Page 132 - Decoding Culture

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RESISTIN G THE O M I N ANT 125
for 'contrary cultural definitions are always in play' (ibid: 43) where
classes seek to 'win space'.
In this discussion class is clearly the central focus, whether in
formulating the precise terms in which working-class subcultures
relate to parent and dominant cultures, or in defining the general
forms within which ideology operates ('imaginary' relations to
'real' conditions) and hegemony is secured. Compared to Hall's
later formulations (where 'relative autonomy' of the ideological
level is more prominent and groups other than classes feature sig­
nificantly) the Resistance through Rituals position is heavily class
oriented. But as CCCS work diversified in the late 1970s and the
1980s class became less central to their analysis, on both theoreti­
cal and empirical grounds. Apart from the obvious difficulties
experienced by orthodox marxism in incorporating gender and
race as significant forms of social differentiation and exploitation,
the very concern of the CCCS with the 'struggle in ideology'
required a growing recognition that the social groupings around
which such struggles coalesced were not always easily reducible to
class terms. Hall, in his increasingly Gramscian formulations of
the relation between ideology and the material world, had always
been careful to use the expression 'classes and social groups',
allowing that there were significant social groups that required
non-class concepts for their proper understanding. By 1983, while
still resisting the move of some marxist theorists of ideology
toward a model in which endless variation in discourses replaced a
class-determined account, the picture he offers is one in which a
more general play of social forces is realised in struggle. As an
example of the changing position, this passage is worth quoting at
length:
Ideas only become effective if they do, in the end, connect with a
particular constellation of social f o rces. In that sense, ideological
struggle is part of the general social struggle for mastery and

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