In her essay named the Invention of Every Day, Rita Felski tries to seek the reformation of every day in the ordinary aspect of existence. She rejects the problems and hurdles that she finds for everyday life in both modernist Literature And Cultural Studies. She has been able to locate this disdain in the descriptions of Samuel Beckett (Felski, 2017).
According to her, Modernism deletes the fact of every day because it tries to go beyond the very mundane aspect of daily life. This makes the aspect of modernism lose the casual inattentiveness which marks an everyday experience. She also draws on the phenomenological aspects of every life and argues that habits should be taken for granted because it is necessary recognition for impulse and innovation. She does not have any contempt for everyday life and she finds peace as well as acceptance in daily life with all its mundane and banal aspects. She is asking readers to give value to ordinary life even if it is habitual and it is boring rather than see it as something negative. She tells the readers to not perceive daily life as negative or derogatory. Theory, modern literature and cultural studies are all marked with the same aspect of negativity about ordinary life (Felski, 2017). This has been written in the hope that all the theoretical approaches will get more discourse and discussion in order to isolate the real aspect of post-modern restlessness. She asks whether existentialism and post-modern nomadism are the only ways in which everyday life can be described.
She wants people to accept daily life for exactly what it is and also sit in a positive light. To see everyday life as just a routine work of conducting existence without making any change is a very existence of a negative outlook towards life. She tries to eradicate this outlook from the world through this essay (Felski, 2017). Her target is for people to realize that daily life with all its heavy jewel work and predictable Ness is not something that is negative.
She wants people to appreciate the everyday mundane life as a threshold between the ordinary as well as extraordinary. She wants people to perceive everyday life as a place between what is and what might be (Felski, 2017). She gives a reassuring, warm, and wholesome aspect to the contents of everyday life. Therefore to describe daily life just as it is a very dangerous rendering of history. It is oversimplified the cultures of the modern world and it does not properly appreciate the present. If every life is seen to be mundane and negative then the present is being insulted and the past, as well as the future, is being celebrated. This is what the author is telling the readers not to do. They need to be a proper appreciation of everyday life so that people can live in the present and they do not have any negative or existential thoughts about their achievements or their identity.
In this essay, the author is arguing for the fact that people do not differentiate between reality and the constructed creation or representation of reality. He also speaks about the analogy where he talks about a map and the precise scale in which it is made. he reiterates that the scale and the creation of the map are so accurate that they cannot be distinguished from the real empire it has been made for (Baudrillard, 1993). The map, which is actually a simulation becomes so realistic that it is confused with the real topography of the land until it starts to disintegrate. However, the author also says that this reference is not relevant for modern people because, in this modern world, the simulation is not only a reflection of reality but a creation of a new form of reality. This reality is created by models which are not based on realities seen in the everyday world. This is called the hyperreal and says the difference between the map and the land disappears completely in this new reality.
Baudrillard suggests the fact that the people are being forced to believe the new form of reality around them. He uses the example of Disneyland and says that “it is presented as the imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real”. Therefore, he points out the fact that the fictitiousness and the childishness of this world are kept in contrast to the rest of the real world in America so that the people believe that the outside world is the real and harsh world. But in hindsight, the outside world is also as fictitious as the world created inside Disneyland. The argument stated by the author is that the aspect of simulation and the precision of simulacra is not something that is special to the era. The scenario of the simulation was formed when humanity started to explore the meaning behind reality rather than accepting the reality exactly as it is (Baudrillard, 1993).
The main argument also states that in the post-modern era, the unprecedented capability of humanity to produce and disintegrate information leads to diversified of the hyper-realistic aspects which range from politics to fan fiction. But the end conclusion is that no one can say whether the action and objects are more real than the mere products of the mind when the only access to the real world is through the perception of the individual mind. Therefore, the real world can be assessed through the allegory of the cave by Plato which means that humans only see one certain perspective at one time and not the whole reality. In this modern era, the difference between this reality and the hyperreality created by humans cannot be divided.
The article written by Raymond Williams talks about the vocabulary of culture as well as society. It is a collection of essays on different words which are very critical to the understanding of the modern scenario of the world. In his essay on culture, the author starts to trace the origin as well as the development of the word “culture” (Raymond,1983).
