Page 20 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Introduction to Part One 9

annual political economy columns for Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural
Studies, with a view also to stimulating policy- and political economy-related
submissions. Five columns appeared between the spring of 2003 and the fall
of 2006, revised versions of which are gathered here. Before moving forward,
however, it is essential to recount from whence we have come. Chapters 1 and
2, therefore, present brief “genealogies” of political economy and cultural
studies, respectively. Together, these chapters establish the integrated nature
of political economy and cultural studies in the formative years, and by im-
plication point to means of reintegrating them now. Chapter 3 revisits the Col-
loquy, and looks at related materials, to determine the main lines of opposi-
tion separating political economy and cultural studies. It is proposed that it
was the poststructuralist turn in cultural studies that instigated the separation.
Chapter 4, therefore, reviews the beginnings of American poststructuralist
cultural studies, and places that within the genealogy of mainstream Ameri-
can media/communication thought; the argument is made that poststructural-
ism is quite consistent with, and is indeed the latest manifestation of, the his-
toric inattention of mainstream American media scholarship toward
considerations of inequality. Given the historical background of part I, part
II—“Portals for Dialogue”—suggests three means whereby political econ-
omy and cultural studies can be reintegrated: recognizing money as a cultur-
ally biased medium of communication, contemplating the time-space dialec-
tic of communication media, and foregrounding what I term the “dialectic of
information.” The final chapter of part II, however, which compares and con-
trasts the media thought of Harold Innis and poststructuralist Mark Poster, is
less optimistic; it shows that poststructuralism is fundamentally at odds with
these three “portals,” and hence also with the prospect of reintegrating polit-
ical economy and cultural studies. A final chapter addresses the issues at a
new level.

NOTES

1. Marshall McLuhan, Culture is Our Business (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970).
2. For FCC commissioner, Mark Fowler, “Television is just another appliance. It’s
a toaster with pictures. . . . Why is there this national obsession to tamper with this
box of transistors and tubes when we don’t do the same for Time magazine?” Mark
Fowler, Interview in Reason magazine, 1 November 1981.
3. Cultural “commodities” are not usually used up, as are normal consumer goods;
books, sound recordings, films, carvings, paintings, and so forth, endure after being
processed by users, meaning that they are more analogous to capital items than they
are to consumer goods. Live performances, too, linger, perhaps attenuated, perhaps
reinterpreted, in human minds—with unforeseen consequences, some of which may