Dancing in Spite of Myself: Essays on Popular Culture

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Duke University Press, 1997 - Social Science - 304 pages
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In Dancing in Spite of Myself, Lawrence Grossberg--well known as a pioneering figure in cultural studies--has collected essays written over the past twenty years that have also established him as one of the leading theorists of popular culture and, specifically, of rock music. Grossberg offers an original and sophisticated view of the growing power of popular culture and its increasing inseparability from contemporary structures of economic and political power and from our everyday lives.
In the course of conducting this exploration into the meaning of "popularity," he investigates the nature of fandom, the social effects of rock music and youth culture, and the possibilities for understanding the history of popular texts and practices. Describing what he calls "the postmodernity of everyday life," Grossberg offers important insights into the relation of pop music to issues of postmodernity and inton the growing power of the new cultural conservatism and its relationship to "the popular." Exploring the limits of existing theories of hegemony in cultural studies, Grossberg reveals the ways in which popular culture is being mobilized in the service of economic and political struggles. In articulating his own critical practice, Grossberg surveys and challenges some of the major assumptions of popular culture studies, including notions of domination and resistance, mainstream and marginality, and authenticity and incorporation.
Dancing in Spite of Myself provides an introduction to contemporary theories of popular culture and a clear statement of relationships among theories of the nature of rock music, postmodernity, and conservative hegemony.
 

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Contents

Replacing the Popular
1
Rock and Roll and the Empowerment
29
and Power 1984
64
Rock Territorialization and Power 1991
89
The Indifference of Television or Mapping TVs Popular Affective
125
All Dressed Up with No Place to Go 1988
145
Postmodernist Elitisms and Postmodern Struggles 1990
166
Myself Politics
189
Rockin in Conservative Times
253
From Media to Popular Culture to Everyday Life 1991
270
Notes
285
References
293
Index
301
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About the author (1997)

Lawrence Grossberg is Morris Davis Professor of Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including We Gotta Get Out of This Place and Cultural Studies.

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