According to him “culture”, is one of the most complicated words in the English language and it is not just due to historical development but also due to the relevance of the systems of thought. Williams also refers to a letter from 1730 as one of the earliest recorded references of the word culture in English. Williams also looks at the different forms of development of this word in other languages, especially in the German language. The Germans had borrowed the word from the French and he had spelled it as Kultur. The main synonym for this word was to cultivate and cultivation. The first abstract meaning of the word that was discovered was to be civilized or to be cultivated. There were different forms of treatment of the word culture that was formed by Williams in his essay. All these various treatments of culture had contributed to the modern usage as well as the complexity of the word in the modern world. There is a proper continuity of the physical processes of the word culture and beyond the physical reference, Williams also recognized other three broad categories of hues. The first category is the independent as well as the abstract noun which describes the processes of spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual development . The second category is the independent noun of this word whether it is used specifically or generally and it indicates a specific way of life. The final is the independent and the abstract noun which describes the practices on the works of intellectual artistic activity(Raymond,1983).
Therefore the word culture was investigated by Williams in all its different forms and categories. He understood the significance of the word and how the word became more complicated and complex in modern history. Culture is very complicated and independent now and it is an abstract process. According to him, culture is one of the most complicated words in the English language. It has had several historical and Traditional developments and now it has become more complicated (Raymond,1983). The complexity of the modern development of this world can be distinguished in the sense of the physical processes such as the sugar beet culture or John culture.
Once the physical application of the word is transcended, the abstract and the independent aspect of the noun can be understood through intellectual as well as spiritual development. There is no one true or scientific sense of the word and all other abstract senses of the word cannot be dismissed. Therefore, it is very important to look into the word with all its derivatives and all the abstract meanings that it possesses.
The essay on distinction: a social critique of the judgement of test talks about different aspects of aristocracy and different lifestyles. It is literally the distinction of the judgement related to taste. The author describes that those with a high volume of cultural capital such as education and economic aspects are the people who are most likely capable of determining the constituents of tastes in the society. The people who have lower availability of overall capital accept the test that is approved by the higher class and the distinction of this high and low culture is made to be legitimate. The people with a lower capital are not able to access a higher volume of cultural and economic capital because they lack the necessary resources. For example, this would make them lack the knowledge of terminology in order to describe and access higher cultural artworks (Bourdieu, 1984).
He also discussed an objectified form of cultural capital where the aesthetic of people or any object was more significant than the inner meaning of the object. He also argued that all art and pictures which are not attractive became appealing because of the higher levels of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984). According to him the acceptance of a dominant form of class and test was a form of symbolic violence . This meant that the natural formation of this difference of taste as a necessity makes dominant classes define their own world and eradicate those people who do not have as much capital as the higher class .
He talked about the removal of the fact that the working-class expects the objects to have utility and function and to serve a purpose. This is not the case for the higher class because they will be able to have a purely aesthetic appreciation for the object rather than think about the utility (Bourdieu, 1984). Accepting these forms of dominant characteristics of taste is a form of symbolic violence. These differences in taste between the higher class and the lower class are expected to be natural and they are also believed to be necessary. This is a very negative aspect in society because it denies the dominated classes the possibility of defining their own universe.
The distinction is capitalised and the difference in test between the higher class and the lower class is also capitalised by the society. The people who have a lesser availability of resources are forced to accept the choices of the higher class as the accepted taste.This is the lower class and working class to have no freedom over their perception and they are deprived of their own freedom of thought. Therefore, taste according to the author is a very significant example of the hegemony structure of culture. It determines how class differences are decided and it also determines the position of economic and social capital. On the other hand, when the person is taught the tests at a very young age they are also deeply internalised and they are difficult to change which makes the person become biased and narrowminded.
References
Baudrillard, J. (1993). The precession of simulacra. A postmodern reader, 342-375.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. Translated by Richard Nice.
Felski, R. (2017). Retrieved 28 March 2022, from https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/literaturetheoryandtime/ltt-felski.pdf
Raymond, W. (1983). Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society.
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