology
when ideology no longer seems transparent but contingent and
constructed (see Jean-Franois Lyotard's The Post-Modern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge). Thus, "Progress" was seen as
a failed Master Narrative. Faith in social and cultural unity, hierarchies
of social-class and ethnic/national values was replaced by social and
cultural pluralism, disunity.
We can think of postmodernity as a world process, by no means
identical everywhere yet global nonetheless. Or think of it as a vast
umbrella under which stand various phenomena: postmodernism in the
arts, poststructuralism in philosophy, feminism in social discourse,
postcolonial and cultural studies in academe, but also multi-national
capitalism, cybertechnologies, international terrorism, assorted
separatist, ethnic, nationalist, and religious movements--all standing
under, but not causally subsumed by, postmodernity (Ihab Hassan's
From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: The Local/Global Context).
Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than
the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original" "As seen on TV"
and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience.
Hypermedia is also seen as a sort of transcendence of the physical
limits of print media. The Web is considered as infinitely expandable,
centerless, inter-connected information system.

3. Postmodernism as an Aesthetic Paradigm

In most contexts postmodernity should be distinguished from

postmodernism, the conscious adoption of postmodern philosophies or
traits in art, literature and society. The term "postmodernism" comes
from its critique of the "modern" scientific mentality of objectivity and
the progress associated with the Enlightenment.
It is an aesthetic movement characterized by artistic and stylistic
eclecticism (aesthetic postmodernism) hybridization of forms and
genres, combining "high" and "low" cultural forms and sources,
mixing styles of different cultures or time periods, intertextuality,
dehistoricizing and re-contextualizing styles in architecture, visual arts,
literature, film, photography, fragments, hybridity, relativism, play,
parody, pastiche, an ironic, and an anti-ideological stance.
In 1971, the Arab American scholar Ihab Hassan published The
Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature, an
early work of literary criticism from a postmodern perspective, in
which the author traces the development of what he calls "literature of
silence" through Marquis de Sade, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway,

Beckett, and many others, including developments such as the Theatre

of the Absurd and the nouveau roman.
5. Key Terms: postmodernity postmodernism
6. Presentations: Robert Rauschenberg (Assemblage Art) - John Maxwell
Coetzee (Foe)

Resources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernity
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
3. http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/pomo.html
4. Jean-Franois Lyotard's The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge.
5. Ihab Hassan's From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: The
Local/Global Context

Lecture 4
Globalization & Cyberculture
1. Definition
Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term
globalization has quickly become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of
contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalization often
functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena:
the pursuit of classical liberal (or free market) policies in the world economy
(economic liberalization), the growing dominance of western (or even American)
forms of political, economic, and cultural life (westernization or
Americanization), the proliferation of new information technologies (the Internet
Revolution), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing
one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished
(global integration).
2. Genealogy
Theorists of globalization disagree about the precise sources of recent shifts in the
spatial and temporal contours of human life. Nonetheless, they generally agree that
alterations in humanity's experiences of space and time are working to undermine the
importance of local and even national boundaries in many arenas of human endeavor.
2.1.Marx
The socialist theorist Karl Marx, in 1848 formulated the first theoretical explanation
of the sense of territorial compression that so fascinated his contemporaries. In Marx's
account, the imperatives of capitalist production inevitably drove the bourgeoisie to
nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere.
Industrial capitalism constituted the most basic source of technologies resulting in the
annihilation of space, helping to pave the way for intercourse in every direction,
universal interdependence of nations, in contrast to a narrow-minded provincialism
that had plagued humanity for untold eons (Marx 1848, 476). Despite their ills as
instruments of capitalist exploitation, new technologies that increased possibilities for

human interaction across borders ultimately represented a progressive force in history.

They provided the necessary infrastructure for a cosmopolitan future socialist
civilization.
2.2.Dewey
John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic and technological trends implied the
emergence of a new world no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to
European exploration and conquest in 1492. For Dewey, the invention of steam,
electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges to relatively static and
homogeneous forms of local community life that had long represented the main
theatre for most human activity. Economic activity increasingly exploded the confines
of local communities to a degree that would have stunned our historical predecessors,
for example, while the steamship, railroad, automobile, and air travel considerably
intensified rates of geographical mobility.
2.3.McLuhan
The unabated proliferation of high-speed technologies is probably the main source of
the numerous references in intellectual life since 1950 to the annihilation of distance.
The Canadian cultural critic Marshall McLuhan made the theme of a technologically
based global village, generated by social acceleration at all levels of human
organization, the centerpiece of an anxiety-ridden analysis of new media
technologies in the 1960s (McLuhan 1964, 103).
2.4.Heidegger
But it was probably the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who most clearly
anticipated contemporary debates about globalization. Heidegger not only described
the abolition of distance as a constitutive feature of our contemporary condition, but
he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterations in the
temporality of human activity: All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man
now reaches overnight, by places, places which formerly took weeks and months of
travel (Heidegger 1950, 165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new
communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities
for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality: Distant sites of the most

ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today's
street trafficThe peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached
by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of
communication (Heidegger 1950, 165). The loss of any meaningful distinction
between nearness and distance contributed to a leveling down of human
experience, which in turn spawned an indifference that rendered human experience
monotonous and one-dimensional.
3. Assessment of Globalization
3.1.The Positive Frame
This frame points to the potential gains and benefits of globalization.
3.2.The Neutral Frame
This frame portrays globalization as a natural, evolutionary, and largely
inevitable development.
3.3.The Negative Frame
This frame points out the increasing potential for economic crisis, the
threat to the livelihoods of workers, and the growing income inequality
caused by globalization. Critics argue that globalization results in:

more rapid and extensive deterioration of the environment

social disintegration

the spread of new diseases

increasing poverty and alienation

4. Cyberculture
4.1.Definition

Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of
computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the
study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms
of network communication, such as online communities, online multi-player gaming,
social media and texting

4.2.Manifestations of Cyberculture

Manifestations of Cyberculture include various human interactions mediated by

computer networks. They can be activities, pursuits, games, places and metaphors,
and include a diverse base of applications. Some are supported by specialized
software and others work on commonly accepted web protocols. Examples include
but are not limited to:

Blogs

Chat

E-Commerce

Social networks

Usenet

Peer-to-peer file

Games

Bulletin Board

Systems

Internet memes
webinars

sharing

Virtual worlds

4.3.Qualities of Cyberculture
There are several qualities that cybercultures share that make them warrant the prefix
cyber-. Some of those qualities are that cyberculture:

Is a community mediated by ICTs.

Is culture mediated by computer screens.

Relies heavily on the notion of information and knowledge exchange.

Depends on the ability to manipulate tools to a degree not present in other forms
of culture.

Is a cognitive and social culture, not a geographic one.

Is the product of like-minded people finding a common place to interact."

Is inherently more "fragile" than traditional forms of community and culture (John
C. Dvorak).
5. Key Terms: globalization cyberculture
6. Presentations: Cyber-revolution: The Impact of Facebook and Twitter on the
Egyptian Revolution
7. Webinar: Globalization Assessment - Cyber-revolution: The Impact of
Facebook and Twitter on the Egyptian Revolution

Resources
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/globalization/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberculture

Lecture 5
Orientalism & Counter- Orientalism

1. Orientalism Typology
1.1.Orientalism as Scholarship
Orientalism is a type of Western scholarship that is focused on the
study of ancient oriental civilizations and the cultures, religions,
histories, and languages of the Near East, the Middle East, and the
Far East. This scholarship particularly foregrounds the study of the
past of Oriental nations and cultures as "dead" civilizations and the
study of such past in its cultural aspects, notably the language and
religion, detached from social evolution. History was studied, at its
best, as a mere re-emergence or prolongation of the past. In
addition, the scientific work of the scholars of different Oriental
countries was passed over in silence. One groups of researchers
produced genuine work of scientific value, while others along with
businessmen, colonial officials, and adventurers were just
interested in gathering intelligence information in the area to be
occupied and about the people whose consciousness was to be
enslaved. Both groups consider the Orient and Orientals as an
'object' of study, stamped with otherness, passivity, non-autonomy,
non-sovereignty, and non-activity. Both groups adopt an

