Page 256 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

244 LOOKING BACK AT NEW TIMES AND ITS CRITICS

in the desire to keep hold of the various levels which also come into play in
these New Times and particularly in consumption, to ‘overplay the
coherence of the shifts which are being pinpointed’ (Nixon, 1994a). I also
find useful Nixon’s alternative, that the economic is frequently constructed
in culturally-informed discourse. His detailed example is the professional
knowledge of magazine editors and advertisers brought into play as they
consider the production of a new commodity, for example, a man’s
magazine. The discourse which results in an economy (investment capital,
etc.) and in a new commodity being put into production (in this case a
magazine) relies extensively on cultural knowledge drawn from the
observable world of social trends, tastes and lifestyles. Equally important to
Nixon’s argument is that different knowledges are here posed against each
other so that what is a question of economics and profit is constructed and
carried out in the language of culture.
My contention is that this negotiation occurs, not because the
‘cultural’ components of the magazines are somehow ‘relatively
autonomous’ from their economic kernel, but because the economic
determinants on the magazines have specific conditions of existence
that are discursive; that is, they are produced by specific discursive
practices.
(Nixon, 1993:490)
What all of this shows is that questions of the economy are back on the
agenda of cultural theory after what some might see as too long an absence,
and with this reappearance come the equally important experiences of
work and employment. What is more problematic from Nixon’s viewpoint
is the way in which these ‘big issues’ still seem to have the power to re-
insert themselves magisterially, and fairly automatically re-inscribe
themselves in bottom-line positions. In New Times, he argues, they still
take the lead. This kind of criticism casts some theoretical doubt over, for
example, Robin Murray’s contributions which focus on how the emergent
world economy is marking the end of the old Keynesian order. This has
become outmoded by the growth of international capital, the crisis of
unemployment, the skills mismatch produced by the development of new
technology and the crisis of profitability brought about by ‘market
saturation’. Post-Fordism and flexible specialization then step in as part of
a grand process of capital restructuring. New technology and new markets
offer the promise of recovery, and according to some of the commentators
on post-Fordism, particularly those who have been associated with the
French and Italian ‘Regulation School’, they also ‘hand back to labour
some of the creativity of work which Fordism has eliminated’ (Sabel,
quoted in Pollert, 1988).