Page 123 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

Intellectuals The main concern that cultural studies has had with the idea of an
intellectual is to consider what kind of a cultural and political role they might play.
In a sense, to ask this question is to address what the purpose of cultural studies
100 itself is as an intellectual project.
In the context of the Gramscian cultural studies of the 1970s and 1980s, many
writers within the field held the ambition of linking intellectuals with political
movements in the model of the ‘organic’ intellectual. Organic intellectuals are said
to be a constitutive part of working class (and later feminist, postcolonial, African
American etc.) struggles. They are said to be the thinking and organizing elements
of the counter-hegemonic class and its allies. Given that Gramsci has an expansive
notion of the organic intellectual, this role is not played only by those situated
within the educational world but by trade unionists, writers, campaigners,
community organizers, teachers and so forth. By contrast, traditional intellectuals,
who fill the scientific and philosophical positions in universities, the media,
publishers and so forth, are said to maintain and circulate those ideologies
constitutive of ruling class cultural hegemony.
In thinking of themselves in ‘organic’ terms, cultural studies writers sought to
play a ‘de-mystifying’ role in the ‘ideological struggle’ by pointing to the
constructed character of cultural texts. They aimed to highlight the myths and
‘ideologies’ embedded in texts in the hope of producing subject positions, and real
subjects, who are enabled to oppose subordination. Indeed, as a political theory
cultural studies has hoped to organize disparate oppositional groups into a politico-
cultural alliance. However, there is little evidence to suggest that cultural studies
writers have ever been ‘organically’ connected with political movements in any
significant way. Rather, cultural studies intellectuals acted ‘as if’ they were organic
intellectuals or in the hope that one day they could be.
It is questionable whether cultural studies has ever been conceivable in terms of
organic intellectuals. In particular, the prime institutional sites for cultural studies
are those of higher education. Consequently, though individuals and groups
identified with cultural studies may try to forge connections outside of the academy
with social and political movements, workers in cultural institutions, and cultural
management, cultural studies shares its relative isolation from popular culture with
most other academic disciplines.
In this context the main purpose of cultural studies’ intellectuals as enacted
through teaching and writing is restricted to intellectual clarification and
legitimization (which might for Gramscians be seen as a part of ideological conflict).
As such, cultural studies is a potential tool for activists and policy makers rather
more than a form of ‘direct’ or ‘organic’ political activity. Cultural studies is no less
valuable for that; storytellers have had an important role in human history. Thus,
though the activists of New Social Movements do not need cultural studies per se,
nevertheless, theorizing may be of assistance in ‘clearing the way’ for activists
through re-definition and re-description of the world. As such, ‘doing cultural
studies’ is an intellectual activity rather more than it is political activism.

Links Cultural policy, cultural studies, hegemony, ideology, writing