Page 92 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Genealogy of Cultural Studies 81

trol and the commodity form, and instituting rights for common people to ac-
cess media as message senders; for Innis, all that certainly was part of the so-
lution, but as well he called for a reinvigoration of the oral dialectic to offset
mechanized, space-binding media.
For Innis and Williams (as for Adorno), true understanding of present con-
ditions comes mainly from the margins of society. For Williams, however,
artists and intellectuals, despite radical beginnings, often succumb to eco-
nomic pressures and “slip into the prepared ideological positions of mass cul-
ture and the technologised world.” 128 Innis agreed, claiming that it is only at
rare intervals that creative artists and intellectuals are truly freed from elite
control, and hence it is only at such times that a culture, even if but briefly,
can truly flourish.
Certainly Innis’ canvass was much grander than Williams.’ Innis under-
stood media to be implicated in the veritable rise and fall of civilizations—
Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, the Dark and Middle Ages—as well as
being paramount in contemporary western civilization. Williams’ specialty,
on the other hand, was England during and since the Industrial Revolution.
Williams saw the control exercised by commercial forces over media as an
aberration peculiar to capitalism, and as a travesty. Innis, on the other hand,
with his transcivilizational view that included also the various staples
economies of Canada, emphasized that monopolies of knowledge are the rule,
not the exception, and these knowledge monopolies are inextricably tied to
political-economic power. In our time, as it happens, it is corporate, commer-
cial concerns that possess (and propagate) their monopolies of knowledge.
Neither Williams nor Innis was a hard economic or technological deter-
minist, although both certainly saw economic and technological factors as be-
ing highly significant.
Most significantly, although Williams was versed in English literature and
language, he was also a political economist in undertaking his cultural studies;
and Innis, although trained in the social sciences and practising economics/
economic history, placed culture (time and space as organizing principles, ex-
tended analyses of literacy) at the very heart of his political economy. Despite
marginal differences in positions and approaches, the writings of these two sem-
inal authors show no bifurcation of cultural studies/political economy, and con-
sidered together, both their works gives rise to an even more comprehensive and
nuanced view than when they are considered separately.

E. P. Thompson
E. P. (Edward) Thompson (1924–1993) is the third of the foundational British
theorists, and his landmark book, The Making of the English Working Class