Adhikary-1

Assignment
On

Single Access vs. Double Access in High

Culture Revisited

Name
ID

: Nandita Adhikary
: 14363003

Course Code : ENG 617

Course Name : Literature and Popular Media
Submitted to : Rifat Mahbub
Submission Date : 05/07/15

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In traditional cultural expression, high culture and low culture is separated cultural realm. In
High culture Revisited essay , Jostein has critically commented on certain perspective that
developed in 1960s and 1970s Europe. He has analyzed the ideological distinction between
high culture and low culture. According to him this distinction is prevailing in different societies
in different ways.

In the beginning of the essay , Jostein has discussed the earlier effect of neo-Marxism. Primarily ,
neo-Marxism has challenged two traditional notions of art and cultural heritage . Firstly , the
reinterpretation of cultural text occupies the social repression concept . Secondly , rewriting of
cultural history would expose gender based repression in academic writing also. Linking up to
it he says that popular cultural criticism differs from earlier critical approach . Firstly , popular
cultural texts are analyzed with same semiotic expression of high culture and secondly , the
scholarly criticism of popular culture is a critic from within. The critic himself has grown up in
pop cultural movie, music and so , it will be difficult for him to get an objective perspective.

The complexity of single access and double access arises in 1960 when students from working
class or non academic petit bourgeois background get access to higher learning . From the
peripheral areas they were moving to the center . For this reason their position becomes
ambivalent. They are gradually placed in a cultural limbo , they are no more integrated to lower
class culture they left and not in the upper class high culture they have entered. For example ,
African scholar like Chinua Achebe has completed their higher studies from western institution
and he has been introduced with all western discourses and so , it was quite difficult for him to
intermingle the values of African culture and western values though he has navigated that
challenge successfully. However, it has left the students from the lower class three options 1) to
fully integrate upper class culture , 2) to strive for the culture they have once left and 3) to
acknowledge their marginal position and start investigate the possibility of engagement from
there.
According to Gripsrud , high culture refres to set of institutions, certain type of media and text
and other phenomena . Higher learning institutions are considered as high cultural elements .

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However , at postmodern time , students and teacher both can enjoy rock music and can also
enjoy reading Nieyzsche. However , people living in the domain of high culture can also share
and participate in low culture which can either be folk (rural) culture or mass (urban ) culture.
But the number of participants of high culture is lower than the participants of low culture. Very
few people have double access or access to both high and low culture . majority of the people has
only access to low culture. The audiences from the opera can certainly go to movies and watch
televisions but movie or television audiences will never go to opera or museum . In addition to
it , the students from the lower class who have accessed in the high cultural aspects like
institution can have double access . They can criticize Foucault , Nietzsche as their class
assignments require and they can also enjoy the rural aspects like folk songs , traditional
occasions . Since I have access to higher education at a well-known university, I am aware of
postcolonial , postmodern aspects and I can also enjoy Indian daily soaps at home and can go to
watch Ananta Jalil movies. While I am doing this , I will always feel ambivalent position . I will
no longer belong to my own class which I left and also cannot full access to higher class.

The distinction between double access and single access is based on the education , income and
in some cases age . The double access to both high and low culture is a class privilege . But in
this case , cultural capital plays an important role than the economic capital or money. Earning
lot of money does not ensure that the person will read higher literary contexts .