Week+3+-+Coda+Questions

If time allows, I'll be happy if we can discuss some of the thornier questions about culture (high and popular)


 * How do we experience "culture" and cultural definitions in our reading, studying, and teaching lives? How about in entertainment? Are we aware of any tensions about what's in / out? Who is involved in influencing these constructions?
 * Doesn't is seem confusing that "culture" is used for categories of art (high, low, etc.) and also the tacit understanding and beliefs of a group (ex. American culture, working class culture)? What sense can you make of this?
 * Are you persuaded by the argument that since meaning always requires a context, then exclusions (and the formation of cultural boundaries) are inevitable to living in a world that makes sense? 57, 61
 * Bloom is not sympathetically discussed. But how persuaded are you of the problems inherent in this "high cultural" snobbery? And if it's so bad, why does it persist?
 * Are mass culture and now digital culture 2.0 new names for the same old issues, or has technology helped create a paradigm shift?
 * Besides the idea of "past-ness" what links the "posts" of - structuralism and -modernism? How do you get from a postmodern style of painting/writing to a postmodern skepticism about truth? or vice versa?