Page 84 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

72 COLIN SPARKS

As we shall see, it is possible to put at least a rough date to the start of
the identification between cultural studies and marxism. The process took
place between 1968 and 1972. We can date the end of the affair with
considerably more precision. In the initial publicity for his keynote address
to the April 1990 University of Illinois conference on ‘Cultural Studies Now
and in the Future’, Stuart Hall was billed as speaking on ‘The marxist
element in cultural studies’. In the event, the final printed version of the
programme had him addressing ‘Cultural studies and its theoretical
legacies’. The published form of the paper carries the same title and is
concerned to elaborate the proposition that: ‘There never was a prior
moment when cultural studies and marxism represented a perfect
theoretical fit’ (Hall, 1992:279). Born in the aftermath of the student
radicalism of 1968, marxist cultural studies died with the collapse of the
Soviet empire.
The close association between marxism and cultural studies thus lasted
for a period of around twenty years. In the course of these two decades,
cultural studies went from the status of a marginal note to British literary
studies to a central aspect of the humanities in the USA and Australia, as
well as in Britain. If Perry Anderson were to re-write his famous essay on
‘Components of the national culture’ today, he would undoubtedly be
obliged to place cultural studies in the place of literary criticism as the
central locus of discussion about the nature of British society. The cultural
studies which entered the centre of British intellectual life, and which
proved such an unusually successful export, was marxist cultural studies.

BEFORE MARXISM
The aftermath of 1968 was not the first time there had been an encounter
between marxism and cultural studies. On the contrary, the initial
formation of a recognizable strand of thought we can call ‘cultural studies’
came in the aftermath of 1956. The foundation of cultural studies lay in a
move away from, and critique of, the established marxist tradition of
cultural theory embodied in the writing of authors who were members of
the British Communist Party and its international affiliates. All of the
multitude of introductions to cultural studies seem to be in agreement that
the Founding Fathers of cultural studies were Williams, Hoggart and
Thompson, ably assisted by the young Stuart Hall. Each of these writers
had critical positions towards marxism.
Hoggart is the simplest case: he was not, and never had been, a marxist.
His only relation to marxism was one of dismissal. There is little evidence,
either in his contemporary writings or in his later autobiographical
sketches and books, that there was ever any protracted engagement with
marxist ideas. Marxism is mentioned as an influence on W.H.Auden in
Hoggart’s first book, but there is nothing in the discussion to suggest any