Tony Bennett And His Concept Of Political Culture,

Tony Bennett has been a Marxist scholar with unique thoughts in Britain since 1970s, who has become much more well-known since late 1980s because of his research in the aspects of cultural mechanism. In the field of cultural studies, he has formed his unique theories of his own, and developed a different direction of studies with different stresses, such as the studies of cutural policies, museum, etc., which diverts from the mainstream discourse of cultural studies and in some sense exibits a new trend of cultrual studies of the late phase. In details, the following parts outline my paper:The first part is the preface, in which I will mention the basic academic background of Mr. Bennett and brief the reason for choosing this theme for my paper and the research goals, which will define the scope of the research and pave the way for the discussion thereafter.The first chapter will introduce the general evolution of Bennett's academic thoughts. In this chapter, I will briefly introduce three aspects: first, the characteristics of his thoughts; second, a brief introduction of his major publications; third, the tracing of the development of his thoughts in different periods of time. Of course, as all these issues are interwoven together, they will be dicussed comprehensively.The second chapter, which is one of the koral parts, will firstly illustrate Bennett's opinions on the nature of literature and art and his questioning of Marxist aesthetics. In disenchanting the unquestioned and unthought-of essentialistic literary beliefs, Bennett has transgressed the barrier of traditional cultural studies. At the same time, with further discussion of these issues, (as a more striking issue,) Mr. Bennett, a former Marxist literary critic, claims to adopt a post-Marxist theoretical framework in his studies; this paper will also analyse the essential reason for this change.The third chapter involves the issues of "turning to Gramsci" and the definition of popular culture. In fact, these two issues are not the fields that best show Bennett's theoretical characterisitcs, but they constitute key parts of his thoughts, and he has some unique opinions in the studies of these issues, therefore, this paper treats these two issues as an individual chapter.The fourth chapter is another key part of the paper. This chapter will firstly systematically illustrate a shift of Gramscian paradigm to Foucaultian paradigm in Bennett's thoughts, and then analyse how Bennett applies a general Foucaultian framework to the theorization of specific cultural practice, which will involve the issues of intelligentzia, museum, cultural policies, etc.With the discussion in the above-mentioned chapters, the conclusion part of this paper draws the conclusion that Bennett has, in a grand sociological point of view, uncovered the political ambition of the "New Liberalism", which has become an indirect interference in the contemporary society, and historically contextualized this ideology by inserting it into the historical path of production and development, therefore removing its mask of universality of all kinds, which had been availed of by itself. But Bennett fails to criticise this social fact, on the contrary, he has formed a kind of comspiratory relationship with the system to a great extent.