Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 April 21

= April 21 =

"A rendering academic of mass culture"
"In the United States shunning high culture and studying popular culture is not a politically radical or resistant gesture so much as a rendering academic of mass culture." Jonathan Culler, Literary theory, A very short introduction. What does "a rendering academic of mass culture" mean? Ridding academic of mass culture? --2405:201:F00A:2070:E9D6:C5BE:6475:E3B5 (talk) 05:44, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * No, it means making mass culture academic. Not a very well written sentence, in my opinion. --Viennese Waltz 06:35, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * In the phrase "rendering academic", the sense of "academic" is normally sense 3 or 4 here. But Wikipedia thinks that "mass culture" is another name for popular culture.  Consequently the sentence makes no sense to me.  Studying popular culture makes it impractical or irrelevant?  If it had said "a rendering academic of high culture", that would make sense. --184.147.181.129 (talk) 07:29, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The sentence makes sense to me. You are misreading the intended meaning of the word "academic". In this case it is sense 1 of your link that is intended. You could gloss it as "making mass [or popular] culture worthy of academic study". --Viennese Waltz 08:58, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * And if you have any doubts about the sense of academic, the next sentence describes cultural studies in America as a "still academic study of cultural practices and cultural representation". However, in the context this is presented as being in contrast with Britain, where links with political movements are said to have "energized" cultural studies, so there is a bit of an "ivory tower" connotation. --Lambiam 12:32, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * That's as may be but, to me at least, to "render (something) academic" has one meaning: to make it moot or irrelevant. Buying a phone rendered my hollering skills academic. He seems to be saying that the US is warming up to the idea of mass culture as something worthy of investigation and formal criticism, but as a literary theorist he was forbidden from using language that's clear. Matt Deres (talk) 19:45, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The meaning of moot is moot. DuncanHill (talk) 19:38, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Original poster again. Thanks to all. I can't see why an "a" should precede 'rendering'. Wouldn't 'rendering mass culture academic' have better conveyed the sense you suggest? Culler distinguishes mass culture and popular culture. Mass culture is said to be an oppressive force (like hegemonic) while popular culture while deriving from mass culture could still be resistive to dominant ideology. So, he must be meaning that while studying popular culture in US is hardly radical, lending academic interest to mass culture has better chance of being radical. Am I right? Contrasting USA and Britain Culler says, "Traditionally the American is the man on the run from culture." Also, "In Britain, where national cultural identity seemed linked to monuments of high culture – Shakespeare and the tradition of English literature, for example – the very fact of studying popular culture was an act of resistance, in a way that it isn’t in the United States, where national identity has often been defined against high culture." 2405:201:F00A:2070:5D83:F81:9135:833E (talk) 18:08, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The word "rendering" is being used as a gerund. --Viennese Waltz 20:44, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Unless you parse the rendering academic as a noun modified by a postpositive attribute, as in the body politic, which I think is not the author's intention, the whole combination is the nominalization of to render  academic as one verbal expression, but in doing so excluding the object of the verb, which then has to become the possessor of the noun phrase. While the best explanation available, such combined gerunds with excluded objects are definitely unusual; one doesn't normally say such things as, the making great again of America has hit a snag, or, my next project is the painting black of my red door. --Lambiam 08:02, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Not sure what your point is. There is no confusion here, the author's meaning is clear and there is only one explanation, which I already gave 45 minutes after the question was posted. --Viennese Waltz 08:28, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * My point is that the author used a construction that is unusual, if not ungrammatical, which (I suspect) is a contributing factor to some readers getting confused. --Lambiam 18:36, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * And my point is that there's no need for anyone to get confused because I have already explained it. --Viennese Waltz 18:59, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * And my point is that what you explained is not what "rendering academic" normally means. Are we done repeating ourselves? --184.147.181.129 (talk) 20:40, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Not well said, but he appears to be saying: 'studying popular culture is a rendering academic of mass culture' or to switch it around '[A rendering academic of mass culture] is studying popular culture' - Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:17, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Is this less confusing than the original? My interpretation, completely paraphrasing the sentence, is as follows: "Peeps in the US who study popular culture turn it into an academic (and anemic) subject, divorced from its radical political load". Here, "turn into" is a synonym of "render". The parenthesis "and anemic" is not present in the original, but is implied. I see no intended opposition in meaning between the uses of "popular culture" and "mass culture". The "shunning" of high culture simply means, I think, that the author's statement applies to scholars of culture who focus their field of study to popular culture. --Lambiam 10:43, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Differentiation between mass culture and popular culture is definitely there even though the major contrast is between the high culture of Britain and anti-intellectual culture of US. I will quote from the same book. "Cultural studies in this tradition is driven by the tension between the desire to recover popular culture as the expression of the people or give Literary Theory voice to the culture of marginalized groups, and the study of mass culture as an ideological imposition, an oppressive ideological formation."2405:201:F00A:2018:38E5:353B:B19D:EC08 (talk) 19:39, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Fuzzy scholarese this sentence is. After several cycles of attempted interpretation, I got that "imposition" does not refer to "mass culture", but to its study. So the author states here that Cultural studies is driven by the tension between a desire and an imposition. I am willing to accept the thesis that there are two approaches, one more aspirational, the other more impositional, and that there is a tension between these. But is that tension the driving force? Really? --Lambiam 08:45, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
 * No, correction, after perusing more snippets from the book, I now understand that not the study but "mass culture" itself is the imposition (as seen in one approach). The tradition referred to is Marxist literary tradition in Britain, and the tension is between viewing "popular culture" as giving voice to the oppressed masses, and viewing "mass culture" as an objectively oppressive formation that justifies the workings of state power. It seems to me that, regardless of the label attached to it, the objective object of study is the same, but that the tension lies in different ways of positioning this object of study in a given ideological framework. --Lambiam 09:06, 24 April 2021 (UTC)