Page 21 - Decoding Culture

14 DECODING CULTURE
text-driven model that Screen had derived from Althusser and
Lacan. For the CCCS, culture was a site of constant conflict, a sig­
nificatory terrain across which attempts to secure hegemony - in
effect, domination by consent of the dominated - were variously
resisted. Class remained a key concept. Although it was increas­
ingly recognized that gender and race were important structuring
features of social life, in its main period of influence the CCCS was
committed to class-based analysis first and foremost. That was in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, at which time both the Centre and
its then Director, Stuart Hall, produced a remarkable body of work.
Hall in particular pushed cultural studies theory forward; and the
series of papers that he published during this period are probably
the most influential cultural studies writing to come from the pen of
a single individual.
In spite of the quality of that work, however, it became apparent
in the course of the Thatcherite 1980s that something was amiss
with this neo-Gramscian synthesis. Doubts had been growing in
the social sciences and humanities about the effectiveness of class­
based general theories, and it was also becoming clear that the
polysemic potential of culture - its inherent capacity for multiple
meanings and ambiguity - was significantly greater than even the
CCCS model could encompass. Saussurian structuralism had
always recognized that semiotic systems were complex and under­
determined, by their very nature open to plural 'readings' -
although language systems did indeed set limits on communication
processes, they were rarely simple or straightforward enough to
do so unambiguously. However, in embedding structuralism in a
context that viewed culture as ideology, as a key element in secur­
ing hegemony, the CCCS framework was obliged to minimize
these polysemic aspects of communication. How else could the
dominant ideology be effective? Accordingly, CCCS thinking
sought to understand the relationship between cultural texts and

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