Dancing In Spite of Myself

Essays on Popular Culture

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by Lawrence Grossberg

Duke University Press

Due/Published June 1997, 320 pages, paper

ISBN 0822319179

Grossberg, well known as a pioneering figure in cultural studies, has collected these essays, written over the last twenty years, that have also established him as one of the leading theorists of popular culture, especially of rock music. He offers an original view of the growing power of popular culture and its increasing inseparability from contemporary sturctures of economic and political power and from our everyday lives. He investigates the meaning of popularity, 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. Grossberg offers insights into the relation of pop music to issues of postmodernity and into the growing power of the new cultural conservatism and its relation to the "popular." This is being published along with Bringing It All Back Home, another collection of essays by Grossberg, from Duke.