Page 154 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

148 CULTURAL STUDIES

contestation’ (p. 4). For Schwichtenberg this is the ‘Madonna paradigm’ which
‘serves as a touchstone for theoretical discussions of issues of morality, sexuality,
gender relations, gay politics, multiculturalism, feminism, race, racism,
pornography, and capitalism (to name a few)’ (p. 4, 3). For E.Ann Kaplan it is
‘the Madonna phenomenon’ or ‘MP’, a related notion which highlights Madonna
as the sum of multiply inflected interpretations rather than a ‘real’ identity. For
Thomas A.Nakayama and Lisa N.Penaloza she is associated with a ‘racial prism,
revealing a range of colours’ (p. 51). This figure is not only convenient to the
maintenance of existing academic demarcations, it is also crucial to an
interpretation which must find subversion in such a dominant figure, marginality
in someone so mainstream. Only by dividing Madonna’s audience into discrete
‘cultures’ can the cosy consensus that her massive audience are all subordinate
resisters be maintained. Like Donahue, everyone can be a rebel, and oppression,
whilst it exists, is, in each instance, conveniently elsewhere. Even as they
question this consensus Laurie Schulze, Anne Barton White and Jane D.Brown
invoke ‘multiple sets of interests all along the scale of power, in shifting and
frequently contradictory patterns’ in order to salvage ‘insubordination’ for
both Madonna fans and ‘Madonna haters’ (p. 32–3). Resistance becomes a
fetishized object which is only ever contingently connected to the meaning
through which it is expressed.

Representation
As the language in these quotes might suggest, this vision of Madonna is frequently
authorized with appeals to French poststructuralist theorists, though here they are
called postmodernists and the transposition is not insignificant. Figures as
diverse and antagonistic as Foucault, Baudrillard and Derrida have all expressed
a bewilderment at the way they became co-opted into debates about
postmodernism as they crossed the Atlantic. By their own admission they were
initially either ignorant of or actively hostile to many of its key themes (see, for
example, Baudrillard, 1993: 21–3; Foucault, 1989:250; Gane, 1991:46, 54–7).
Here they are blithely lumped together as so many advocates of ‘postmodernist
theory’. For Schwichtenberg, Foucault has ‘advocated a postmodern proliferation
of bodies’ (p. 136), for E.Diedre Pribram Baudrillard has a ‘postmodern view’(p.
204) and so on. Postmodernism serves as a catch-all term through which all these
theorists become advocates of an ‘anti-realist’ theory (the feminist chapters
consist of ‘a dialogue between realist and postmodernist positions’ (p. 7), the
simple obverse through which all the familiar representationalist couples—truth/
fiction, essence/construction, etc.—can be preserved and returned. It also serves
as a term through which poststructuralists can come around to being theorists of
fragmentation and incoherence, postmodern themes which can more easily be
assimilated into an anodyne pluralism. Postmodernism makes poststructuralism
safe for democracy.