Machine generated contents note: 1.Introducing Cultural Studies: A Brief Contextual History -- Introduction -- Cultural studies? -- Culture? -- The Culture and Civilization Tradition: Matthew Arnold and the Leavises -- The Frankfurt School and the culture industry -- Culturalism(s) -- Richard Hoggart and The Uses of Literacy -- E. P Thompson and The Making of the English Working Class -- Raymond Williams -- The consolidation of cultural studies in Britain: Stuart Hall and the Birmingham Centre -- Feminism and race/ethnicity and beyond -- 2.Structuralism and the Linguistic Turn: Ferdinand de Saussure -- Introduction -- Second-hand Saussure -- Signs of Saussure: signifiers and signifieds -- Language as relational not referential -- Of `Cartoon Wars' signification and syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations -- Coding reality, langue and parole -- Levi-Strauss and the Binary Opposition -- Linguistic exchange and acts of power -- Conclusion: men and women are not natural facts --

Contents note continued: 3.Semiotics: Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes and Stuart Hall -- Introduction -- Structuralism and `bonding' with popular culture -- Structuralism and the rhetoric of the image: anchoring the image and making it speak -- The linguistic message: denotation and connotation -- The non-coded and coded iconic messages -- The relation between linguistic and iconic levels: anchorage -- The relation between linguistic and iconic levels: relay -- Barthes and `The Photographic Message' -- Semiology and ideology -- Semiology and ideology: the ideological contents of our age -- (Bourgeois) Paris meets its match: Barthes and modern mythologies -- Myth, motivation and naturalization -- Interpreting signs in the media: Hall's `Encoding and Decoding in Television Discourse' -- Hall and preferred readings -- Alternative meanings and the `Battle of Orgreave' -- The `Battle of Orgreave' and preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings --

Contents note continued: 4.Ideology: Marxism and Louis Althusser -- Introduction -- Introduction: Althusserian structuralism -- The ideological and repressive state apparatuses -- The relative autonomy of the ideological state apparatuses -- Overdetermination and the imaginary and material aspects of ideology -- Ideology as imaginary -- The material existence of ideology -- Interpellation -- The Subject of the subject -- Reading culture with Althusser: double reading -- The (invisible) problematic -- Symptomatic reading -- E. P. Thompson verus the Athusserians and the triumph of structuralist approaches -- Structuralism, Althusser and Marxism as science -- 5.Poststructuralism: Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida -- Introduction -- Poststructuralism and deconstruction: a few preliminary remarks -- The `post' of poststructuralism, Barthes, and the mythology of the de-mythologist -- Readers as writers, the death of the author and `authoricide' --

Contents note continued: Of intertextuality, authoricide and suicide -- Jacques Derrida: `differance', deferral and trace -- Structure, the transcendental signified, the metaphysics of presence and logocentrism -- Logocentrism and the metaphysics of presence: further connections -- Phonocentrism -- Conclusion: returning to differance -- 6.Doing Deconstruction: Techniques for Practice -- Introduction -- Practising Deconstruction: a heuristic -- Deconstructing patriarchal power -- Further adapting deconstruction to cultural studies: Stuart Hall's `Notes on Deconstructing "The Popular"' -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and deconstructing historiography -- Homi Bhabha and `DissemiNation' -- The danger of deconstruction -- The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing: two interpretations of interpretation -- 7.Psychoanalysis: Jacques Lacan -- Introduction -- Preliminaries -- Lacan, lack and identity: Lac(k)an -- The `subject' of Lacan and the grammatical origins of subjectivity --

Contents note continued: The Mirror Stage -- The big Other -- Outside inside: Lacan and objets petit a -- Subjectivity and gender -- Oedipus, the unconscious as a linguistic phenomenon, and the Name-of-the-Father -- Desire as an inter-subjective phenomenon -- The Real -- Summing up the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real: returning to Althusser -- 8.Applying Lacan: Techniques for Feminist and other forms of Cultural Analysis -- Introduction -- Anchoring the self: the master signifiers -- Lacan, feminism and the privileged signifier: the Phallus -- The Master Signifier and the Name-of-the-Father in practice: From electrocuting thy neighbour to The Yes Men -- The Lacanian explanation: the Name-of-the-Father -- The Lacanian explanation: the subject supposed to know -- Oedipus (culture) bound -- Points of connection: poststructuralism, Derrida and Lacan -- 9.Discourse and Power: Michel Foucault -- Introduction -- Situating Foucault and his contribution to cultural studies --

