Page 20 - Decoding Culture

THE STORY SO FAR 13

became foundational to assume that psychoanalytic concepts
would provide privileged access to these processes, notably
through terms drawn from the 'structuralist' development of psy­
choanalytic theory pioneered by Jacques Lacan. Thus, by yoking
together a theory of ideology that focused upon the construction of
subjects, and a psychoanalytic account of that process itself, Screen
theory was able, formally at least, to locate structural analysis in a
social and psychoanalytic context. From these beginnings there
developed the whole tradition of 'subject positioning theory' which,
to this day, retains an important role in cultural analysis.
The crucial period for the development of Screen theory was
during the first half of the 1970s, and by the middle of that decade
it had reached its high point of influence. It was very controversial,
with critics accusing the theory of over-determinism, of psychoan­
alytic reductionism, and of betraying Screen's political project by
retreating into the obscurantism of Lacanian terminology. Among
these critics were members of the Screen group itself, as well as
those within the CCCS who had made it their business to engage
with this particular extension of structuralism. The CCCS had also
been much influenced by the first phase of structuralist thinking
and, while rejecting Screen's formulation of post-structuralism, was
eager to find its own way of carrying things forward. Convinced
that ideology was the key concept through which to relate struc­
tural analysis of texts to larger political and social dynamics, they
too drew upon Althusser. However, rather than extending
Althusser's ideas in the ways found in Screen theory, they sought
increasingly to theorize ideology in terms derived from Gramsci's
work.
We will examine this version of post-structuralist cultural studies
in some detail in Chapter 5. For the purposes of the present outline
it is only necessary to note that the CCCS position, while preserv­
ing a central emphasis on ideology, rejected the strongly

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