Public Intellectual: Meaghan Morris

Cultural Studies is not a unified theory but an interdisciplinary field of studies with a diversity of intellectual strands. It is the study of the ways in which culture is constructed and the ways in which it evolves and changes over time (Study.com 2003 – 2017). Cultural analysis focus on the political dynamics of contemporary culture, its historical foundations, defining traits, conflicts, and contingencies. Researchers in this field investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with or operating through social phenomena, such as ideology and class structures. For Stephen Loosley, who was a New South Wales Senator in the 1990s, culture is ‘a complex of social customs, …show more content…
Neo-liberal understanding of culture is closely connected with work and the network of representation around it, with a crystal-clear intention to be effective to influence people’s thoughts. This concept of culture shows it as a short way to change people’s conduct by sharpening class consciousness. In other words, culture should be understood as a way of life following social distinctions and structure by representation and power. Among other features, cultural war deserves a quote in cultural studies. Cultural war has, as its main dimension, the social class structure and how it appears to take shape in public opinion through the media. Media space seems to be the stage for world-scale reconstruction of class structure. This essay will present Meaghan Morris biograph, trace hers arguments related to cultural war and the importance of media, and the construction of class, as one aspect of …show more content…
Cultural war is literally a conflict between groups with different ideals and beliefs (Dictionary.com 2017). Professor Morris approaches those themes having as her object of study the former political Pauline Hanson’s interview with Tracey Curro at the Australian Sixty Minutes television program. The lecturer cleverly makes a critical intellectual practice, by analysing the dialogue from a class structure perspective, which is a crucial dimension of cultural war. Ultimately, her argument assumes a much broader view of the subject, leading the discussion of cultural war and class to the national level and how it is positioned in a globalised context. Applying an increasingly popular research framework named critical discourse analysis (CDA), she empowered her detailed examination of the interview using Foucault’s methodology and his notable contribution to understanding discourse, seeing language as a tool of power and knowledge, and the attempt to recognise modes of