Page 128 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

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Kellner, Douglas (1943– ) Kellner is an American theorist who is currently Chair of
the Philosophy of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kellner has
been a prolific writer and many of his books deal with the critical theory of the
Frankfurt School and the contemporary emergence of postmodernism and
poststructuralism. He has been a leading advocate for cultural studies in the United
States, arguing for a multi-perspectival approach that combines political economy
and cultural analysis. He has applied this perspective to an understanding of media
and globalization amongst others. In his recent work, The Postmodern Adventure, he
argues that massive geopolitical shifts and dramatic developments in
computerization and biotechnology are heralding the transformation from the
modern to the postmodern age.
• Associated concepts Cultural politics, culture industry, identity, ideology,
political economy, popular culture.
• Tradition(s) Critical theory, Marxism, postmodernism.
• Reading Kellner, D. (with S. Best) (2001) The Postmodern Adventure: Science,
Technology and Cultural Studies in the Third Millennium. New York and London:
The Guilford Press.

Kristeva, Julia (1941– ) Born in Bulgaria, and schooled in Marxism and Russian
formalism (see Bakhtin), Kristeva emigrated to France where she initially studied
with Roland Barthes and wrote for the avant-garde journal Tel Quel. Working as a
professor at both the universities of Pairs and Columbia (New York), she developed
a critique of structuralism and a methodology she calls ‘semanalysis’ that seeks to
explore signification and ‘set categories and concepts ablaze’. She argues that
transgression of the dominant symbolic order is marked in certain kinds of
(modernist) literary and artistic practice through the rhythms, breaks and absences
in texts that develop a new language. A practising psychoanalyst in the tradition of
Lacan, her work is particularly concerned with gender and subjectivity, which are
critical issues for cultural studies.
• Associated concepts Avant-garde, intertextuality, semiotics, subject position,
subjectivity, symbolic order.
• Tradition(s) Feminism, Marxism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis.
• Reading Kristeva, J. (1986) ‘Revolution in Poetic Language’, in T. Moi (ed.), The
Kristeva Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

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