Contents note continued: Foucault: the critique of reason and the irrationality of rationality -- Truth as a thing of this world: knowledge, discourse, truth and power -- Self-regulation, surveillance and control: Foucault and Bentham's Panopticon -- Man as a recent invention! `Man' in the discourses of the sciences -- Goodbye to identity! The dissolution of `history' and the genealogical approach -- Foucault and the history of sexuality -- The homosexual as a recent invention -- 10.Gender and Sexuality: Judith Butler -- Introduction -- Judith Butler and the weave of theory -- Troubling gender through poststructuralist theory: the project -- Butler, Freud and Foucault: gender troubled -- A lesbian is not a woman -- Gender and performativity -- Drag, not such a drag: deconstructing gender -- Genealogy and gender; gender as historical sedimentation of corporeal styles -- Gender subversions -- Gender trouble and feminist politics --

Contents note continued: Postmodern bodies, postmodern identities, postmodern feminism -- 11.The Postmodern Condition: Daniel Bell, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jurgen Habermas -- Introduction -- Postmodernism(s): an exasperating but necessary term -- For whom the Bell tolls: the coming of the post-industrial society -- Lyotard, the postmodern condition and the crisis of metanarratives -- Legitimation and the grand narrative -- Incredulity toward metanarratives and the postmodern alternative -- Delegitimation and performativity -- Lyotard and postmodern culture as eclectic -- Postmodernism and the arts -- A postmodern academic style: an alternative intro-diction -- Lyotard contra Habermas (and Marxisism) -- 12.Identity and Consumption: Jean Baudrillard -- Introduction -- A reluctant postmodernist? -- Baudrillard, (post)structuralism and consumption: postmodern identity -- Postmodernism and the breakdown of high versus low culture --

Contents note continued: How to skive off school or avoid paying for the drinks in one easy lesson: dissimulation, simulation and simulacra -- Substituting signs of the real for the real: contemporary society and hyperreality -- A Trip to Disneyland (USA): Baudrillard in action -- Revealing the truth by devious means: Watergate -- The Gulf War never happened: the strategic value of Baudrillard's thought -- The Gulf between Baudrillard and his Critics: uncritical theory? -- Postmodernism and (some of) its discontents: the case of feminism -- Jilting the God's eye view of philosophy -- Feminist postmodernism and its discontents: the incredible shrinking woman -- 13.Postmodernism Unplugged: Fredric Jameson -- Introduction -- Situating Fredric Jameson historically -- The Third Stage of Capitalism, globalization and the multinationals -- Postmodernism and the end of this or that -- From the breakdown of the high versus mass or commercial culture to the logic of late capitalism --

Contents note continued: Postmodernism, `depthlessness' and the role of commodity fetishism -- Postmodern culture, more `depthlessness' and the waning of affect -- The death of the subject and Marxist discourse -- Parody versus pastiche, `pastness' and crisis in contemporary history -- Postmodernism and cultural schizophrenia -- From high-tech paranoia to cognitive mapping -- Jameson, popular culture, politics and new social movements -- 14.Practising Cultural Studies: Hegemony and Cognitive Mapping -- Introduction -- Theory wars: Gramsci, hegemony and the postmodern as a site of struggle -- Cognitive mapping, postmodern political art and the `homeopathic strategy' -- Cognitive mapping in practice 1: Haacke's MetroMobilitan -- Cognitive mapping in practice 2: Susan Daitch's L.C. -- `The philosophers have only interpreted the world [...] the point is to change it': Hall, Grossberg and the politics of change --

Contents note continued: 15.Where to Go from Here: Cognitive Mapping and the Critical Project of Cultural Studies -- Of begin(end)ings and the project of cultural studies -- To (cognitively) map or not to map the corporate world? -- A funny thing happened on the way to the fish fingers: cognitive mapping in the (super)market -- Brothers in Arms: the military-industrial complex -- Homo economicus -- The business of higher education -- Shocking doctrines: the rise of disaster capitalism -- The IMF and World Bank, and the cultural economic logic of late capitalism -- Cultural studies, critical journalism, Gramsci and the organic intellectual -- Cultural studies within/beyond academe: don't just theorize-do it! New social movements, subvertizing, culture jamming and DiY -- Thinking with Deleuze and Guattari -- Cognitive mapping, evaluating sources and further research -- Postscript: struggling with theory.