Page 17 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

with both structuralism and the work of Gramsci. Here the key concepts for cultural
studies are those of text, ideology and hegemony. At the same time, cultural studies
developed a stream of empirical and ethnographic work which has often been less high
xvi profile than textual analysis but with which I have sympathy. Indeed, I do not see
ethnography and textual analysis as mutually exclusive. Later, somewhat in the wake
of Stuart Hall, I embraced aspects of poststructuralism, and the work of Foucault in
particular, where the concepts of discourse and subjectivity are central along with
issues of truth and representation. In this context cultural studies and I became
absorbed by questions of identity.
The engagement with poststructuralism has led to a re-thinking of the notions of
ideology and hegemony. For example Hall, Laclau and Mouffe have pioneered a
poststructuralist-inspired post-Marxism with which I have sympathy, though I now
have even less use for the notion of ideology or orthodox Marxism than they do. This
is a relatively straightforward Birmingham-inspired inter-subjective trajectory and one
that is reflected in the construction of this dictionary. However, I shall claim with irony
a small blow for my individuality by pointing to a departure from the main trajectory
of cultural studies, that is, the influence of Richard Rorty and neo-pragmatism on my
thinking and through him to the work of Wittgenstein (who also appears in the work
of Mouffe for example).
Pragmatism shares its anti-foundationalism and anti-representationalism with the
poststructuralist thinking that is currently ascendant within cultural studies. However,
in contrast to poststructuralism, pragmatism combines these arguments with a
commitment to social reform. Pragmatism suggests that the struggle for social change
is a question of language/text and of material practice/policy action. Like cultural
studies, pragmatism attempts to render contingent that which appears ‘natural’ in
pursuit of a ‘better’ world. However, unlike the revolutionary rhetoric of many followers
of poststructuralism, pragmatism weds itself to the need for piecemeal practical political
change. In this sense, pragmatism has a ‘tragic’ view of life for it does not share the
utopian push of, say, Marxism. In contrast, it favours a trial and error experimentalism
that seeks after new ways of doing things that we can describe as ‘better’ when measured
against ‘our’ values. I would argue that for cultural studies those values are, or should
be, a modern–postmodern mix constituted by equality, liberty, solidarity, tolerance,
difference, diversity and justice.
Overall then, my own thinking hovers between post-Marxism and neo-pragmatism,
and an anonymous reviewer’s description of me as a ‘neo-Marxist turned postmodernist’
was not without foundation. For those who are interested, this mixture forms the core
of my book Making Sense of Cultural Studies: Central Problems and Critical Debates (Barker,
2002). This is not to say that other streams of cultural studies inspired, for example, by
hermeneutics, feminism and/or postcolonial theory are not important, they most
certainly are. I am merely trying to assist the reader in the deconstruction of any
apparent solidity in this dictionary by pointing to some of the influences that bore on
its formation.