Page 29 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

namely the labour process, into meaningless actions, and second, through
separation from the products of their own labour. According to Marx, capitalism
also alienated workers from each other through competition, division and
6 individualism as well as from their ‘species being,’ by which he means the human
potential for self-determination.
A less theoretically specific use of the concept of alienation comes with the sense
that the cultural circumstances of modernity are inherently those of inauthenticity
and dislocation. In particular, the cultural experience of modern urban life is
understood to be one of anonymity, isolation and anxiety as expressed through the
themes and aesthetic style of modernism. Here alienation connotes a psychological
condition of estrangement, disaffection and emotional distance that is a
consequence of the impersonality and speed of living generated by modern
technology, commodification and city life.
Links Capitalism, commodification, Marxism, modernism, modernity, urbanization

Althusser,Louis (1918–1990) Althusser was a Marxist philosopher and theorist of the
French Communist Party who is associated with the attempt to produce a
structuralist Marxism. In particular he rejected what he saw as the humanism
inherent in the early work of Marx in favour of what he understood to be the
scientific structuralism of the later Das Kapital. His central influence within cultural
studies was the argument that a social formation was constituted by a complex
overdetermined relationship between different autonomous levels of practice. In
particular, he was a significant figure in cultural studies’ break with economic
determinism and the granting of autonomy within theory to the levels of culture
and ideology. Once a thinker of considerable influence, especially during the late
1960s and 1970s, his star has now waned because of the complexity of his writing
and the dogmatism, scientism and reductionism of his thinking.
• Associated concepts Ideological state apparatus, ideology, post-humanism, social
formation.
• Tradition(s) Marxism, structuralism.
• Reading Althusser, L. (1969) For Marx. London: Allen Lane Press.

Ang, Ien (1954– ) Ang’s pioneering study of the way an audience reads television,
Watching Dallas, became one of the cornerstones of the ‘active audience’ stream
within cultural studies. Her central argument is that Dallas viewers are actively
involved in the production of a range of responses that are not reducible to the
structure of the text. Subsequent to this study, Ang has continued to write widely
on the themes of media, culture, migration and globalization. She has continued to
maintain a substantial empirical emphasis in her work that includes an interest in
ethnicity and migrant cultures in Australia. She is Professor of Cultural Studies and
Director of the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney.
• Associated concepts Active audience, consumption, ethnicity, gender,
globalization, reading.
• Tradition(s) Cultural studies, feminism, hermeneutics, postmodernism.