Page 163 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

152 MEDIA STUDIES

being positioned in patriarchal ideology. ‘Screen theory’ has attempted to deal
with this problem by advancing the strategy of ‘deconstruction’ (for example,
deconstructing the practices and positionings of classical realism). But although
deconstruction may provide a significant strategy of resistance, especially for the
unmasking and interruption of dominant discourses, it certainly does not identify
the conditions for the production of alternative languages and discourses. What it
appears to do is to establish a simple alternation between being ‘in language’
(and therefore, inescapably, in ideology) or ‘against language’. But a non-
patriarchal language cannot be conceptualized in terms of a revolution against
language as such: this is a contradiction in terms. One effect of this, however,
has been that a rather simple and unproblematic identity has been forged between
the practices of struggle in ideology and the practices of the avant-garde. Julia
Kristeva has taken this implied premise to its logical conclusion in her theory of
the revolution in language. But this has not proved an adequate resolution of the
problem, which arises because the argument has collapsed a theory of the
functioning of specific ideologies into a theory of the conditions for language as
such.
6 We have taken patriarchal ideologies as our example in the foregoing
criticism because ‘screen theory’ has advanced particularly strong claims in this
area (in contrast to classical Marxism), has been deeply influential for feminist
theory and film practice—and yet seems to encounter particular difficulties
precisely on this ground. For in Lacan the differences and distinctions which
make language and representation possible (a condition of the ‘symbolic’) are
rooted in the marking of sexual difference—the latter providing the paradigm for,
as well as the supporting structure of, the former. But the key mechanism which
sustains this passage into the ‘symbolic’ is the resolution of the castration
complex. However, this is a highly phallocentric theory, and its effect appears to
be to consign women, not just in this culture but forever—and as a condition of
having access to representation at all—to a negative entry into language, which
is already and always marked by patriarchal dominance. If the ‘Law of Culture’
is, by definition and always, the ‘Law of the Father’, and this is the condition of
language and the ‘symbolic’, then it is difficult to see why patriarchy is not—
psychoanalytically rather than biologically—a woman’s necessary and
irreversible destiny.
These debates are by no means yet resolved: they have been vigorously and
often contentiously pursued: and they continue to define a central terrain of
theorization and argument in this area of work. Consequently, in 1977–8 the
Media Group spent the year making itself familiar with this difficult body of
work and with the bodies of theory on which it is based. It attempted to identify
the central thesis and premises of the ‘screen theory’ problematic, as well as
demystifying a little the forbiddingly arcane language and abstract formulations
in which a great deal of the transcriptions from French theory have been cast. It
attempted to develop a serious critique of ‘screen theory’, at the same time
revaluing its own premises and practices in the light of that work. This critique is