essentialist conception of the countries, nations and peoples of the

Orient under study.
1.2.Orientalism as Discourse
Orientalism expresses and represents the Orient culturally and
ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions,
vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, and colonial styles.
According to Said's Orientalism, Western knowledge about the
East is not generated from facts or reality, but from preconceived
archetypes that envision all "Eastern" societies as fundamentally
similar to one another, and fundamentally dissimilar to "Western"
societies. This discourse establishes "the East" as antithetical to
"the West". Such Eastern knowledge is constructed with literary
texts and historical records that often are of limited understanding
of the facts of life in the Middle East. In the book, Said effectively
redefined the term "Orientalism" to mean a constellation of false
assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the Middle East.
He uses the term to describe a pervasive Western tradition, both
academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the
East, shaped by the attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th
and 19th centuries. Said's work has given rise to a new discipline
called Postcolonialism or Postcolonial Studies.
2. Counter-Orientalism
Counter-Orientalism is a kind of scholarship and discourse that
critically reflects on its own production and reproduction of the Orient
as 'subject' rather than 'object' of knowledge and attempts to counter
the reinscription of the essentialist strategies of Orientalism. In
Oriental Enlightenment, J. J. Clarke points to that positive cultural
encounter that rests on reciprocity, understanding, and empathy:
The perceived otherness of the Orient is not exclusively one of mutual
antipathy, nor just a means of affirming Europes triumphant

superiority, but also provides a conceptual framework that allows

much fertile cross-referencing, the discovery of similarities, analogies,
and models; in other words, the underpinning of a productive
hermeneutical relationship. (27)
3. Key Terms: Orientalism Counter-Orientalism
4. Presentations: Eastern Movies (1001 Nights [Sinbad] [Ali Baba]
Sheikh Terrorism)
Resources
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism
3. Edward Said. Orientalism.
4. Anouar Abdel-Malek. "Orientalism in Crisis".
5. J. J. Clarke. Oriental Enlightenment.

Culture 4 Student Activities and Presentations

Culture Module 2 Dictionary
Culture Module 2
Dictionary of important cultural terms

1-Modernity ................................................
2-Subjectivity ...............................................
3-Modernization ..........................................
..........................................
4-Eurocentric Modernity .............................
.........................

5-Alternative/Planetary
Alternative/Planetary Modernity ........... ... /
6-Modernism...............................................
...............................................
7-Postmodernity ..........................................
..........................................

8-Postmodernism .........................................
.........................................

9-Globalization ...........................................
...........................................
10-Cyberculture
Cyberculture
11-Orientalism....
Orientalism....
12-Counter-Orientalism................................
................................

1-Modernity
Modernity is basically a temporal category implying a cultural content. A modern
society is supposed to be post-medieval
post medieval and mainly based on subjectivity, rationalism,
emancipation,, secularization, revolution, development, and progress.

2-Subjectivity is one of the basic elements of cultural modernity. It is mainly based on

individualism, the right for criticism, autonomy of action, and idealist philosophy.

3- Modernization is a process of development in the nation-state that includes social

institutions, urbanization, political centralization, development of production, and
spread of education.

4- Eurocentric Modernity is a cultural sub-type of modernity implying a temporal

concept. This frame of thought describes modernity as exclusively established and
centered in Europe in post-Medieval times. Philosophers like Hegel think that
perfection of human thought is manifested largely in the German race.

5- Alternative/Planetary Modernities is a cultural sub-type of modernity that explains

modernity as a universal concept established all over the world and manifested in
regions like Latin America and Africa and not necessarily in Europe.

/ .
, .

6- Modernism is an aesthetic movement that began in France the second half of the
nineteenth century. It was represented in many fields of art such as music, painting,
and architecture. Modernism is characterized by six main motifs. It deconstructed
tradition like Nietzsches critique of the old utilitarian concept of morality. Moreover,
modernism was characterized by rewriting of history, and myth, linguistic turn,
primitivism, and the concept of the colonial other.

.
.

.

7- Postmodernity is a cultural movement implying a temporal and analytic category. It

is a temporal and cultural analytic category. The term refers to the same period which
is described by globalization, multinational organizations, and late capitalism (late
twentieth century). From a cultural stand point, it has many aspects such as cultural
pluralism ( accepting various religion, races, classes, languages), Fragmentation, and
extreme relativism. From a political stand point, it witnesses the declination of the
nation state .

.
.( )
( " " )
.

8- Postmodernism is an aesthetic movement characterized by artistic and stylistic

eclecticism by mixing styles from different cultures and times. It appears in many
(intertextuality and aesthetic fields like architecture, visual arts (pastiche), literature
parody).

) .
.(

9-Globalization is a concept and a type of social reality. It might refer to free market
policies in economy. In political and cultural fields, it refers to Americanization and
Westernization. In the field of communication, it refers to the quick development of
the information technology networks.

.

. .

10- Cyberculture is cultural exchange based on internet, social networks, blogs,

forums, chatting, webinars, e-marketingetc. Cyberculture is fragile, cognitive,
transmitted through computer screens, and its based on ICT.

....
.

11- Orientalism is a kind of western scholarship and discourse that takes as its focus
the study and representations of languages, peoples, and religions of the near and far
east countries. Great deal of orientalist scholarship and discourse study the orient
merely from a political and ideological point of view.

12-Counter-Orientalism is a kind of critical study and discourse of orientalism in both

constructive and deconstructive analysis. Deconstruction is based on rewriting of
western stereotypes of the orient while construction is mainly based on highlighting
positive influence of the East and its culture on the West.

Editors:
Amal Mohammad
Josephine Fayez
Menna Riad
Maisara Salah
Mariam Hamdy

Pablo Picasso Presentation , ( African Masks)

Dec 28, '11 10:12 AM

by Amera for everyone

The Primitive African Masks

Tribal masks are a basic feature of African traditional culture; it is a kind of a
national art.
Such masks have an appearance in the traditional ceremonies, or in the ritual fire
dances.

The implication associated

to the use of ritual masks would be:

Either a looseness of identity as the mask wearer becomes the spirit

represented by the mask itself (whether it is the spirit of the dead and the
ancestors, or the spirit of the gods, devils, and wild animals).

Or a hiding technique the tribes have ways to secure their own communities
and interests against any interruption, corruption, or even a foreign attack.
The colours used in some masks are mainly red, white, and black, which signifies
the wilderness and roughness features of African life.
Pablo Picasso

By the early twentieth century, African art captured the attention of

Europeans and the western society towards African " imagination, emotion and
mystical and religious experience" , as well as African "phenomenal expressive
power".

Westerns referred to African art as just primitive, but it was proved to have

relations to "philosophic and intellectual discourse[s] "

Pablo Picasso, and other artists, was influenced by this artistic side of African

culture. He tried to indicate a simplistic style in some of his artworks, like Les
Demoiselles d' Avignon

"Pablo Picasso painted in a style which was strongly influenced by African

sculpture."

As if Picasso was searching for something quite lost in the western everyday

life. It could be an attempt to visualize the purification and innocence within

Human nature.
WHEREAS WE ARE DEALING WITH THE CULTURAL ERA OF
MODERNISM, WHY DON NOT WE TRY TO BE
QUITE INTELLECTUALS AND INNOVATE SOMETHING
PERSUADE HOW WE UNDERSTAND THE METAPHYSICS OF
THIS NEW ERA ?!
LET'S TRY !!
"African Masks", as an idea itself, can be applied to the image of the
Belgian colonial society in Congo, presented by Joseph Conrad in his
novella.

Virginia Wolfs To the Lighthouse

Dec 25, '11 4:55 PM

by laila for everyone

Virginia Wolfs To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf is born in 25th of January 1882 in London, England,
UK. She began writing professionally in 1900. She is a novelist (her 1st novel
was The Voyage Out in 1915 & her last was Between the Acts),
), Essayist, publisher,
and a critic. Her father was a notable historian, author, a critic, and an editor of THE
DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY that she influenced by in her later
experimental biographies.
Adeline Virginia Woolf has been hailed as one of the greatest novelists
of the 20thC and one of the foremost modernists. She is considered one of the greatest
innovators in the English language. She has experimented with stream of
consciousness in her notable novel TO THE LIGHT HOUSE.
The Stream of consciousness is a technique was pioneered by Dorothy
Richardson in Pilgrimage(1915
(1915-1935), and by James Joyce in Ulysses in 1922 ,and
further developed by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway in 1925 (one of her main
works).
The Stream of consciousness is the continuous flow of sense
perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind or a literary method
of representing a blending of mental processes usually in an unpunctuated form of
interior monologue without an apparent intervention
intervention of a selecting narrator without
violating or focusing on grammar, syntax, or logic. This shows that there is no central
narrator, (the centrality of the characters), that could make the prose difficult to
follow.
The use of the technique of the stream of consciousness or the interior
monologue indicates fragmentation and disharmony of the modernism.

2. Plot Disunity in Virginia Wolfs To the Lighthouse

1-

The action of the novel is set on two days, ten years apart.

2-

The plot does not open up with a narration rather it starts with shifting streams of

consciousness of different characters.

3-

The novels division is totally untraditional, it is not divided into chapters like the

classical novels, rather it is divided into three sections, each section has a different
name from the other, these sections are:
The Window
Time Passes
The Lighthouse
4-

The novel includes little action and almost no dialogue.

