Page 217 - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture an Introduction

CULT_C09.qxd 10/24/08 17:25 Page 201

Postmodernism and the pluralism of value 201

should not take any of these changes at face value; we must always be alert to the what,
why and for whom something is being articulated, and how it can always be articulated
differently, in other contexts (see Chapter 10).

Postmodernism and the pluralism of value

Postmodernism has disturbed many of the old certainties surrounding questions of
cultural value. In particular, it has problematized the question of why some texts are
canonized, while others disappear without trace: that is, why only certain texts sup-
posedly ‘pass the test of time’. There are a number of ways to answer this question.
First, we can insist that the texts which are valued and become part of what Williams
calls the ‘selective tradition’ (see Chapter 3) are those which are sufficiently polysemic
45
to sustain multiple and continuous readings. The problem with this approach is that
it seems to ignore questions of power. It fails to pose the question: ‘Who is doing the
valuing, in what context(s) and with what effects of power?’ In short, it is very difficult
to see how a process, in which only certain people have the power and cultural author-
ity to ensure the canonical reproduction of texts and practices, can really be described
as simply an effect of a text’s polysemy.
Rather than begin with polysemy, cultural studies would begin with power. Put sim-
ply, a text will survive its moment of production if it is selected to meet the needs and
desires of people with cultural power. Surviving its moment of production makes
it available to meet the (usually different) desires and needs of other generations of
people with cultural power. The selective tradition, as Williams (2009) points out, is
‘governed by many kinds of special interests, including class interests’. Therefore rather
than being a natural repository of what Arnold thought of as ‘the best that has been
thought and said’ (see Chapter 2), it ‘will always tend to correspond to its contemporary
system of interests and values, for it is not an absolute body of work but a continual
selection and interpretation’ (38–9). Particular interests, articulated in specific social
and historical contexts, always inform the selective tradition. In this way, what consti-
tutes the selective tradition is as much about policing knowledge as it is about orga-
nizing terrains of critical inquiry.
It is not difficult to demonstrate how the selective tradition forms and re-forms in
response to the social and political concerns of those with cultural power. We have
only to think of the impact that, say, feminism, queer theory and post-colonial theory
have had on the study of literature – women writers, gay writers, writers from the
so-called colonial periphery have become a part of the institution of literature, not
because their value has suddenly been recognized in some disinterested sweep of the
field: they are there because power encountered resistance. Even when the selected texts
remain the same, how and why they are valued certainly changes. So much so that
46
they are hardly the same texts from one historical moment to the next. As the Four
Tops put it, in a slightly different context: ‘It’s the same old song / But with a different