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| Postmodern Cultural Studies: A Critique |  2003-10-29 | The (Post)Discipline of Postmodern Cultural Studies |
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These opposing tendencies—on the one hand, cultural studies understood as the explanation of the conditions of possibility for the production and reproduction of subjectivities; on the other hand, cultural studies understood as the description of “experience"—have been inscribed in its logic from the start. Stuart Hall, in his “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms," distinguishes between a “culturalist” paradigm, which he associates with the work of Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson, and a “structuralist” paradigm, which he associates with the work of structuralists like Claude Levi-Strauss and the Marxism of Louis Althusser. The significance of the “culturalist” paradigm, according to Hall, is that it insists on an understanding of culture not as a set of privileged texts, but rather as the systems of meanings embodied in all social practices. The strength of the “structuralist” paradigm, meanwhile, is that it critiques the humanism and experientialism of the “culturalist” paradigm: the structuralist paradigm decenters experience by showing it to be an effect of social structures which cannot be reduced to the “materials” of experience: "The great strength of the structuralisms is their stress on 'determinate conditions'" (67).
What is at stake in the distinction between “culturalism” and “structuralism” is the significance of theory. What the “structuralist” paradigm defends, in contradistinction to the “culturalist” one, is the necessity of providing explanations of social and cultural phenomena in relation to the determinations which produce those phenomena. Theory, that is, requires some notion of totality which can enable the understanding of the specificity of social phenomena as effects of that totality; in this case, experience does not contain within itself the conditions of its own intelligibility cxperience, [sic.] rather, is what needs to be explained. The “culturalist” paradigm, meanwhile, undermines the possibility of establishing a hierarchy between determinations by taking as its starting point the activity of subjects in which social conditions and social consciousness are “mixed” in an indeterminate way. At the same time, Hall argues that culturalism's strength corresponds to the weakness of structuralism. That is, structuralism is unable to account for precisely those phenomena which culturalism privileges: "It has insisted, correctly, on the affirmative moment of the development of conscious struggle and organization as a necessary element in the analysis of history, ideology and consciousness: against its persistent down-grading in the structuralist paradigm” (69).
Hall's discussion of these contesting paradigms is part of a historical narrative of the emergence and development of cultural studies. According to Hall, cultural studies emerged as a distinct problematic through the interventions in literary studies of, especially, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams. The structuralist intervention, meanwhile, constituted a powerful challenge to this paradigm, making work along similar lines impossible. Hall is then attempting to chart a course for the future of cultural studies, one which would appropriate the “strengths” and avoid the “weaknesses” of each approach, which would go beyond both paradigms in “trying to think both the specificity of different practices and the forms of the articulated unity they constitute” (72).
Insofar as cultural studies is constituted by opposing theoretical discourses which, taken separately, are both necessary but limited, clearly some kind of conceptual transformation or “epistemological break” is necessary. That is, if, as I suggested above, the problem facing cultural studies is that of theorizing determination, the resolution of this difficulty cannot be a question of “combining” the strengths and weaknesses of two incompatible theories, but of starting from one set of premises and developing a new theoretical paradigm “by way of criticism” (Marx and Engels 105). The attempt to combine the results of incompatible premises is in practice a capitulation to the “culturalist” paradigm, the problems and contradictions of which Hall has already noted. This is the case because the consequence of such an attempt would be a theoretical eclecticism, unable to comprehend social phenomena as an effect of more abstract determinations in a consistent way. This means, finally,that the categories privileged by the “structuralist” paradigm—"theory," different levels of abstraction, “conditions of possibility," and so on—must be the starting point if cultural studies is to be adequate to the tasks Hall sets for it in this essay.
Hall's response to this “crisis” in cultural studies—merely adumbrated in “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms," but more fully developed in The Hard Road to Renewal, and elsewhere was to turn to Gramsci, and in particular, his notion of “hegemony." The usefulness of Gramsci is, according to Hall, twofold: first, in his understanding of the “conjuncture” as a specific combination of a variety of determinations; second, in his critique of a kind of “economic reductionism” which sees cultural and ideological phenomena as direct expressions of some class position while still connecting these phenomena to social struggles between contesting groups. That is, the category of “hegemony” enables us to see political domination both as contested and uncertain, and as encompassing the whole domain of social and cultural life (as opposed to being restricted to struggles articulated in relation to the state).
However, Hall's use of the categories of hegemony and “articulation” does not in and of itself solve the problem of determination, or even provide the elements of such a solution. It still leaves the two sides of the equation—class domination, on the one hand, and the reproduction of the conditions of that domination, on the other—unarticulated. If the dominant ideology and culture are instrumental in securing class domination in however indirect or mediated a manner, then the analysis and critique of ideology and culture must proceed from a theoretical understanding of the needs, capacities, and problems faced by the ruling class in some specific relation to other classes with opposing and/or aligned interests. In this case, the significance or content of ideological struggles, or struggles over representations and meanings, cannot be “in” those struggles themselves but in the contradiction between the forces and relations of production and the class struggles they determine. In other words, one is still working within the framework of determination by the economic (but not necessarily an economic “reductionism").
