Page 117 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

106 Chapter Three

insistence on the primacy of class as a flashpoint, remarking that “as early as
1968, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was exploring issues of
the gendered relations of power, without assuming that these were merely
epiphenomenal expressions of deeper, more real, bottom line economic or
class relations.” 28 He continued: “The fact that race and gender are articu-
lated to economics (and may be articulated to class) does not say much about
the appropriate ways of accounting for, or struggling against, structures of
domination organized around race and gender.” 29
However, as we saw in chapter 1, in his surveys of civilizations ancient and
modern, Innis bypassed the usual notion of class, and instead simply distin-
guished between those controlling media and knowledge, who could be a
priesthood, royalty, the military, scribes, scientists, mathematicians, male or
female depending on the civilization in question, and the far greater numbers
of people subject to the media’s influence. In no way was Innis’ political
economy circumscribed by or centered on Garnham and Grossberg’s notion
of “class.” Adorno, too, another founder of political economy of media, chose
not to deal with traditional conceptions of class and distinguished instead be-
tween the privileged elite and the mass. Ironically, the inaugural British cul-
tural theorists were more imbued with the traditional labor-capital dichotomy
than were the pioneering political economists! Undoubtedly cultural studies
is well positioned to refine Adorno’s distinctions between elite and mass
along gendered, occupational, racial, ethnic, and other lines, but the point re-
mains that there need be no contradiction between contemporary cultural
studies and political economy concerning class. The issue Garnham raises,
then, might distinguish basic Marxism from other branches of knowledge, but
not necessarily critical political economy from critical cultural studies.

Ontology
None of the foregoing issues are irresolvable. Nor are all even important.
Some, I would argue, even point to the desirability of closer integration be-
tween cultural studies and political economy. Finally, however, I turn to what
is a fundamental breach between critical political economy and cultural stud-
ies, or at least the version of the latter advanced by Grossberg, Hall, McRob-
bie, and (as developed below) by Jean Baudrillard and Mark Poster. The is-
sue, despite its monumental significance, was mentioned only in passing in
the Colloquy, with false consciousness (dual in meaning) the cover or proxy
diverting attention from it. Here are the pertinent passages:

GARNHAM: The rejection of false consciousness within cultural studies goes
along with the rejection of truth as a state of the world, as opposed to the tem-