Page 63 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

ContCultural Theory Text Pages 4/4/03 1:42 PM Page 54

Contemporary Cultural Theory

to the Conservatives (p. 155). Moreover, Williams was concerned
at the political risk entailed in any such ‘block diagnosis of
Thatcherism’: that it ‘taught despair and political disarmament
in a social situation which was always more diverse, more volatile
and more temporary’ (Williams, 1989a, p. 175).

Culture as experience versus culture as text
We might note that Williams was dealing here with precisely the
kind of ‘objective coordinates’ or ‘structural determinants’ that
culturalism is often alleged to ignore. Indeed, it was Williams’
explanation, rather than Hall’s, that seemed the more readily
compatible with mainstream empirical sociology. As Britain’s
leading expert in the empirical study of class inequalities,
J.H. Goldthorpe would observe of Hall: ‘Not only is no evidence
provided of the supposed “hegemony” at work, but the argument
for it involves ignoring the... quite substantial findings to
indicate that Thatcherism cannot be linked with any very signif-
icant belief and value changes within British society, and that
many Conservative policies are well out of line with prevailing
opinion’ (Goldthorpe, 1990, p. 431). Certainly, the accumulating
empirical data on the continuing resilience of the connections
between class identity and politics, both in Britain and inter-
nationally (cf. Wright, 1997), calls into question some of Hall’s
work on the New Right.
Theoretically, we need to ask why Williams was able to read
Thatcherism more accurately than Hall. At one level, the answer
must rest with the legitimacy he accorded the proper claims of
experience. Like Thompson, Williams had persisted in a long-
standing commitment, inherited from Leavisism, not to
experience per se, but to the analysis of the connections between
being, consciousness and experience. By contrast, Hall progres-
sively abandoned all three, initially in favour of the notion of
ideology as structure, later still in favour of the even more ‘imma-
terial’ notion of discursive formation. Hence the increasing
preoccupation with ‘cultural representations and signifying prac-
tices’, the subtitle to his Representation (1997). The focus here is
on how the dynamic relationship between representation,

54