The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law
by Rosemary J. Coombe series edited by Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson
Duke University Press, 1998 Cloth: 978-0-8223-2103-3 | eISBN: 978-0-8223-8249-2 | Paper: 978-0-8223-2119-4 Library of Congress Classification KF2979.C66 1998 Dewey Decimal Classification 346.73048
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Logos, trademarks, national insignia, brand names, celebrity images, design patents, and advertising texts are vibrant signs in a consumer culture governed by a regime of intellectual property laws. In The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties, professor of law and cultural anthropologist Rosemary J. Coombe brings an illuminating ethnographic approach to an analysis of authorship and the role law plays in shaping the various meanings that animate these protected properties in the public sphere. Although such artifacts are ubiquitous in contemporary culture, little attention has been paid to the impact of intellectual property law in everyday life or to how ownership of specific intellectual properties is determined and exercised. Drawing on a wide range of cases, disputes, and local struggles, Coombe examines these issues and dismantles the legal assumption that the meaning and value of a text or image is produced exclusively by an individual author or that authorship has a single point of origin. In the process, she examines controversies that include the service of turbanned Sikhs in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the use of the term Olympic in reference to the proposed gay Olympic Games. Other chapters discuss the appropriation of such celebrity images as the Marx brothers, Judy Garland, Dolly Parton, James Dean, and Luke Skywalker; the conflict over team names such as the Washington Redskins; and the opposition of indigenous peoples to stereotypical Native American insignia proffered by the entertainment industry. Ultimately, she makes a case for redefining the political in commodified cultural environments. Significant for its insights into the political significance of current intellectual property law, this book also provides new perspectives on debates in cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and political theory. It will therefore interest both a wide scholarly and a general audience.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Rosemary J. Coombe is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Toronto.
REVIEWS
"[F]orceful, provocative and sometimes tendentious . . . . Rosemary Coombe points us towards areas of society where the increasingly oppressive dominance of trademarks and copyrights may be resisted and possibly subverted." - Times Literary Supplement
“[A]n important book, asking terribly significant questions and providing reasonable answers supported by numerous provocative examples. It deserves to be read and discussed by all who are concerned about the role of law in cultural politics.” - Mark Kessler, The Law and Politics Book Review
“[P]athbreaking. . . . [Coombe’s] study has much to offer a broad range of scholars including those in the social sciences and humanities, communications departments, and law schools.” - Lisa A. Marovich, Law and History Review
"[A] fascinating romp through consumer culture." - Peter Krapp, Cultural Critique
“A sparklingly original synthesis of cultural studies and law. Rosemary J. Coombe is a clever and edifying guide through the hidden landscape of property rights that subtly shapes so many cultural phenomena, from the circulation of celebrities to the struggles of indigenous peoples.”—Bruce Robbins, Rutgers University
“This is a scintillating cultural commentary: Coombe’s own skills as anthropologist and lawyer have been re-combined to devastating effect.”—Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge
“This is highly original ethnography. Coombe not only shows us the lifeways of law, but also some fascinating routings between the streets and high theory, and back again. In all of this, Rosemary J. Coombe is a hip and good-humored guide—and a trenchant critic.”—Carol J. Greenhouse, Indiana University
“[A]n important book, asking terribly significant questions and providing reasonable answers supported by numerous provocative examples. It deserves to be read and discussed by all who are concerned about the role of law in cultural politics.”
-- Mark Kessler Law and Politics Book Review
“[P]athbreaking. . . . [Coombe’s] study has much to offer a broad range of scholars including those in the social sciences and humanities, communications departments, and law schools.”
-- Lisa A. Marovich Law and History Review
"[A] fascinating romp through consumer culture."
-- Peter Krapp Cultural Critique
"[F]orceful, provocative and sometimes tendentious . . . . Rosemary Coombe points us towards areas of society where the increasingly oppressive dominance of trademarks and copyrights may be resisted and possibly subverted."
-- TLS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Authoring Culture
A Critical Cultural Legal Studies
Against Culture(s)
Anthropology's Trademark and Its Academic Others
Authoring Alterity
Contested Cultures
Legalities, Identities, and Mass Media
Authorship and Alterity
1.
