Page 193 - Decoding Culture

186 D E C O D I N G C U L TURE
that the emergence of new revisionism in a specifically cultural
studies context does make it a distinctly different beast to superfi­
cially similar revisions of the orthodox mass communications
tradition. Nevertheless, as we have seen earlier in this chapter's
discussion, there is some force to the claim that new revisionism is
significantly less critical than its predecessors, not because it is
doing no more than repeat previous errors in new guises, but
because in embracing subjectivism it finds its focus restricted in
empirical, theoretical and evaluative terms.
In response to that, there is a tendency in critiques of new revi­
sionism to suppose that reincorporating political economy
considerations will return cultural studies to its proper critical role.
McGuigan (1992: 160), for instance, in resisting what he calls the
'essentially hermeneutic perspective' of the likes of Ang and
Morley, argues that macro-dynamics cannot be understood satis­
factorily where 'interpretation of cultural consumption [is] always
firmly at the centre of the analytic picture'. These 'complex and
obscure dynamics', he continues, 'are fundamentally about the dis­
position of material resources, corporate decision-making and
capital investment'. While much of my discussion in this chapter
would reinforce the first part of his claim - that making audience
interpretation the analytic focus is not conducive to extending our
grasp of macro-dynamics - it is surely not the case that such
dynamics are 'fundamentally' of the material and economic form
that he then proposes. Certainly the apparatus of global capitalism
is significant in understanding macro-processes at work in modern
media; but so too is a variety of other, non-economic features of the
ways in which our social lives are systematically structured. If the
critical cultural studies paradigm has indeed been lost, return to a
version of the reductionism that flawed it in the first place is not an
ideal strategy to bring about its resurrection. As a disconsolate
Curran (1990: 158) himself observes at the end of his discussion,

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