Page 149 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

138 Introduction to Part II

the nature of oral culture, and it extends the media/environmental analysis of
chapter 5.
Chapter 7, “Semiotics and the Dialectic of Information,” addresses the
common poststructuralist contention that language/discourse is now segre-
gated from material reality, a topic raised initially at the close of chapter 3.
Chapter 7 notes that in the contemporary digital age there has been a marked
tendency to etherealize information, a tendency that can be traced back to the
semiotics of Ferdinand de Saussure at the start of the twentieth century (if not,
indeed, to Plato), and which has been pursued by such other eminent schol-
ars as Kenneth Boulding and Norbert Wiener, as well as by contemporary
poststructuralists. However, the dialectic of information (namely, matter-in-
form), as proposed here, avoids the pitfalls of both an undue materialism (i.e.,
economism or hard determinism), and an overextended idealism (flight from
material reality). Put more positively, by helping integrate considerations of
matter, form, and interpretation, the dialectic of information is a third “portal
for dialogue” between cultural studies and political economy. The chapter
concludes by integrating the medium theories of Innis and McLuhan.
Each of these aforementioned chapters, focusing respectively on the cul-
tural biases of money, time/space as organizing principles, and the dialectic
of information, explores means whereby political economy and cultural stud-
ies can be brought into closer alignment. Notably, the key in all three cases is
dialectical treatment. Chapter 8, the final chapter of part II, alas, is less opti-
mistic. It revisits differences in ontology between poststructuralist cultural
studies and political economy, as raised initially in chapter 3. In particular, the
chapter discusses significant and likely irresolvable contradictions between
the inaugural political economist, Harold Innis, and the contemporary post-
structuralist, Mark Poster. Poster may be thought of as representing a school
of thought that would close the “portals for dialogue,” for example, by his in-
sistence that we turn “from action to language” and by his recommendation
that we abandon dialectical thinking. This chapter, moreover, forms the tem-
plate of a future volume to be published by Lexington Books, entitled Meet
Harold Innis. There, I introduce Innis’ thought to such other eminent media
scholars, past and present, as Ferdinand de Saussure, Walter Lippmann,
Wilbur Schramm, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Daniel Bell, Marshall McLuhan, David
Harvey, and Michel Foucault.