Page 186 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Chapter Eight

Keeping the Portals Open:
Poster vs. Innis 1

Several years ago in England, a doctoral student suggested to one of us that
the work of Mark Poster is strongly correlated with that of Harold Innis. In-
deed, at a surface level, similarities do abound.
The contention here, however, is that this veneer of similarity masks deep-
seated differences and significant contradictions. Moreover, as Poster is one
of the more “materialist” of the poststructuralists, the incompatibility of his
framework with that of political economy is of broader applicability.
Interestingly, Poster claims that poststructuralism “is a uniquely American
practice,” and that the writings of such seminal French theorists as Derrida,
Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Foucault “have far greater currency in the United
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States than in France.” This contention, if accurate, adds support to the ar-
gument of chapter 4 regarding the marked proclivity of scholars in the United
States to marginalize political economy.

MARK POSTER

At the core of Mark Poster’s work are the concepts of the mode of informa-
tion, language, and poststructuralism. We begin the chapter by looking at, and
commenting upon, these three terms.

Language and the Mode of Information

For Mark Poster, each medium of communication (whether cave paintings,
clay tablets, computer databases, or communication satellites) “profoundly
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intervenes in the network of relations that constitute a society.” Being a

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