Page 207 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

196 Conclusion

perception and cognition when, at the same time, they propose (if not directly,
then at least by implication) that oppression for one may be adulation for an-
other and freedom to a third, reality being what one chooses it to be, linguis-
tically speaking that is? Is not poststructuralism, in the end, despite its radi-
cal pretensions, really a paradigm or ideology for the status quo? Is not the
claim that we all exist in language, that we cannot escape language, also an
argument that we should refrain from tampering with the fundamental struc-
tures of society? Because, really, we can know nothing? These are certainly
questions worth pondering.
In any event, I would like to conclude the present tome with a call to inte-
grate, or reintegrate, political economy and cultural studies. Some ways of ac-
complishing this reintegration were suggested in chapters 5 to 7 and else-
where: maintaining an awareness of the cultural biases of money; forwarding
the time-space dialectic of Innisian medium theory; insisting on the dialectic
of information; understanding culture as a whole way of life. Reintegrating
critical political economy and cultural studies also means, most fundamen-
tally, setting aside poststructuralist cultural studies. In fact, if poststructural-
ist cultural studies is disregarded, political economy and cultural studies (cul-
tural materialism) are united already. They were never divorced, and hence
need no reconciliation.
Why, then, is it of some human benefit to abandon poststructuralist cultural
studies, or at least turn from its most extreme instances as represented here by
Poster, Baudrillard, and Grossberg? One set of benefits flows simply from jet-
tisoning a mode of thought which is falsified in self-reference and which is
plagued by inconsistencies; if clarity of thought is in fact a benefit, casting
aside poststructuralism is certainly an advantage.
Stuart Hall, who often seemed to have a foot testing the poststructuralist
waters, inadvertently gave another one. He declared: “Postmodernism at-
tempts to close off the past by saying that history is finished, therefore you
needn’t go back to it. There is only the present, and all you can do is be with
it, immersed in it. . . . What it says is this: this is the end of the world. His-
3
tory stops with us and there is no place to go after this.” Harold Innis termed
this kind of thinking present-minded, and he argued convincingly that con-
temporary scholarship, for this very reason, leads to a lack of understanding.
John Ralston Saul, as we saw previously, made the same claim. To disregard
poststructuralist positions, therefore, by implication, opens up possibilities
for greater understanding.
Kevin O’Donnell, echoing Grossberg and Poster, has pointed to another
potential benefit of casting aside poststructuralist thought. O’Donnell ob-
served that a chief contention of poststructuralism is that “there is no way to
escape language, no way to stand outside discourse to get at pure, raw truth.” 4