Mas'ud Zavarzadeh – författare

In this bold political rethinking of contemporary film theory, Zavarzadeh overturns the dominant concepts that fetishize film as a work of art or simple entertainment. He demonstrates how aesthetic notions obscure the ideological effects produced by viewing films, particularly the production of the spectator as the subject of social class. Seeing films, he argues, is part of the political struggle over cultural intelligibilities, subjectivities, and representations. One of the book's analytical innovations is its concept of renarrating: a reading strategy that displays the logic of the film, showing that it is not so much a unique aesthetic articulation as it is the common logic of the dominant ideology. In a series of brilliant readings of recent films, the book constructs a critical space for the reader to not only see the culturally visible tale of the film-the one that legitimates the existing reality, the status quo-but also to see the other, suppressed tale that (de)narrates the social contradictions arising from exploitation and class rule.

"A gem of a book. Its topics are timely and provocative for cultural studies, sociology, English, literary theory, and education classes. The authors are brilliant thinkers and clear, penetrating writers." -Peter McLaren, UCLA, author of Capitalists and Conquerors: A Critical Pedagogy Against Empire Class in Culture demonstrates the power of moving beyond cultural politics to a deeper class critique of contemporary life. Making a persuasive case for class as the material logic of culture, the book is written in a double register of short critiques of life practices-from food and education to race, stem-cell research, and abortion-as well as sustained critiques of such theoretical discourses as ideology, consumption, globalization, and 9/11. Surpassing the orthodoxies of cultural studies, Class in Culture makes surprising connections among seemingly unrelated cultural events and practices and offers a groundbreaking and complex understanding of the contemporary world.