Page 197 - Decoding Culture

190 D E C O D I N G C U L TURE
holism. Note, however, that there are two analytically separate
issues here: one depends upon making a general case in favour of
holism; the other seeks to use holistic understanding of the socio­
political role of cultural forms as a basis for critical assessment.
On the first issue it is difficult not to feel some sympathy with
the critics of audience-oriented studies. Though the rise of the
reader has not necessarily precluded a fully contextual account of
readership - indeed, that has been the stated goal of such
researchers as Ang and Morley - the net result has been the
proliferation of detailed micro-studies at the expense of macro­
understanding. Lacking the theoretical and methodological
resources necessary to make the micro-macro connections, recent
cultural studies has all too often defaulted into forms of 'ethno­
graphic' description from which structural considerations are
largely absent. On the second issue, things are less straightfor­
ward. Whilst I have no inclination to bemoan the lack of a
post-Leavisite critical sensibility in modern cultural studies, it is at
least arguable that making informed judgements about cultural
materials in terms of their socio-political significance is a necessary
part of any adequate analysis of culture. To that degree, cultural
studies should indeed be 'critical'. What is not so clear is whether
the kinds of theoretical alternatives posed by critics of 'cultural
populism' or 'the new revisionism' would do the required job. They
may be right to draw attention to the drift toward pluralism in cul­
tural studies theory, but this does not mean that superseded
neo-Gramscian models should be returned to centre stage. Some
form of critical holism may well be necessary, but it must be a
holism that can grapple with precisely those previously unad­
dressed concerns that have occasioned the turn toward
audience-oriented work: pleasure, processes of readership, poly­
semy, and the manipulative use of popular culture by social agents.
Whatever one's position on the aesthetic and political

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