Page 100 - Decoding Culture

SITUATI G SUBJECTS 93
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Generality III: one order of concept working upon another, to pro­
duce yet a third.
Any reader familiar with twentieth-century theories of knowl­
edge and science will recognize a strong conventionalist element in
this formulation. Although Althusser surely believes that there is a
'real' material world, his account of knowledge production operates
entirely at the conceptual level. In the course of a forceful critique
both of Althusser's epistemology and of its influence upon cultural
studies, Lovell (1980) argues that the concept of the 'real-concrete'
through which he seeks to sustain a sense of real world reference
does not fulfil that task. Instead, he leaves us with a view of knowl­
edge which operates within a hermetically sealed conceptual box,
a body of theory (a 'theoretical practice') which constitutes its own
object of study and develops its own distinctive 'problematic'.
Although it is not a step that Althusser himself takes, it is not far
from such a conception to the kind of view espoused by Hindess
and Hirst (1977: 19-20) when they go beyond Althusser and sug­
gest that 'what is specified in theoretical discourse can only be
.
conceived through that discourse . . the entities discourse refers
to are constituted in and by it'.
I am not suggesting here that the detail of Althusser's formula­
tion of epistemology entered cultural studies or Screen theory in
unadulterated form. In fact, there was (and is) relatively little
detailed discussion of questions of epistemology and method in
this area. What I do want to suggest, however, is that the warrant
it gave for theorizing independent of any clear criteria of empirical
relevance fed an already incipient theoreticism. For Althusser
himself empiricism had a specific meaning in the context of vari­
ous idealist and essentialist philosophical traditions. In Screen
theory's use of it, however, empiricism covered an even larger
multitude of sins, not the least of which was any claim to be con­
cerned with an empirical domain against which theory might be

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