Page 71 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

50 Mapping approaches and themes

et al. 1976). Such work challenged the presumed homology and passivity of ‘the
masses’ and highlighted problems in conceptions of ‘false consciousness’ and
ideological indoctrination inherent in domination perspectives.
The concept of a ‘dominant ideology’ which informed radical accounts in the
1970s was also rejected as insufficient and reductionist, in favour of theories of
the ‘relative autonomy’ of ideology and sociocultural identities. It was also
challenged for its presumptions of intellectual coherence within ‘ruling’ ideologies,
in place of attention to divisions, contradictions and tensions. These debates
marked shifts within and beyond a Marxian tradition, focused in particular on
theories of ideology. Althusser provided critical scholars with an account of the
‘relative autonomy’ of culture in place of the economism inherent in the base–
superstructure model, although his account of media as Ideological State Apparatuses
was itself narrowly functionalist (chapter one). A greater influence on radical
culturalism was Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. The Italian Marxist Antonio
Gramsci (1891–1937), in the form his work was adopted, offered radical media
theory a way out of rigid determinism by emphasising conflict and contestation.
The concept of hegemony could help explain how dominant ideologies were
constructed and suffused popular culture (involving processes of consent and
construction of the popular) but also, crucially, how the inherent conflicts
between different groups and interests were played out. For Gramsci egemonia
denoted the taken-for-granted cultural frameworks and beliefs that enabled
ruling class authority to remain generally unchallenged.
This paved the way for radical studies that were attendant to moments of
crisis and division, when dominant ideologies were denaturalised and contested.
However, Gramscianism offered ‘a rather unstable basis for reformulation since
it tended to mean different things to different analysts’ (Goldsmiths Media
Group 2000: 25). As Eagleton notes (2003: 212) ‘[t]his ardent Leninist has come
by a devious process of editing to stand for a Marxism soft-focused enough to
suit a post-radical age’; yet, as adopted, Gramsci influenced a ‘non-reductive
style of Marxism which takes cultural meanings seriously without denying their
material determinants’. While a Gramscian influence remains evident, rallying to
Gramsci proved short-lived and transitional, as Marxian influence declined in
media and cultural studies during the 1980s and 1990s.

Postmodernism and power

Another important route was towards a postmodernist ‘post-Marxist’ reworking
that used discourse theory to reject Marxist epistemology and critical realism
(Laclau and Mouffe 1985). For Laclau, classical Marxism is determinist and
essentialist, not only because it privileges the economic ‘in the last instance’ but
also in proposing the proletariat as the subject of history. The collapse of belief in
the organised working class underlies much revisionism in political and cultural
theory from the mid twentieth century. Laclau’s theoretical framework emphasises
the fluidity and unfixity of social identities.