RIP Richard Hoggart, 95, British academic and author (The Uses of Literacy).
My interest in Hoggart?
There was a time I was obsessed by the overlapping areas of high culture and low culture (nobrow!) and the notion of cultural pessimism, commodity fetishism and commodification (think Cocacolonization, Disneyfication, McDonaldization, Walmarting) and false consciousness and whathaveyounot (all essentially notions of Marxist cultural criticism).
I think this was due to my interest in sexual fetishism (hence the link to commodity fetishism) and my reading of Dick Hebdige and being into popular music and against state funding of the arts and being affectionate of the beautiful loser.
Things have changed, my interests have become less fanatical. But I’m still against drab intellectualism and in favor of the best of the body genres.