Page 124 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

The Colloquy Revisited 113

11. Garnham, “Political Economy and Cultural Studies,” 65. While affirming a de-
gree of interpretive freedom on the part of cultural “consumers,” then, Garnham here
claimed that elites, pursuing their own economic and political agendas, retain the
power to determine “which meanings circulate and which do not, which stories
are told and about what, which arguments are given prominence and what cultural
resources are made available and to whom.” He might well have added that from a
political economy perspective elites also help determine what is considered feasible
or even thinkable, and suggest or inculcate interpretive categories. Garnham con-
cluded: “The analysis of this process is vital to an understanding of the power rela-
tionships involved in culture and their relationship to wider structures of domination”
(p. 65). The writer often associated with emphasizing the pleasure aspects of cultural
consumption as opposed to outside ideological domination is John Fiske. See John
Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989); also, Graeme
Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Cambridge, MA: Unwin Hyman,
1990, 221.
12. Grossberg, “Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy,” 74–75.
13. Grossberg, “Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy,” 77. In fact, Garnham’s
goal was to “reconcile” political economy and cultural studies. In Garnham’s view, as
noted by Murdock, “critical political economy [is] a necessary starting point for a crit-
ical analysis of contemporary culture.” Graham Murdock, “Across the Great Divide:
Cultural Analysis and the Condition of Democracy,” Critical Studies in Mass Com-
munication 12, no. 1 (1995): 90.
14. Grossberg, “Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy,” 74. Interestingly, this po-
sition is supported by Carey, who wrote: “The dispute between cultural studies and
political economy should largely be ignored; it reflects the increasing academization
of the subject matter.” Carey, “Abolishing the Old Spirit World,” 84. Murdock pro-
vides a similar explanation, if not justification: “Part of the explanation [for the divi-
sion] has to do with the prevailing academic division of labor. Cultural studies has
found its primary institutional home within schools and faculties of humanities and
has been most consistently supported by scholars migrating from literary studies, art
history, and cultural anthropology. In contrast, critical political economy tends to be
pursued within schools of social sciences and operate across the boundaries of eco-
nomics, political science and sociology.” Murdock goes on to remark, correctly I be-
lieve, that to perpetuate this “great divide,” is to “break faith with the original project
of cultural studies.” Murdock, “Across the Great Divide,” 90.
15. Grossberg, “Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy,” 74.
16. Grossberg, “Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy,” 76.
17. Interestingly, this was a major virtue of Adorno’s coupling of Freudian cate-
gories and political economy. Adorno acknowledged, on the one hand, that “shifting
responsibility from the manipulators to the manipulated is a widespread ideological
problem.” On the other, he understood media as playing upon audiences’ background
assumptions and motivations so as to strike a resonance whereby interpretations de-
sired by the manipulator would likely take hold. Theodor Adorno, “The Stars Down
to Earth,” 54; and Stephen Crook, “Introduction,” The Stars Down to Earth, by