Page 26 - Decoding Culture

2 The Way We

Were

Like tribal societies, nascent disciplines are drawn to origin myths,
stories which stabilize otherwise recalcitrant histories by identify­
ing founding figures. Perhaps it is comforting to feel that one is, in
Newton's memorable phrase, 'standing on the shoulders of giants',
if not to see further, like Newton himself, then at least to feel the
benefit of good company. The very identification of founders gives
us a sense of intellectual commonality, of tradition, of aspirations
shared and enemies discomfited. It offers a collective memory of
the way we were, and a kind of legitimation of how we are, for
although the intellectual giants of our past are not to blame for
what we have done to their project. their ghosts may be (and fre­
Quently are) summoned up in support of this or that act of revision
or betrayal.
So it has been with cultural studies. As the discipline has edged
toward academic respectability, its history has been reconstructed
and rewritten in terms of putative founders. And although Stuart
Hall (1980b: 57) began one of the earliest and best known analyti­
cal accounts of the formation of cultural studies with the
observation that there were no 'absolute beginnings' to be uncov­
ered in such intellectual work, it is notable that he and most

Copyrighted Material