Cultural Studies Questions and Answers

Q: Who described nation as an 'imagined community' ?

The nation was described as an 'imagined community' by Benedict Anderson.In Imagined Communities (1983), Anderson argues that a nation is imagined because its members will never know most of their fellow members, yet each carries an image of their communion. He links the rise of nationalism to print capitalism, especially newspapers and novels, which let readers imagine themselves part of the same community.Perry Anderson, his brother, is a Marxist historian; Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams were founders of cultural studies. None of them coined this phrase.

Q: The term 'diaspora' literally means :

'Diaspora' literally means Scattering.The word comes from the Greek diaspeirein, 'to scatter across', from dia (across) and speirein (to sow or scatter, as seed). It was first used of the Jews dispersed outside the land of Israel, and is now applied to any people living scattered away from an original homeland.Migration, immigration and journey describe movement, which may cause a diaspora, but none is the literal meaning of the Greek word, which is the image of seed being scattered.

Q: Edward E. Said's Culture and Imperialism deals with one of the following central themes :

The central theme of Culture and Imperialism is the development of novel as a vehicle of imperialism.In this 1993 book, Edward Said extends his earlier work by arguing that the European novel and imperialism are bound up with each other: the novel helped create and sustain the attitudes on which empire rested. He reads canonical works such as Austen's Mansfield Park, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Kipling's Kim 'contrapuntally', showing how empire is present in them even where it appears only at the margins.The image of the Oriental is the theme of his earlier Orientalism (1978). The theory of colonialism and the civilising mission are topics the book touches, but its distinctive central argument concerns culture, and especially the novel, in the service of empire.

Q: Raymond Williams is considered to be one of the founders of :

Raymond Williams is considered one of the founders of cultural studies.With Richard Hoggart and E.P. Thompson, Williams laid the foundations of British cultural studies. Culture and Society (1958) and The Long Revolution (1961) treated culture as 'a whole way of life', including the culture of working people, and his later 'cultural materialism' linked literature with social and material history.Feminist studies, semiotics and psychoanalysis developed from other traditions and thinkers, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Saussure and Barthes, and Freud.

Q: 'Nation and Narration' is authored by :

Nation and Narration is by Homi Bhabha.Homi K. Bhabha edited Nation and Narration (1990), a collection of essays on the nation as a story told in literature and culture, which includes his own influential essay 'DissemiNation'. Bhabha is one of the leading figures of postcolonial theory, known also for The Location of Culture and the ideas of hybridity and mimicry.Benedict Anderson wrote Imagined Communities, a related study of nationalism. Partha Chatterjee wrote Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, and Ranajit Guha founded Subaltern Studies.

Q: 'The Wretched of the Earth' is a book on the post-colonial theory by one of the following authors :

The Wretched of the Earth is by Frantz Fanon.Fanon, the psychiatrist and revolutionary from Martinique who joined the Algerian struggle, published Les Damnes de la Terre in 1961, with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. It analyses the violence of colonialism and decolonisation and the pitfalls of national consciousness, and is a founding text of postcolonial theory.Barbara Harlow, Henry Louis Gates and Helen Tiffin (co-editor of The Empire Writes Back) are later critics in the field, their names printed with variations in the options; none wrote this book.

Q: The Wretched of the Earth includes an introduction by :

The Wretched of the Earth has a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre.Frantz Fanon's book (1961), written as he was dying of leukaemia, analyses colonial violence and decolonisation and became a foundational text of postcolonial thought. Sartre's fierce preface, addressed to Europeans, endorsed Fanon's argument about the violence of colonialism and its overthrow.Aime Cesaire, Fanon's teacher in Martinique, influenced him but did not introduce the book; Michel Foucault and Nelson Mandela have no connection with it.

Q: Matthew Arnold's model of culture was based on :

The key gives Internal purification, integrity and abstinence.In Culture and Anarchy (1869) Arnold defined culture as the pursuit of perfection, 'an inward condition of the mind and spirit', aimed at 'sweetness and light'. He set it against the Victorian faith in machinery: in industry, in material wealth and in the mere means of progress. So his model of culture rests on inner self-cultivation and discipline, which this option expresses.Industrialisation, scientific progress and material prosperity are exactly the external 'machinery' that Arnold said people mistook for ends in themselves.

‘Residual Culture’ is a term given by:

A.Raymond Williams
B.Stuart Hall
C.Richard Hoggart
D.Peter Burke

Exam Year(s)

DSSSB PGT - 2023,

Answer: A

The key is Raymond Williams. In Marxism and Literature (1977) Williams describes dominant, residual and emergent elements of a culture, where the residual is formed in the past but is still active in the present. Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart and Peter Burke are cultural studies writers but the triad of dominant, residual and emergent is from Williams. Williams set out dominant, residual and emergent cultures in Marxism and Literature, and he used the word residual for meanings and practices that were formed in the past and are still active in the cultural process. Hoggart wrote The Uses of Literacy, and Hall and Burke are cultural historians.

Discuss in Forum

"This education has reduced us to a nation of morons; we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture, feeding on leavings and garbage...what about our own roots?"
The above lines have been taken from:

A.Orientalism by Edward Said
B.The English Teacher by RK Narayan
C.The Location of Culture by Homi K Bhabha
D.Devil on the Cross by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Exam Year(s)

DSSSB PGT - 2023,

Answer: B

The key is The English Teacher by R. K. Narayan. What was not confirmed: the quotation about education reducing the nation to morons, strangers to their own culture and camp followers of another, could not be traced to a page of the novel in this review, and it also sounds like a postcolonial critique of education of the kind found in Ngugi or Said. The key is kept as printed since nothing shows it to be wrong. Orientalism, The Location of Culture and Devil on the Cross are the options it rejects.

