Page 110 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy
P. 110
The Colloquy Revisited 99
POINTS OF DEPARTURE
False Consciousness
McRobbie, Hall, and Grossberg berated political economists for employing
the category, false consciousness. But what exactly is false consciousness? I
propose that the term has two distinct, albeit related meanings, and that much
confusion resulted as these meanings were conflated or confused.
In his extended essay, “The Stars Down to Earth,” Theodor Adorno noted
that “various mass movements [have] spread all over the world in which peo-
ple seem to act against their own rational interests of self-preservation and the
6
‘pursuit of happiness.’” This is as good a definition as any of the common
meaning of false consciousness. “Capitalism deepens false consciousness,”
explains Ben Agger, by “suggesting to people that the existing social system
is both inevitable and rational. . . . People ‘falsely’ experience their lives as
7
products of a certain unchangeable social nature.” False consciousness, then,
is usually understood as describing a condition whereby oppressed groups
misconstrue their condition by accepting the view propagated to them by
elites. In the Colloquy, Grossberg agreed that the condition usually referred
to as false consciousness is prevalent and serious—without, however, using
the term. Grossberg wrote:
Cultural studies does assume that people live their subordination actively; that
means, in one sense, that they are often complicit in their own subordination,
that they accede to it, although power often works through strategies and appa-
ratuses of which people are totally unaware. Be that as it may, cultural studies
believes that if one is to challenge the existing structure of power, then one has
to understand how that complicity, that participation in power, is constructed
and lived, and that means not only looking at what people gain from such prac-
tices, but also at the possibilities for rearticulating such practices to escape, re-
sist, or even oppose particular structures of power. Cultural studies refuses to as-
sume that people are cultural dupes, that they are entirely and passively
manipulated either by the media or by capitalism. But it does not deny that they
are sometimes duped, that they are sometimes manipulated, and that they are
lied to (and believe the lies, sometimes knowing that they are lies). 8
Here, Grossberg is agreeing that understandings, outlooks, and interpreta-
tions proffered by media and elites are, in fact, often accepted by subordi-
nated people—to their disadvantage. This is consistent with Raymond
Williams’ complaint that in turning class into mass, elites rob working people
of their class consciousness. And this is indeed the most common meaning of
false consciousness, although as just noted Grossberg refrained from using