Page 176 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

164 LAWRENCE GROSSBERG

institutions and texts which populate our commimicative environment, and
the processes which organize it. It is a model posed against the elitism
which characterizes so much of contemporary scholarly and political
practice, a model committed to respecting human beings, their lives and
their possibilities.

II
CULTURAL STUDIES AND THE POSTMODERN

Hall’s dialectic involves the search for a middle ground which is never
merely a ‘desired’ synthesis or reconciliation of contradictions but the
recognition and embodiment of struggle at every level. The tradition of
cultural studies associated with the Birmingham School has been shaped by
an almost continuous series of debates and challenges (Hall 1980a;
Grossberg 1983, 1984). On the one hand, it has constantly constituted
itself by a critical engagement with other theoretical positions: with the
humanism of the culturalists (for example, Raymond Williams and
E.P.Thompson), with the structural/functionalism of the structuralists (for
example, Althusser), with the anti-humanism and textualism of
deconstructionists and psychoanalytic discourse theory (for example,
Screen and certain versions of feminist theory). In each of these debates,
cultural studies has moved onto the terrain in order to both learn and draw
back from the differences. In each case, it has taken something from the
other position, reshaped itself, its questions (empirical as well as
theoretical) and its vocabularies. But it has refused to abandon the terrain
of marxism and refused to succumb to the increasingly common pessimism
of the left. On the other hand, it has constituted itself by constantly
anchoring its theoretical concerns in concrete historical events and political
struggles. It has opened itself, however reluctantly at times, to the
recognition that history constantly makes new demands upon us,
presenting us with new configurations and new questions. One can simplify
this history of ‘anchoring points’: beginning with the New Left’s concern
with issues of imperialism, racism and culture, continuing into questions of
emerging forms of resistance, from ‘the margins’ (in the form of
subcultures) and from feminism, and arriving at the rise of the New Right
and the simultaneous ‘collapse’ of effective left opposition.
It is within these terms that we must consider the relationship between
2
marxist cultural studies and postmodernism. To speak metaphorically, the
war of positions between them has only begun and the result will be, not a
hegemonic discourse, but a different theoretical position which has
negotiated the space between them through an analysis of its own
historical context. After all, both cultural studies and postmodern theory
are concerned with the place of cultural practices in historical formations
and political struggles. But marxists are often reluctant to acknowledge the