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172 LAWRENCE GROSSBERG
language as intervention, diversity, chance, contextuality, egalitarianism,
pastiche, heterogeneity without norms, quotations without quotation marks,
parodies without originals.
4 Postmodernism’s lack of a theory of articulation results in the ‘flatness’
(albeit defined by a multiplicity of vectors and planes) of its analysis of
contextual effectivity. In neither postmodernism nor cultural studies is
articulation ever complete. In cultural studies, no articulation is either
complete or final; no term is ever finally sewn up. This is the condition of
possibility of its dialectic of struggle. In postmodernism not every element is
articulated or stitched into the fabric of any particular larger structure. Ths is
a crucial part of its analysis of contemporaneity. Speaking metaphorically, a
theory of articulation augments vertical complexity while a theory of wild
realism augments horizontal complexity.
5 Theorizing the concept of affect involves deconstructing the opposition
between the rational and the irrational in order to undercut, not only the
assumed irrationality of desire but also, the assumed rationality of
signification and ideology. Current theories of ideology, rooted in
structuralism, have too easily abandoned the insights embodied in notions of
‘the structure of feeling’ (Williams) and ‘the texture of lived experience’
(Hoggart). (I am grateful to John Clarke for his observations on this point.)
REFERENCES
Baudrillard, J. (1983) Simulations (trans. P.Foss, P.Patton and P.Beitchman), New
York: Semiotext(e).
Benjamin, W. (1968) Illuminations (ed. H.Arendt), New York: Harcourt Brace &
World.
Brunsdon, C. and Morley, D. (1978) Everyday Television: ‘Nationwide’, London:
British Film Institute.
Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Q.Hoare and G.N.
Smith, eds), New York: International Publishers.
Grossberg, L. (1983) ‘Cultural studies revisited and revised’, in M.S.Mander (ed.)
Communications in Transition, New York: Praeger, 39–70.
———(1984) ‘Strategies of Marxist cultural interpretation’, Critical Studies in
Mass Communication 1(4), 392–421.
———(1984b) ‘“I’d rather feel bad than not feel anything at all”: rock and roll,
pleasure and power’, Enclitic 8(1–2), 94–110.
Hall, S. (1974) ‘Marx’s notes on method: a “reading” of the “1857 introduction”’
Working Papers in Cultural Studies 6, 132–70.
———(1976) ‘Introduction’ to An Eye on China (D.Selbourne), London: Black
Liberation Press.
———(1977) ‘Culture, the media and the “ideological effect'” in J.Curran et al.
(eds) Mass Communication and Society, London: Edward Arnold, 315–48.
———(1980a) ‘Cultural studies: two paradigms’, Media, Culture and Society 2,
57–72.