Page 36 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

BAUDRILLARD, JEAN (1929– )

culture. As such it forms the basis of a perspective known as cultural materialism.
Broadly speaking, it is argued that the cultural superstructure is shaped and
determined by the economic base or mode of production. According to Marx, as
people produce the means of their material subsistence, so they enter into definite 13
forms of social relationship. Subsequently these relations of production constitute
the economic structure of society which itself constitutes the base on which cultural
and political superstructures arise. Thus, the mode of production of material life
determines the general character of the social, political and cultural processes of
living.
It is noteworthy that for Marx a mode of production is held to be ‘the real
foundation’ of legal and political superstructures and that it determines the social,
political and cultural. Thus, the economic mode of production or ‘base’ shapes the
cultural ‘superstructure’ so that, for Marxism, culture is the consequence of a
historically specific mode of production. As such it is not a neutral terrain because
the class-based relations of production express themselves as political and legal
relations. Here culture naturalizes the social order as an inevitable ‘fact’ so obscuring
the underlying relations of exploitation. Consequently, culture is understood to be
inherently the domain of ideology, a conceptualization that forms the basis of
cultural studies’ fascination with issues of ideology and hegemony as read through
Althusser, Gramsci and Hall.
Most thinkers in cultural studies have rejected the economic reductionism
implicit to the base and superstructure model. While the analysis of economic
determinants may be necessary to any understanding of culture it is not, and cannot
be, self-sufficient. Many thinkers from within cultural studies have argued that we
need to examine cultural phenomena in terms of their own rules, logics,
development and effectivity. This argument points to the desirability of a multi-
dimensional and multi-perspectival approach to the understanding of culture. This
methodology would seek to grasp the connections between economic, political,
social and cultural dimensions without reducing social phenomena to any one level.
Links Circuit of culture, cultural materialism, culture, hegemony, ideology, Marxism,
reductionism

Baudrillard, Jean (1929– ) The early influences upon French theorist Jean Baudrillard,
namely structuralism and Marxism, are also the prime targets of his core works
where he critiques their assumptions and develops his own theories of
postmodernism. Amongst Baudrillard’s key themes is the idea that the Marxist
distinction between use-value and exchange-value has collapsed in favour of the
exchange of signs. Thus, a commodity is not simply an object with use-value for
exchange but a commodity-sign. For Baudrillard, postmodern culture is
constituted through a continual flow of images that establishes no connotational
hierarchy but is one-dimensional and ‘superficial’. Baudrillard argues that a series
of modern distinctions, including the real and the unreal, the public and the
private, Art and reality, have broken down (or been sucked into a ‘black hole’ as he
calls it) leading to a culture of simulacrum and hyperreality.