If, however, ideological struggles cannot be “read back” (i.e., subordinated) to class interests and class struggles, but are actually the site of the construction of these interests and struggles, then one is left with another, “discursive” kind of reductionism: that is, social positions are the results of positions constructed through discursive articulations and ideological struggles (in which case, of course, the problem of who is struggling, and over what, becomes highly problematic). Even though Hall, in the essays I am discussing, explicitly rejects this kind of position, which he associates with poststructuralist and especially Lacanian and Foucauldian approaches, he is left with what is ultimately an eclectic position: on the one hand, a specific form of social domination from which nothing necessarily follows; on the other hand, struggles over meaning and representations whose outcome or significance cannot be determined by structures external to the struggles themselves.
An example of how this tension determines Hall's work can be seen in
his discussion of the kinds of questions a Gramscian approach poses
for the left in Thatcherite England. Hall argues as follows in
The Hard Road to Renewal:
Gramsci always insisted that hegemony is not exclusively an
ideological phenomenon. There can be no hegemony without
“the decisive nucleus of the economic." On the other hand,
do not fall into the trap of the old mechanical economism and
believe that if you can only get hold of the economy, you can move
the rest of life. The nature of power in the modern world is that
it is also constructed in relation to political, moral,
intellectual, cultural, ideological, and sexual questions. The
question of hegemony is always the question of a new cultural
order. The question which faced Gramsci in relation to Italy faces
us now in relation to Britain: what is the nature of this new
civilization? Hegemony is not a state of grace which is installed
forever. It's not a formation which incorporates everybody. The
notion of a “historical bloc” is precisely different
from that of a pacified, homogeneous, ruling class. It entails a
quite different conception of how social forces and movements, in
their diversity, can be articulated into strategic alliances. To
construct a new cultural order, you need not to reflect an
already-formed collective will, but to fashion a new one, to
inaugurate a new historical project (170).
Both the “economic” and the “cultural-ideological” aspects of social domination are recognized here, but in a way that separates them in an absolute way and makes it impossible to theorize the relations between them. The two possible courses of action posited by this passage are either to reflect an already existing collective will which is to be found in the “economy," or to fashion a new collective will. The very notion of the “economy” as something that one could “get a hold on” presupposes the economic reductionism that Hall is presumably contesting: that is, it accepts the notion of the “economic” as something self-contained and independent. In this case, as soon as the contending classes step outside of the “economy," they are no longer “classes” in any meaningful sense, but rather positions struggling for power in relation to political, moral, intellectual, cultural, ideological, and sexual questions. This rigid antinomy is reproduced in the “choice” between reflecting an already formed collective will and fashioning a new one. The possibility of constructing a new collective will out of the contradictions situated in the economic structure, contradictions which are articulated in relation to other cultural structures where the elements of such a will are emerging as a result of differentiated arenas of struggle, is excluded here. Instead, the collective will can be “fashioned” through a synthesis of positions immanent in these specific struggles themselves.
This becomes more evident in Hall's concluding chapters to
The Hard Road to Renewal. There he argues that
[e]lectoral politics—in fact, every kind of
politics—depends on political identities and
identifications. People make
identifications symbolically: through social imagery, in their
political imaginations. They 'see themselves' as one sort of
person or another. They 'imagine their future' within this
scenario or that. They don't just think about voting in terms of
how much they have, their so-called 'material interests'. Material
interests matter profoundly. But they are always ideologically
defined (261).
Once again, there is a reference to the importance of material, ultimately class interests, and Hall also mentions that people have conflicting “interests” as well as conflicting “identities ." However, the claim that both the economic and the ideological are “important"—by itself, a commonplace observation—can lead in one of two fundamentally opposed directions. One possibility is to theorize the material interests of social classes and engage in ideological struggle for the purpose of clarifying the contradictions which structure the ideologies and “identities” of oppressed groups, thereby making the production of oppositional class consciousness possible. The other possibility is to construct “images” and “identities” that are immediately accessible and intelligible within the framework of those contradictions, thereby resecuring subordinated subjects' “consent” for the social order which produces them. This latter possibility becomes the unavoidable consequence insofar as politics is defined as "'a struggle for popular identities'" (282). In addition, this possibility is also inevitable given Hall's reductive understanding of “material interests” as little more than “income levels” ("how much they have"), rather than in terms of the reproduction of all of the social and institutional conditions of the production of “effective” subjects.