Objects of Property and Subjects of Politics
Objects and Subjects
Historicizing the Subject
Postmodern Culture
It's a Small, Small World™
Postmodern Goods
Author(iz)ing the Corporate Persona
Manufacturing Distinction
Fixing the Signifier/Owning the Sign
Activist Appropriations
Policing Postmodern Precincts
Xerox® Cultures
Dialogics of Postmodern Politics
2.
Author(iz)ing the Celebrity: Engendering Alternative Identities
The Value of the Celebrity Persona
Celebrity Authorship
The Celebrity Form and the Politics of Postmodernism
Doing Gender
Respecting Judy
Fictionalized Sexualities
Enterprising Women
Engendering and Endangering Alternative Identities
3.
Tactics of Appropriation and the Politics of Recognition
Political Articulations
Official Signifiers
Postmodernity and the Rumor
Racial Inscriptions and Iterations
Corporeal Vulnerability
Signifyin(g) Powers
4.
Embodied Trademarks: Mimesis and Alterity on American Commercial Frontiers
Mimicry, Alterity, and Embodiment
Marked and Unmarked Bodies
Contemporary Contestations
Fighting Redskins®
Consuming Crazy Horse
Mimicking Authors at the Altars of Property
5.
The Properties of Culture and the Politics of Possessing Identity
Whose Voice Is It Anyway?
The European Art/Culture System
Contemporary Properties of Culture and Identity
Listening to Native Claims “in Context”
Representation without Representation: Visibility without Voice
Possessive Individualism Revisited: Authorship and Cultural Identity
Aboriginal Title
6.
Dialogic Democracy I: Authorship and Alterity in Public Spheres
The Author in the Modern Public Sphere
Free Speech in the Condition of Postmodernity
Objects and Subjects Redux
7.
Dialogic Democracy II: Alterity and Articulation in the Space of the Political
Locating the Politics of the Public Sphere
Mass Mediation and the Publics of Civil Society
The Space of the Signature
The Unworked Community
An Ethics of Contingency
Notes
References
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law
by Rosemary J. Coombe series edited by Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson
Duke University Press, 1998 Cloth: 978-0-8223-2103-3 eISBN: 978-0-8223-8249-2 Paper: 978-0-8223-2119-4
Logos, trademarks, national insignia, brand names, celebrity images, design patents, and advertising texts are vibrant signs in a consumer culture governed by a regime of intellectual property laws. In The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties, professor of law and cultural anthropologist Rosemary J. Coombe brings an illuminating ethnographic approach to an analysis of authorship and the role law plays in shaping the various meanings that animate these protected properties in the public sphere. Although such artifacts are ubiquitous in contemporary culture, little attention has been paid to the impact of intellectual property law in everyday life or to how ownership of specific intellectual properties is determined and exercised. Drawing on a wide range of cases, disputes, and local struggles, Coombe examines these issues and dismantles the legal assumption that the meaning and value of a text or image is produced exclusively by an individual author or that authorship has a single point of origin. In the process, she examines controversies that include the service of turbanned Sikhs in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the use of the term Olympic in reference to the proposed gay Olympic Games. Other chapters discuss the appropriation of such celebrity images as the Marx brothers, Judy Garland, Dolly Parton, James Dean, and Luke Skywalker; the conflict over team names such as the Washington Redskins; and the opposition of indigenous peoples to stereotypical Native American insignia proffered by the entertainment industry. Ultimately, she makes a case for redefining the political in commodified cultural environments. Significant for its insights into the political significance of current intellectual property law, this book also provides new perspectives on debates in cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and political theory. It will therefore interest both a wide scholarly and a general audience.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Rosemary J. Coombe is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Toronto.
