Dancing in Spite of Myself: Essays on Popular Culture

by Lawrence Grossberg

In Dancing in Spite of Myself , Lawrence Grossberg—well known as a pioneering figure in cultural studies—has collected essays written over the past twenty years that have also established him as one of the leading theorists of popular culture and, specifically, of rock music. Grossberg offers an original and sophisticated view of the growing power of popular culture and its increasing inseparability from contemporary structures of economic and political power and from our everyday lives.
In the course of conducting this exploration into the meaning of "popularity," he investigates the nature of fandom, the social effects of rock music and youth culture, and the possibilities for understanding the history of popular texts and practices. Describing what he calls "the postmodernity of everyday life," Grossberg offers important insights into the relation of pop music to issues of postmodernity and inton the growing power of the new cultural conservatism and its relationship to "the popular." Exploring the limits of existing theories of hegemony in cultural studies, Grossberg reveals the ways in which popular culture is being mobilized in the service of economic and political struggles. In articulating his own critical practice, Grossberg surveys and challenges some of the major assumptions of popular culture studies, including notions of domination and resistance, mainstream and marginality, and authenticity and incorporation.
Dancing in Spite of Myself provides an introduction to contemporary theories of popular culture and a clear statement of relationships among theories of the nature of rock music, postmodernity, and conservative hegemony.

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 1997

About the author

Morris Davis Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies, adjunct distinguished professor of anthropology, and the director of the University Program in Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He has won numerous awards from the National Communication Association and the International Communication Association, as well as the University of North Carolina Distinguished Teaching Award (for post-baccalaureate teaching). He has been the co-editor of the international journal Cultural Studies for over fifteen years. He has written extensively about the philosophy and theory of culture and
communication, and the interdisciplinary practice of cultural studies. His research focused for many years on American popular music and youth culture, but his recent work has turned to the contemporary
U.S. political culture and the global struggle over the possible ways of being modern. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.