The way in which these contradictions have been resolved in contemporary cultural studies can be seen in John Fiske's Understanding Popular Culture. Fiske is critical of radical understandings of culture which focus on the way in which capitalist culture functions to reproduce ruling class domination, at the expense of trying to understand the multifarious ways in which subordinated groups appropriate the resources available within the dominant culture in order to gain more power relative to their oppressors. Fiske distinguishes between the “radical” and the “progressive," and claims that critics of culture who measure cultural practices according to the standard of “radicality” (systemic transformation) are unable to comprehend or support the wide variety of oppositional practices which undermine or limit the power of dominant groups without necessarily challenging their dominance. Such critics therefore lose the opportunity—at this historical moment, for Fiske, the only opportunity which actually exists—for intervening in progressive articulations of the “popular," in order to enable them to take on more radical forms in the future. At the same time, Fiske acknowledges that the “popular” is only potentially progressive, not necessarily so. In addition, there are many practices of the “popular” which have both a progressive and a reactionary dimension. He also recognizes that the relation between progressive popular articulations and radical politics are often distant, difficult to produce or analyze, or non-existent. However, the problems these reservations point to can be put even more strongly. If the popular is defined in terms of a kind of “guerrilla warfare” or “poaching” of the texts of the dominant culture which increases the power of the subordinated subject in relation to a specific articulation of power relations, then not only is it impossible to theorize the connections between progressivity and radicality, but the entire distinction between “progressive” and “reactionary” loses its meaning. This is because one cannot move, either conceptually or politically, from reversals in local power relations to systemic transformations. If one takes such reversals as a starting point, it will be impossible to account for their structural consequences: that is, they could have the effect either of strengthening or of weakening power relations elsewhere, and there is no way of theorizing this from the interior of the local reversal. Thus, when Fiske associates the “progressive” with the popular, and understands it as at least a potential “stage” in the movement towards radicalization, his notion of “progressiveness” is necessarily external to his theoretical position. In other words, it is “borrowed” either from the cultural commonsense, or from those “radical" theories which Fiske critiques, and which would themselves arrive at a substantially different assessment of the practices Fiske includes in his notion of the “popular." (For example, radical theories would argue that it precisely by conceding local power reversals that global domination is maintained.)
Graeme Turner, in his British Cultural Studies,
specifically refers to Fiske's work as an example of the way in which
the increasingly powerful tendency within cultural studies (influenced
by de Certeau) to focus on popular, “bottom-up” resistance
to domination may have gone “too far." With the now prevalent
use of the category of “pleasure” to refer to a space
outside of ideological domination, Turner argues that cultural studies
is in danger of celebrating rather than critiquing
the dominant ideology and culture. Turner claims that “it is
important to acknowledge
that the pleasure of popular culture cannot lie outside hegemonic
ideological formations; pleasure must be implicated in the ways in
which hegemony is secured and maintained (221).
However, Turner's own account of the positive effects of “The
Turn to Gramsci” in cultural studies support the same
theoretical incoherencies that lead to Fiske's conclusions. Turner
argues that
[h]egemony offers a more subtle and flexible explanation than
previous formulations because it aims to account for domination as
something that is won, not automatically delivered by way of the
class structure. Where Althusser's assessment of ideology could be
accused of a rigidity that discounted any possibility of change,
Gramsci's version is able to concentrate precisely on explaining
the process of change. It is consequently a much more optimistic
theory, implying a gradual historical alignment of bourgeois
hegemony with working class interests (212).
Leaving aside the question of why an alignment of bourgeois hegemony with working class interests provides an “optimistic” outlook, this more “optimistic theory” is possible because, like Hall, Turner establishes a rigid and caricatured dichotomy between domination as “automatically delivered” and domination as “won." However, with what “weapons” is domination “won"? If it is “won” by the ruling class or hegemonic bloc as a result of the advantageous position their control over the means of production grants them, then we are still left with the problem of theorizing the perpetuation of domination as a result of processes determined by the class structure, as domination which is “won” from the dominant positions already occupied. In this case, it is possible to understand “popular culture as the field upon which political power is negotiated and legitimated” (Turner 213), as long as it is clear which agents are engaging in the “negotiations” and under what conditions. However, once the theory of popular culture “dispos[es] of a class essentialism that linked all cultural expression to a class basis” (213), then one can only understand the “winning” of domination as a victory on an indeterminate terrain which is constituted in such a way that the contestants cannot be identified in advance, nor can the conditions for any particular outcome be specified. In other words, it is impossible to maintain a notion of systemic domination without an understanding of determination which sees cultural practices as effects of the general system of domination, rather than as inherently indeterminate and reversible entities.
The turn to Gramsci in contemporary cultural studies, then, is a turn away from Marxism and any other theory which abstracts from the specific and sees the specific as an effect of more general structures. This assessment is confirmed in a more recent text of Stuart Hall's, “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies," his contribution to Cultural Studies, where he argues that the importance of Gramsci to cultural studies is that he “radically displaced" (281, emphasis in original) the entire Marxist problematic. This turn from theory is also the significance of Turner's “optimistic” representation of the progress made since the replacement of Althusser's more “rigid” and “deterministic” one by Gramsci's more “flexible” and “subtle” one. Turner argues that the emphasis on the “creative power of the popular" has led to a “pendulum swing” from “containment to resistance... leading to a retreat from the category and effectivity of ideology altogether" (224), and he is mildly critical of this. However, this “swing” is a necessary consequence of the evacuation of the category of domination of any content, so that in Turner's discourse as well it (like Fiske's notion of “progressiveness") is little more than an untheorized “background” to an understanding of “indeterminate” ideological struggles which would otherwise appear (as Turner fears) completely apologetic.