Page 172 - Decoding Culture

7 The Rise o f the

Reader

The cultural studies inheritance from structuralism was not simply
a matter of new terminology, a methodological focus on significa­
tion, and a desire to theorize langue wherever it might be found.
Structuralism and the various post-structuralisms were marked by
a conceptual tension that runs like an undercurrent through the
cultural studies project. On the one hand, structuralists and post­
structuralists were committed to understanding the constraints
imposed by structures of whatever kind. But on the other hand, as
Saussure had before them, they also recognized the social relativ­
ity of semiotic systems, their inbuilt potential for polysemy, and the
inventive capacities of the social agents who made creative use of
them. In the terms that I borrowed from Giddens (1984) in
Chapter 3, structuralism had the potential to see culture as both
constraining and enabling. Culture stores and delivers the
resources that social agents utilize in making their world make
sense, and in that respect sets limits, defines terms, constrains the
character of social life. But cultures are also complex, contradic­
tory and ambiguous, open to constant reconstruction by users who
are, by their very nature, active manipulators of cultural materials.
Culture may indeed be a reservoir on which we draw to constitute

Copyrighted Material