REVIEWS
"[F]orceful, provocative and sometimes tendentious . . . . Rosemary Coombe points us towards areas of society where the increasingly oppressive dominance of trademarks and copyrights may be resisted and possibly subverted." - Times Literary Supplement
“[A]n important book, asking terribly significant questions and providing reasonable answers supported by numerous provocative examples. It deserves to be read and discussed by all who are concerned about the role of law in cultural politics.” - Mark Kessler, The Law and Politics Book Review
“[P]athbreaking. . . . [Coombe’s] study has much to offer a broad range of scholars including those in the social sciences and humanities, communications departments, and law schools.” - Lisa A. Marovich, Law and History Review
"[A] fascinating romp through consumer culture." - Peter Krapp, Cultural Critique
“A sparklingly original synthesis of cultural studies and law. Rosemary J. Coombe is a clever and edifying guide through the hidden landscape of property rights that subtly shapes so many cultural phenomena, from the circulation of celebrities to the struggles of indigenous peoples.”—Bruce Robbins, Rutgers University
“This is a scintillating cultural commentary: Coombe’s own skills as anthropologist and lawyer have been re-combined to devastating effect.”—Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge
“This is highly original ethnography. Coombe not only shows us the lifeways of law, but also some fascinating routings between the streets and high theory, and back again. In all of this, Rosemary J. Coombe is a hip and good-humored guide—and a trenchant critic.”—Carol J. Greenhouse, Indiana University
“[A]n important book, asking terribly significant questions and providing reasonable answers supported by numerous provocative examples. It deserves to be read and discussed by all who are concerned about the role of law in cultural politics.”
-- Mark Kessler Law and Politics Book Review
“[P]athbreaking. . . . [Coombe’s] study has much to offer a broad range of scholars including those in the social sciences and humanities, communications departments, and law schools.”
-- Lisa A. Marovich Law and History Review
"[A] fascinating romp through consumer culture."
-- Peter Krapp Cultural Critique
"[F]orceful, provocative and sometimes tendentious . . . . Rosemary Coombe points us towards areas of society where the increasingly oppressive dominance of trademarks and copyrights may be resisted and possibly subverted."
-- TLS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Authoring Culture
A Critical Cultural Legal Studies
Against Culture(s)
Anthropology's Trademark and Its Academic Others
Authoring Alterity
Contested Cultures
Legalities, Identities, and Mass Media
Authorship and Alterity
1.
Objects of Property and Subjects of Politics
Objects and Subjects
Historicizing the Subject
Postmodern Culture
It's a Small, Small World™
Postmodern Goods
Author(iz)ing the Corporate Persona
Manufacturing Distinction
Fixing the Signifier/Owning the Sign
Activist Appropriations
Policing Postmodern Precincts
Xerox® Cultures
Dialogics of Postmodern Politics
2.
Author(iz)ing the Celebrity: Engendering Alternative Identities
The Value of the Celebrity Persona
Celebrity Authorship
The Celebrity Form and the Politics of Postmodernism
Doing Gender
Respecting Judy
Fictionalized Sexualities
Enterprising Women
Engendering and Endangering Alternative Identities
3.
Tactics of Appropriation and the Politics of Recognition
Political Articulations
Official Signifiers
Postmodernity and the Rumor
Racial Inscriptions and Iterations
Corporeal Vulnerability
Signifyin(g) Powers
4.
Embodied Trademarks: Mimesis and Alterity on American Commercial Frontiers
Mimicry, Alterity, and Embodiment
Marked and Unmarked Bodies
Contemporary Contestations
Fighting Redskins®
Consuming Crazy Horse
Mimicking Authors at the Altars of Property
5.
The Properties of Culture and the Politics of Possessing Identity
Whose Voice Is It Anyway?
The European Art/Culture System
Contemporary Properties of Culture and Identity
Listening to Native Claims “in Context”
Representation without Representation: Visibility without Voice
Possessive Individualism Revisited: Authorship and Cultural Identity
Aboriginal Title
6.
Dialogic Democracy I: Authorship and Alterity in Public Spheres
The Author in the Modern Public Sphere
Free Speech in the Condition of Postmodernity
Objects and Subjects Redux
7.
Dialogic Democracy II: Alterity and Articulation in the Space of the Political
Locating the Politics of the Public Sphere
Mass Mediation and the Publics of Civil Society
The Space of the Signature
The Unworked Community
An Ethics of Contingency
Notes
References
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE