Page 125 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

Chapter 5
The theory and method of articulation In
cultural studies

Jennifer Daryl Slack

ARTICULATION AS THEORY AND METHOD
The concept of articulation is perhaps one of the most generative concepts
in contemporary cultural studies. It is critical for understanding how
cultural theorists conceptualize the world, analyse it and participate in
shaping it. For some, articulation has achieved the status of theory, as in
‘the theory of articulation’. Theoretically, articulation can be understood as
a way of characterizing a social formation without falling into the twin
traps of reductionism and essentialism. It can be seen as transforming
‘cultural studies from a model of communication (production-text-
consumption; encoding-decoding) to a theory of contexts’ (Grossberg,
1993:4). But articulation can also be thought of as a method used in
cultural analysis. On the one hand, articulation suggests a methodological
framework for understanding what a cultural study does. On the other
hand, it provides strategies for undertaking a cultural study, a way of
‘contextualizing’ the object of one’s analysis.
However, articulation works at additional levels: at the levels of the
epistemological, the political and the strategic. Epistemologically,
articulation is a way of thinking the structures of what we know as a play
of correspondences, non-correspondences and contradictions, as fragments
in the constitution of what we take to be unities. Politically, articulation is
a way of foregrounding the structure and play of power that entail in
relations of dominance and subordination. Strategically, articulation
provides a mechanism for shaping intervention within a particular social
formation, conjuncture or context.
Articulation can appear deceptively to be a simple concept—especially
when one level or aspect of its work is taken in isolation. For example, it
seems manageable if we limit our treatment of articulation to its operation
as either a (or the) theory or method of cultural studies. But when theory
and method are understood—as they have been in cultural studies—as
developing in relation to changing epistemological positions and political
conditions as well as providing guidance for strategic intervention,