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Contemporary Cultural Theory

Americas or Australasia, at any time during the last three decades
of the twentieth century, would have encountered transdis-
ciplinary ‘Theory’ of this kind. Whether appalled by its poverty,
like Thompson, or attracted to its glamour, like Terry Eagleton,
there is no doubting its cultural salience (Thompson, 1978;
Eagleton, 1996, pp. 191–2). Even Hoggart, as unlikely a theoreti-
cian as any, would admit that ‘one does not wish to undervalue
the importance of theory and the need for theoretic languages’
(Hoggart, 1995, p. 177). For our part, we concede to Hoggart that
theory ‘must not be made into a charm, or a prop; or a waffle-
iron to be banged on top of the material’ (p. 178); in short, it must
be about something. But we would want to insist that many of
the older disciplines Hoggart imagined as contributing to an
interdisciplinary cultural studies, and their attendant theories,
have in fact become increasingly irrelevant to contemporary
culture. To take the obvious example, the postmodern cultures
of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are now so
thoroughly mediatised, commodified and relativised as to
demand very different modes of analysis from those Hoggart
learnt from English Literature. This is not to suggest that we are
now somehow able to move beyond ‘disciplinarity’. Quite the
contrary, this latest version of transdisciplinary Theory seems
likely to be a transitional form—like its predecessors—by which
older disciplines are recomposed into new ones more appro-
priate to a changed and changing culture. As Jameson himself
notes, contemporary Theory is already confronted by a renewed
impetus towards disciplinary re-differentiation: ‘philosophy
and its branches are back in force’ (Jameson, 1998, p. 94). We
might add that cultural studies itself is also increasingly subject
to calls for ‘disciplinisation’ (Bennett, 1998).

CULTURE AND SOCIETY: ANTI-UTILITARIANISM AND MODERNITY

What, then, is the occasion for these recurrent bouts of theoris-
ing? Discourses become self-consciously theoretical, which is
another way of saying that they become self-reflexive, as a general
rule only when their subject matters become in some significant

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