Page 184 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

POWER

In sum, poststructuralism absorbs the argument of structuralism regarding the
relational character of language and the production of significance through
difference. However, poststructuralism rejects the idea of a stable structure of binary
pairs; rather, meaning is always deferred, in process and intertextual. 161
Poststructuralism abandons the search for origins, stable meaning, universal truth
and the ‘direction’ of history. Truth is not so much found as made and identities are
discursive constructions. That is, truth and identity are not fixed objects but are
regulated ways that we speak about the world or ourselves. Instead of the scientific
certainty of structuralism, poststructuralism offers us irony. That is, an awareness of
the contingent constructed character of our beliefs and understandings that lack
firm universal foundations.
Poststructuralism has become an extremely influential stance within cultural
studies. For example, the concept of ‘différance’ is at the heart of Hall’s important
conceptualization of identity as a discursive construction. Indeed, the post-
structuralist inspired ‘linguistic turn’ within cultural studies, including the
widespread adoption of the concept of discourse, is core to the anti-essentialism and
social constructionism that mark the field.
Links Anti-essentialism, différance, discourse, semiotics, structuralism, subject position

Power The concept of power is an important one within cultural studies, indeed a
concern for its mechanisms and consequences forms a central part of what makes
cultural studies the way that it is. Thus, for Bennett, cultural studies is ‘defined’, at
least in part, as an interdisciplinary field in which perspectives from different
disciplines can be selectively drawn on to examine the relations of culture and
power. Likewise, for Hall what marks out the pursuit of cultural studies from other
related disciplines is the connection that it seeks to make to matters of power and
cultural change. Hence the centrality of cultural politics to cultural studies, since
questions of power and politics go hand in hand; indeed they constitute and define
each other.
Cultural studies is centrally concerned with culture as constituted by the
meanings and representations that are generated by signifying mechanisms in
the context of human practices. The construction of representation is necessarily
a matter of power since any representation involves the selection and
organization of signs and meanings. For example, whether one describes a
particular armed person as a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘freedom fighter’ is the practice of
cultural power. Further, it is the organization of signs according to cultural
conventions within a particular context that regulates meaning. Regulation is by
definition a matter of power even though the apparent transparency of meaning
achieved through cultural habituation may conceal its practices. Indeed, the very
act of concealment and thus the naturalization of meaning is an expression of
power.
Many cultural studies writers have approached questions of power through the
concept of ideology, a term that refers to the organizing and justifying ideas that
groups of people hold about themselves and the world. Traditionally within cultural