Page 177 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

Finally, post-industrial society theorists often seem to rely on forms of technological
determinism. That is, cultural changes are explained by prioritizing technology as the
motor of transformation without considering that the development and deployment
154 of technology must be understood within a social and economic context. Not only is
the very desire to develop technology cultural, but its deployment is dictated as much
by questions of profit and loss as by the technology per se.
Links Capitalism, class, disorganized capitalism, post-Fordism, postmodernity

Positionality The concept of positionality is used by cultural studies writers to indicate
that knowledge and ‘voice’ are always located within the vectors of time, space and
social power. Thus, the notion of positionality expresses epistemological concerns
regarding the who, where, when and why of speaking, judgement and
comprehension. That is, specific acculturated persons make truth-claims at an exact
and distinct time and place with particular reasons in mind. Consequently,
knowledge is not to be understood as a neutral or objective phenomenon but as a
social and cultural production since the ‘position’ from which knowledge is
enunciated will shape the very character of that knowledge.
The concept of positionality acknowledges that a correspondence theory of truth
is untenable. Correspondence theory claims that truth is to be understood as the
accurate mirroring of an independent object world by forms of representation.
However, this is not possible since there is no Archimedean place from where one
could independently verify the truth of a particular description of the world. That
is, there is no God-like vantage point from which to survey the world and forms of
representation separately in order to establish the relationship between them. This
is so because we cannot escape using representations when we try to establish such
a relationship.
It follows from this argument that we cannot ground or justify our actions and
beliefs by means of any universal truths. We can describe this or that discourse as
being more or less useful and as having more or less desirable consequences.
However, we cannot claim it to be true in the sense of correspondence with an
independent object world. This is why cultural studies writers commonly regard the
production of theoretical knowledge as a political practice-knowledge with
consequences – rather than as neutral and independent knowing.
These arguments turn our attention away from the search for universal truth and
towards justification as the giving of reasons. This reason-giving is a social practice
so that to justify a belief is to give reasons in the context of a tradition and a
community. Here, justification itself is a part of an ongoing ‘conversation’ of
humanity and however we characterize ‘truth’ we have no reliable source for it
other than our ongoing conversation with each other.

Links Epistemology, ethnocentrism, power/knowledge, representation, truth
Post-Marxism In a literal sense the idea of post-Marxism implies ‘after Marxism’ and
as such might suggest that cultural studies has abandoned all the concepts and ways
of thinking associated with Marxist theory. Indeed, the idea of post-Marxism does