My thoughts!

 Arising from the social turmoil of the 1960s, cultural studies is an academic discipline which combines political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, art, history, criticism etc; to study cultural phenomenon in various societies. Cultural Studies researches often focus on how a particular phenomenon relates matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class and gender. Discussion on Cultural Studies have gained currency with the publication of Richard Hoggart's 'Use of Literacy' and Raymond Williams 'Culture and Society'. Since culture is now considered as the source of art and literature, cultural criticism has gained ground, and therefore Raymond William's term " cultural materialism ", Stephen Greenblatt's " cultural poetics " and Bakhtin's term " cultural prosaic" , have been significant in the field of Cultural Studies ...

Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the industrial revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to an economic crises: there was overproduction - the supply of goods grow beyond the consumer demand, and so manufacturers turned to planned obsolescence and advertising to manipulate consumer spending. In 1899, a book on consumerism published by Thorstein Veblen , called The Theory of the Leisure Class,  examined the widespread values and economic institutions emerging along with the widespread "leisure time" in the beginning of the 20th century. In it Veblen, "views the activities and spending habits of the leisure class in terms of conspicuous and vicarious consumption and waste. Both are related to the display of status and not to functionality or usefulness." In economics, consumerism may refer to economic policies which emphasize consumption. In an...

 In the last two decades of the 20th century, Subaltern Studies, postcolonial theory and criticism gained momentum, especially, as a corollary to globalization in the Third World Countries. If postcolonial criticism is taken as an offshoot of postmodernism, subaltern studies derives its force from Marxism, post structuralism and becomes a part of the postcolonial criticism. "Subaltern", meaning " of inferior rank ", is a term adopted by Antonio Gramsci to refer to those working class people in Soviet Union who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes. Subaltern classes may include peasants, workers and other groups denied access to hegemonic power. Gramsci was interested in the historiography of the subaltern 'classes'. In Notes on Italian History , he outlined a six-point plan for studying the history of the subaltern classes which include: 1. their objective formation; 2. their active and passive affiliation to the dominant political formations; ...

 Frantz Fanon - psychiatrist, political theorist,poet, polemicist,diplomat, journalist, soldier, doctor, revolutionary - is one of the foremost writers of the 20th century on the topics of racism, colonialism, and decolonization. In this short lifetime, he produced two enduring books : ' Black Skin, White Masks ', still regarded as the preeminent study of the lived experiences of racism, and ' The Wretched of the Earth ', regarded at the time of its publication as "the handbook of decolonization", and presenting itself to us today as both a clear-eyed prediction of the lasting legacy of Neo- classicism and as a visionary account of a truly post-colonial yet to come. These two books encapsulate, the major themes not only of Fanon's writing but also of his extraordinary life. Black Skin,White Masks  captures Fanon's experience as a native of Martinique and the product of a colonial education who came to experience metropolitan racism upon his arrival in ...

The concept of Feminism, in general, has been concerned to analysis of the trend of male domination in the society; the general attitude of male towards female; the exploitation and discrimination faced by females; the need for and ways of improving the condition of women; and, so on. In concern to literature, this movement has concentrated on the role played by literature to support gender discrimination as well as to oppose it; the reasons for lesser significance of the contribution by female writers in the literary tradition than that of the male writers; the difference in the ways in which works of male writers and female writer respectively, have represented gender discrimination, and, the ways in which social conditions and literary traditions regarding gender discrimination have affected one another. The concept got proper identification in the literary field during 1960s. Before that, feminism was limited to the authorship of female writers and the representation given to a wo...

Simon de Beauvoir was probably best known as novelist, and a feminist thinker and writer but she was also an existentialist philosopher. Her essays, novels and other works greatly influenced feminist existentialism and social theory. Throughout her life, de Beauvoir never claimed herself to be a  philosopher and critical thinker. However, through her major contributions to politics, ethics, feminism and existentialism, she has earned the respect of the masses and an established philosopher., social activist and an intellectual. Beauvoir's most famous work was ' The Second Sex ' from 1949, a hugely influential book which laid the groundwork for second-wave feminism was concerned with women's suffrage and property rights, the second wave broadens these concerns to include sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights and so on. All that started with Beauvoir outlines the ways in which woman is perceived as "other" in a patriarchal society, second to ma...

Dream Analysis is one of the important notions in Freudian theory. He considers dreams as possible entrances or outlets for repressed ideas. They are essentially symbolic fulfillment of the unconscious hopes and wishes. Dreams, in turn, become symbolic texts which need to be understood. In this context, Roman Jacobson's usage of two terms regarding the human language, metaphor and metonymy which, later, moved the French psychologist Jacques Lacan to comment that the unconscious is structured like a language. Freud opines that dreams are the outcome of daily occurrences or thoughts of everyday life. He also states that the dreams can also functions as wish gratification, the repressed sexual desires or the regret of one's childhood and the deep longing for the execution of the events in the future. Dreams may find the forms of outplay through the interplay of words or a set of images which Freud terms them as condensation, displacement and distortion. Not only the dreams, but ...