Page 116 - Decoding Culture

5 Res i sting the

Dominant

In recent years it has become commonplace to suggest that the
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (hence­
forth, the CCCS) was the main locus for the flowering of modern
cultural studies. As I have already observed in Chapter 1, this
claim is misleading. Not because the CCCS was insignificant in the
development of cultural studies - clearly it was not - but more
because our understanding of the complex interrelations between
the various intellectual traditions involved in this history is
restricted by such one-sided claims. From the perspective of the
present study, the CCCS figures as one among several environ­
ments within which the characteristic theories and methods of
cultural studies emerge. Accordingly, it is essential to understand
the CCCS' distinctive analytic contribution in context: both in rela­
tion to other contemporary influences and in relation to the older
traditions on which the Centre itself drew. Only then might we
hope to make even a provisional judgement on its role in the rise
of cultural studies.
But where should one begin when faced with such a complex
heritage? Since we have just discussed Screen theory in some
detail, and since that very term was coined in the 1970s by

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