A Guide to Cultural Invention Craig J. Saper Foreword by Laura Kipnis Cultural critics teach us that myths are artificial.
Cultural innovators use the artificial to make something new.
Saper deploys this method to reveal unsuspected connections among major cultural issues, such as urban decay, the dangers of television's power, family values, and conservative criticism of higher education. The model Saper uses builds on the later works of the revered French cultural critic Roland Barthes. These works, Saper argues, suggest poignant, playful, and productive ways of engaging dominant methodologies and mythologies. The book demonstrates that the very conceptions of media and sociocultural issues that stymie innovation can be made to serve the cause of invention. It's a new form of paying attention to surfaces that John Woo invents for the action picture, just like what Saper envisions for cultural theory.