CSCT 1CS3 Lecture Notes - Media Manipulation, Roland Barthes, Cultural Identity

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Cultural Studies and Critical Theory
• Course: CSCT 1CS3
• Professor: Helene Strauss

Document Summary

Interconnected relationship: rules govern how we convey something; grammar, etc, sign; relationship not conventional or natural, signifier. Once you take into account this inner and other difference, then you pay attention to the other and you understand that fighting for your own identity is not exclusive of another identity, is open to another identity. If canadianess is different, compare it to other cultures (signifiers), compare and contrast. Binary oppositions: male/female, soul/body, high culture/low culture, reason/emotion, capital/labour, reduces complexity, problems with binaries; one term is privileged; hierarchies. Roland barthes 1915-1980: mythologies, justify specific meanings, reinforce dominate structures, defined by him (redefined) expanded de saussure meaning of signs and discriptors; denotation(signifier ex/ literal meaning) v. connotation(tied to ideology ex/ sneaky cat); assumption. Michel foucault 1926-1984 reality: discourse; describes the way speech and writing works with institutions to create social, social knowledge, analyze law, how institutions structure out life, way medicine allowed people to make distinctions between healthy/unhealthy.