Discuss in Forum

Who described nation as an 'imagined community' ?

A.Stuart Hall
B.Raymond Williams
C.Perry Anderson
D.Benedict Anderson

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: D

The nation was described as an 'imagined community' by Benedict Anderson.

In Imagined Communities (1983), Anderson argues that a nation is imagined because its members will never know most of their fellow members, yet each carries an image of their communion. He links the rise of nationalism to print capitalism, especially newspapers and novels, which let readers imagine themselves part of the same community.

Perry Anderson, his brother, is a Marxist historian; Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams were founders of cultural studies. None of them coined this phrase.

Discuss in Forum

The term 'diaspora' literally means :

A.Migration
B.Immigration
C.Scattering
D.Journey

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: C

'Diaspora' literally means Scattering.

The word comes from the Greek diaspeirein, 'to scatter across', from dia (across) and speirein (to sow or scatter, as seed). It was first used of the Jews dispersed outside the land of Israel, and is now applied to any people living scattered away from an original homeland.

Migration, immigration and journey describe movement, which may cause a diaspora, but none is the literal meaning of the Greek word, which is the image of seed being scattered.

Discuss in Forum

Edward E. Said's Culture and Imperialism deals with one of the following central themes :

A.The image of the Oriental in literature
B.The theory of colonialism
C.The development of novel as a vehicle of imperialism
D.The colonizer's civilizing mission

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: C

The central theme of Culture and Imperialism is the development of novel as a vehicle of imperialism.

In this 1993 book, Edward Said extends his earlier work by arguing that the European novel and imperialism are bound up with each other: the novel helped create and sustain the attitudes on which empire rested. He reads canonical works such as Austen's Mansfield Park, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Kipling's Kim 'contrapuntally', showing how empire is present in them even where it appears only at the margins.

The image of the Oriental is the theme of his earlier Orientalism (1978). The theory of colonialism and the civilising mission are topics the book touches, but its distinctive central argument concerns culture, and especially the novel, in the service of empire.

Discuss in Forum

Raymond Williams is considered to be one of the founders of :

A.cultural studies
B.feminist studies
C.semiotic studies
D.psychoanalysis

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: A

Raymond Williams is considered one of the founders of cultural studies.

With Richard Hoggart and E.P. Thompson, Williams laid the foundations of British cultural studies. Culture and Society (1958) and The Long Revolution (1961) treated culture as 'a whole way of life', including the culture of working people, and his later 'cultural materialism' linked literature with social and material history.

Feminist studies, semiotics and psychoanalysis developed from other traditions and thinkers, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Saussure and Barthes, and Freud.

Discuss in Forum

'Nation and Narration' is authored by :

A.Benedict Anderson
B.Homi Bhabha
C.Partha Chatterjee
D.Ranjit Guha

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: B

Nation and Narration is by Homi Bhabha.

Homi K. Bhabha edited Nation and Narration (1990), a collection of essays on the nation as a story told in literature and culture, which includes his own influential essay 'DissemiNation'. Bhabha is one of the leading figures of postcolonial theory, known also for The Location of Culture and the ideas of hybridity and mimicry.

Benedict Anderson wrote Imagined Communities, a related study of nationalism. Partha Chatterjee wrote Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, and Ranajit Guha founded Subaltern Studies.

Discuss in Forum

'The Wretched of the Earth' is a book on the post-colonial theory by one of the following authors :

A.Barbara Harlowe
B.Henry Louis Lates
C.Helen Tiffin
D.Frantz Fanon

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2018, SET Exam - 2018,

Answer: D

The Wretched of the Earth is by Frantz Fanon.

Fanon, the psychiatrist and revolutionary from Martinique who joined the Algerian struggle, published Les Damnes de la Terre in 1961, with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. It analyses the violence of colonialism and decolonisation and the pitfalls of national consciousness, and is a founding text of postcolonial theory.

Barbara Harlow, Henry Louis Gates and Helen Tiffin (co-editor of The Empire Writes Back) are later critics in the field, their names printed with variations in the options; none wrote this book.

Discuss in Forum

The Wretched of the Earth includes an introduction by :

A.Jean-Paul Sartre
B.Michel Foucault
C.Aimé Césaire
D.Nelson Mandela

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2020, SET Exam - 2020,

Answer: A

The Wretched of the Earth has a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Frantz Fanon's book (1961), written as he was dying of leukaemia, analyses colonial violence and decolonisation and became a foundational text of postcolonial thought. Sartre's fierce preface, addressed to Europeans, endorsed Fanon's argument about the violence of colonialism and its overthrow.

Aime Cesaire, Fanon's teacher in Martinique, influenced him but did not introduce the book; Michel Foucault and Nelson Mandela have no connection with it.

Discuss in Forum

10.

Matthew Arnold's model of culture was based on :

A.Industrialization
B.Scientific progress
C.Material prosperity
D.Internal purification, integrity and abstinence

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2021, SET Exam - 2021,

Answer: D

The key gives Internal purification, integrity and abstinence.

In Culture and Anarchy (1869) Arnold defined culture as the pursuit of perfection, 'an inward condition of the mind and spirit', aimed at 'sweetness and light'. He set it against the Victorian faith in machinery: in industry, in material wealth and in the mere means of progress. So his model of culture rests on inner self-cultivation and discipline, which this option expresses.

Industrialisation, scientific progress and material prosperity are exactly the external 'machinery' that Arnold said people mistook for ends in themselves.

Cultural Studies Questions and Answers

Topics

Other Subjects

Tags: Cultural Studies Questions and Answers

About Us

Cultural Studies Questions and Answers

Topics

Other Subjects

Tags: Cultural Studies Questions and Answers

About Us

Stay informed about all important Dates & Notifications