5-

Most of the novel is represented as thoughts and observations.

6-

The prose of the novel is hard to follow because the sentences are very long.

7-

There is absolutely no guide for the readers except character development.

3. Characterization
To The Lighthouse and its characters display modernist elements.
3.1. Multiple characters
The novel has a big number of characters as Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay who have eight
children and their friends. Most of the characters have certain common traits.
3.1.1 Mrs. Ramsay

Mrs. Ramsay, the central character, is the mother of the Ramsay family who dies in
the middle section of the novel. She is a beautiful, caring woman who means many
things to all people. She helps to bring the world out of chaos and darkness with her
positive nature. Characters see her as a symbol of the lighthouse as she is the source
of light for them. That is why she is in a way a representation of life itself.
3.1.2 Mr. Ramsay
Mr. Ramsay is the father of the family. He is a philosopher who disparages Victorian
ideals of society and questions both the existence of God and the goodness in man. .
He is the most misunderstood character in the book, a man whose children hate him
because they think he is viciously unemotional and cold.
3.1.3 Lily Briscoe
Lily is a passionate artist. She rejects the traditional femininity, represented by Mrs.
Ramsay in the form of marriage and family. The recurring memory of Charles
Tansley insisting that women can neither paint nor write deepens her anxiety. It is
with these self-doubts that she begins her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of
the novel. She undergoes a drastic transformation over the course of the novel, trying
to overcome the anxieties that kept her from drawing the portrait. By the end of the
novel, she was able to craft something beautiful and lasting with a larger sense of
completeness.
3.2. Lack of unity
The presence of a great number of characters leads to the lack of unity. There is no
central narrator presenting the characters thought directly.
3.3. Lack of action
The novel doesnt have a lot of actions taking place. It starts with the Ramsay family
thinking of going to the lighthouse, and then they get to the Lighthouse at the end of
the novel. The focus is on the inner actions of the characters. We see each of the
characters from multiple perspectives. Each characters private mutation is recorded,
as well as other characters responses and interpretations of his/her behavior. The

accumulation of those perceptions and the whole incidents leads the characters to
acknowledge and recognize the whole picture at the end of the novel.
Resources
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lighthouse/themes.html
http://www.enotes.com/to-the-lighthouse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Lighthouse
Prepared by: Iman Al Gindi
Norhan Hamdy Osman
Laila Alaa Abd El latif

Dec 16, '11 3:38 PM

Parody in "Foe" by Mai Alawady & Maisara Salah

by Maisara for everyone

1. Background
1.1. John Maxwell Coetzee

1. Coetzee is an author from South Africa, novelist, translator, linguist, programmer

and a literary critic.
2. Hes a hybrid writer with a German origin, speaks Dutch and English, and belongs
to parents of Afrikaan descent. His family spoke English at home but he spoke
Afrikaans with other relatives. Coetzee was born in South Africa and traveled to many
places until he settled in Australia and became an Australian citizen in 2006.
1.2. Intertextuality is the complex interrelationship between a text and other texts
taken as basic to the creation or interpretation of the text-its to borrow different styles
and quotes from other works of literature.
1.3. Parody is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an
original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of
humorous, satiric or ironic imitation.

2. Parody in Foe (Robinson Crusoe versus Foe)

P a r o d y

Robinson Crusoe 1719

Foe 1986

2.1. Narrative voice

-1st and 3rd person

-1st and 3rd person

-Susan Barton

-Robinson Crusoe
-Foe
-unknown narrator
2.2. Space

-Deserted island

-Deserted island
-unknown location (far from Brazil)

-on the coast of south America

2.3. Characters

Robinson Crusoe: young man-strong-

Crusoe: old man-weak-dull-desperat

adventurous- determines to leave the island

to leave the island

Friday: slave-escaped from cannibals-more

European appearance

Friday: slave-lost his tongue-describ

as negro

Susan Barton: Female protagonist-

effective challenging character-seeks

publish her story as it happened

Foe: mixture of real Defoe & imagin

one seeks to change Susans story

Links:
Full text ofFoe: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13749887/JM-Coetzee-Foe

Intertextuality and parody in Coetzees works:http://www.belgeler.com/blg/18w5/jm-coetzee-s-foe-writing-back-to-canonical-pre-texts-j-m-coetzee-nin-foe-adli-romaniyerlesik-oncul-metinleri-yanitlarken

J.M Coetzee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.M_Coetzee

Presentation by: Mai Al Awady

Maisara Salah