John Fiske's Later Cultural Theory Research

With the rise of China's popular culture in the 1990s, western popular culture theory, especially the theory of Frankfurt school has been widely cited in Chinese academic circle. Unlike Frankfurt school's theory, Birmingham school holds opposite attitude on popular culture. One of the representatives in Birmingham school is John Fiske. The introduction of his culture theory has greatly changed the present popular culture research situation in China. However, some illustration and analysis to his culture theory is not complete and is just limited in the research on his early books, like Television Culture, so this thesis focuses on his later culture theory and works to complement the academic gap and insufficiency and points out that John Fiske's later culture theory concerns more about the black issues in the present United States and has realistic and political significance.This thesis contains six parts and in the introduction part, John Fiske's academic career and theoretical position, my literature review and research approaches are to be analyzed. Then, the first chapter to the fourth chapter is the main part of the thesis. Chapter 1 introduces Fiske theory's three new concepts (locale, communitas and the as- if world) to explain popular resistance against the power-bloc. Chapter 2 analyses Fiske's discipline power and localizing power acting on the bodies, and discloses that controlling bodies becomes the discipline of power-bloc on individual identity. Chapter 3 explains John Fiske's new theory: media discourse theory, on the basis of Foucault's power discourse theory. Fiske points out that the discourse is also a place for struggle, and the inner feeling structure drives the development of social cultural diversity. Chapter 4 focuses on Fiske's discussion on some racial events in America. Fiske uncovers the totalitarian tendency under the democratic system, and the counter knowledge of the blacks defends the popular interests which embodies John Fiske's firm stand as popular culture fan. Chapter 5 analyzes the value and limitation of Fiske's theories.The thesis points out that John Fiske's later culture theory has different research approach and focus from the early theory and the later culture theory adopts analysis method of post-structuralism, combining with discourse theory to illustrate the class and race problems in American society. And the thesis praises John Fiske highly as popular culture fan, to be vigilant totalitarianism, to encourage the popular to create their own struggle places and to dream of the near future of multiculture.