Page 264 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

252 LOOKING BACK AT NEW TIMES AND ITS CRITICS

management of consent undertaken by the radical right, and the way in
which that entailed the total discrediting of the ideas associated with the
radical left from the late 1960s onwards, still leaves him open to scorn for
adopting what is described as a ‘new realist’ or accommodationist position
today. It is as though ‘letting the people in’ to the field of analysis rocks the
boat of left consensus. The people are too difficult in their diversity, too
unpredictable in their tastes, too likely to stray from the path of class
politics, that it is better and perhaps safer to run the risk of being seen as
elitist and have them safely suffering from either ‘false consciousness’ or
ideological seduction.
Part of the New Times project was therefore to write into the analysis of
the field of social and cultural life, not just the noticeable changes on the
landscape of new towns and new shopping-centres and theme parks and
heritage museums, but also the experience of these phenomena. As men of
the left this perhaps did not come too easy and the suggestion of a personal
voice in the account of walking round IKEA sometimes struck an awkward
note. What is more, for feminists who had for some time been arguing for
the inclusion of the category of experience in political analysis and in
theory and who had with some difficulty also striven to find the right kind
of voice, this new evocation of experience was maybe a little overdue. But
that did not mean it was not welcome, the alternative assumption being
that the austere writers of Capital and Class could not consider stooping so
low as to express some degree of enjoyment in taking a stroll down South
Molton Street or through Covent Garden. Or else, as Frith and Savage do,
remove themselves from such a discourse except when they write
journalistically as ‘rock critics’ in which case they ‘come out’ as fans.
Otherwise they see the current interest in popular culture as ‘a method of
uncritical celebration’ or more aggressively they see in ‘Contemporary
cultural studies’ cheerful populism’ academics with ‘new found respect for
sales figures’ (Frith and Savage, 1992:107).
My own critique of New Times was certainly not made in this rather
spiteful spirit. It was more of a reminder that for women a good deal of the
construction of femininity, ideology or not, has focused round
consumption, from the smallest item of beauty product to the perfect pair
of shoes. Feminist theory has for many years grappled with the question of
pleasure and complicity in the ideology of femininity and most importantly
has shown women not to be simply taken in by consumer culture but to be
engaged in everyday life neither as dupes nor simply and unproblematically
as feminists and socialists waiting patiently for the great day when their
sisters denounce Clinique or Next or Donna Karan and channel their
efforts into something different and better.
What might have weakened the case of the New Times writers is that,
while open to the question of experience, there were few spoken voices of
ordinary people in the book as a whole. Not that the full-blown presence