Page 74 - Cultural Theory

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••• The Frankfurt School •••

The major traditions of cultural studies combine – at their best – social theory,
cultural critique, history, philosophical analysis, and specific political interventions,
thus overcoming the standard academic division of labour by surmounting special-
ization arbitrarily produced by an artificial academic division of labour. Cultural
studies thus operates with a transdisciplinary conception that draws on social theory,
economics, politics, history, communication studies, literary and cultural theory,
philosophy, and other theoretical discourses – an approach shared by the Frankfurt
School, British cultural studies, and French postmodern theory. Transdisciplinary
approaches to culture and society transgress borders between various academic disci-
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plines. In regard to cultural studies, such approaches suggest that one should not
stop at the border of a text, but should see how it fits into systems of textual pro-
duction, and how various texts are thus part of systems of genres or types of pro-
duction, and have an intertextual construction – as well as articulating discourses in
a given socio-historical conjuncture.
For instance, Rambo is a film that fits into the genre of war films and a specific cycle
of return to Vietnam films, but also articulates anti-communist political discourses
dominant in the Reagan era (see Kellner, 1995). It replicates the right-wing discourses
concerning POWs left in Vietnam and the need to overcome the Vietnam syndrome
(i.e. shame concerning the loss of the war and overcoming the reluctance to use US
military power again). But it also fits into a cycle of masculinist hero films, anti-
statist right-wing discourses, and the use of violence to resolve conflicts. The figure
of Rambo himself became a ‘global popular’ which had a wide range of effects
throughout the world. Interpreting the cinematic text of Rambo thus involves the use
of film theory, textual analysis, social history, political analysis and ideology critique,
effects analysis, and other modes of cultural criticism.
One should not, therefore, stop at the borders of the text or even its intertexuality,
but should move from text to context, to the culture and society that constitute the
text and in which it should be read and interpreted. Transdisciplinary approaches
thus involve border crossings across disciplines from text to context, and thus from
texts to culture and society. Raymond Williams was especially important for cultural
studies because of his stress on borders and border crossings (1961; 1962; 1964). Like
the Frankfurt School, he saw the interconnection between culture and communica-
tion, and their connections with the society in which they are produced, distributed,
and consumed. Williams also saw how texts embodied the political conflicts and dis-
courses within which they were embedded and reproduced.
Crossing borders inevitably pushes one to the boundaries and borders of class,
gender, race, sexuality, and the other constituents that differentiate individuals from
each other and through which people construct their identities. Thus, most forms of
cultural studies, and most critical social theories, have engaged feminism and the
various multicultural theories that focus on representations of gender, race, ethnic-
ity, and sexuality, enriching their projects with theoretical and political substance
derived from the new critical discourses that have emerged since the 1960s.
Transdisciplinary cultural studies thus draw on a disparate range of discourses and
fields to theorize the complexity and contradictions of the multiple effects of a vast

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