Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA19541 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 16 Jan 2001 11:01:20 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745BD2@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: culture and memetics Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 11:00:00 -0000 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>> Isn't memetics an effort to do the same for cultural studies?
>Well, if by cultural studies you mean the body of work that's been
done
> under that specific rubric for 20 years, no, memeticists don't even know
> about that work.
>
> The people who are trying to reconstruct psychoanalysis are familiar with
> the ideas. My basic point about memetics is that it seems to be
> substantially ignorant of other ways of studying culture. So it's not
> trying to reconstruct anything; it's trying to do it all over again, from
> the beginnning.
>
There's definitely an element of that in the main texts thus far, hence my
own persistent comments regarding media theory. I take your point here.
>
>
>However, the most important single characteristic of memetics, even
what I
> am (contentiously) calling orthodox memetics, is that it views culture as
> a
> separate domain of objects and processes. It is not just another facet of
> biology. Culture has "slipped the genetic leash," to use a phrase I
> associate with Blackmore. Old-style sociogiology tried to yoke culture to
> the genes, and I think that evolutionary psychology is, in effect, trying
> to
> do that as well.
>
Surely, one of the problems of recent cultural studies has been its tendency
to go the other way, to deny not only genetic determinism, but to regard
culture as essentially relative, e.g. the postmodernists. In other words,
it might not be so surprising that memeticists might deliberately avoid or
ignore a lot of cultural theory, especially in a post Sokal & Bricmont
world. Of course, to an extent, they appear to have thrown the baby out
with the bathwater.
Vincent
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