Page 114 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

The Colloquy Revisited 103

that audience members exercise interpretive freedom only within the limits
set by their membership in a class or community. Garnham’s proposition that
elites endeavor to position people as consumers, moreover, accords well with
Williams’ claim that elites wish people to see themselves as a class-neutered
mass, as compliant and passive recipients of information.
Garnham carried over this “soft” economic determinist mode of analysis
from reception/interpretation to the cultural superstructure, maintaining that
while capitalism does not require any particular superstructure, it does require
that the superstructure in place be consistent with the capitalist form of pro-
19
duction. Grossberg’s retort was that political economy cannot account for
cultural differences among, say, the USA, the UK, and Japan, all of which
have similar “determining” economic bases. He charged: “Garnham is unable
to consider such questions precisely because he refuses to engage the ques-
tion of articulation, which is, of course, the principal way in which relations
between production, consumption, politics, and ideology are theorized in cul-
tural studies.” 20 However, Garnham had anticipated that criticism, stating:
“The capitalist mode of production does not demand, require, or determine
any one form of politics. . . . It is clear from the historical record that the cap-
italist mode of production can grow within a variety of inherited cultural
forms. All that is required is that they be compatible with the mode of pro-
duction.” (Hence, one could argue, for example, that it is possible for U.S.
21
and Japanese food preferences and marriage customs to differ substantially
because they bear little or no necessary connection to the mode of production,
whereas property relations, the price system, and commodity exchange, being
central to the capitalist economy, are and must be similar in all capitalist
countries).
In addition to noting that many cultural practices are irrelevant to the mode
of production, and that others are necessary to and supportive of the prevail-
ing structure of power, Garnham drew attention to other practices—for ex-
ample critical scholarship—which could actually contribute to capitalism’s
overthrow; obviously, those practices are not “determined” by the economic
22
base, at least not in any linear (nondialectical) sense. For Garnham, the first
step in critical scholarship is always to analyse the “structure of domina-
23
tion,” an analysis which political economy routinely undertakes, but which,
according to Garnham, cultural studies by itself cannot do.
Let us return again, however, to articulation, the term Grossberg invoked
repeatedly to contrast his position with that of political economy. In cultural
studies, articulation has been associated particularly with Grossberg’s mentor,
Stuart Hall. In an interview with Grossberg, Hall remarked that he liked us-
ing the term because of its double meaning. On the one hand, Hall noted, ar-
ticulation is to utter, or speak forth, thereby connoting “language-ing.” On the