Page 108 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies
P. 108

96 COLIN SPARKS

            classes,  as  such,  are  the  subjects  of  fixed  and  ascribed  class  ideologies’
            (Hall, 1983: 77). On the other hand, Hall wished to continue to argue for
            the  continuing  relevance  of  the  idea  of  determination.  To  do  this,  he
            borrowed from Raymond Williams the idea of determination as a setting
            of limits. In practice, however, Hall used this borrowing very sparingly. In
            the  analysis  of  Thatcherism,  for  example,  there  is  no  attempt  to
            incorporate changes in the class structure, the differential impact of rising
            real  wages,  tax  cuts,  unemployment,  privatization  and  the  spread  of
            subsidized home ownership, or any of the other major economic planks of
            Conservative  policies  during  the  1980s,  into  an  understanding  of  how  a
            particular  hegemonic  project  might  come  to  win  consent.  In  a  word,  the
            material basis of Thatcher’s political successes is never investigated.


                                    AFTER MARXISM
            Taken  together,  the  implications  of  the  above  formulations  are  clearly  to
            shift cultural studies away from its encounter with marxism. When Laclau
            and  Mouffe  characterized  their  position  as  ‘post-marxism’  with  an  equal
            stress upon each of the two elements in that portmanteau word, they were
            perhaps  a  little  generous  to  Marx.  The  category  of  ‘marxism’  is  an
            extremely broad one, and there is little point or profit in trying to decide
            whether someone can legitimately claim to be ‘marxist’ or not. If they wish
            to  adopt  the  label,  then  we  have  no  need  to  quibble.  We  may  note,
            however, that there is a fairly large gap between the theoretical framework
            cultural  studies  used  in  its  marxist  phase  and  the  one  that  has  come  to
            dominance  in  more  recent  years.  In  this  respect,  the  ‘marxist  cultural
            studies’  which  has  travelled  so  successfully  around  the  world  was  one
            which was perhaps carrying a dubious passport: the ‘marxist’ element was
            in crisis from the beginning and has now been more or less abandoned.
              The very success of cultural studies means that it is today difficult to pin
            down  a  single  strand  of  thought  as  the  successor  to  marxist  cultural
            studies. If in the early days there was a handful of people working more or
            less in isolation on similar topics, and if in the 1970s one could identify a
            Centre which was also the centre, today the field is so diverse that such a
            task is hopeless. It is, however, possible to claim that almost nobody today
            active  in  the  field  of  cultural  studies  identifies  themselves  with  the
            theoretical  framework  of  what  was  once  marxist  cultural  studies.  In
            particular, the central concerns with the problem of determination and the
            nature  of  ideology  have  more  or  less  disappeared.  The  difficulties  which
            faced the project of marxist cultural studies have been resolved by shifting
            the terrain of investigation.
              Hall himself modified his position considerably during the late 1980s. In
            his contribution to the debate over ‘New Times’, Hall developed a position
            which seems to owe rather more to Foucault than Marx:
   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113