Page 44 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL STUDIES (1964–1988)

ordinary people to lampoon the figures of authority associated with the church and
state. Thus, the carnivalesque involves a temporary reversal of the order of power
enacted through the rituals, games, mockeries and profanities in which the polite
is overthrown by the vulgar and the king up-ended by the fool. The carnival 21
introduces a topsy-turvy world of reversals of power and authority in tandem with
the pleasures of excessive eating, drinking and sexual activity that offend the
borders of polite decorum.
The contemporary use of the term carnivalesque is a metaphorical one that
connotes a form of resistance to power and authority from within popular culture.
The power of the carnivalesque does not lie in a simple reversal of social and
cultural distinctions but rather resides in the invasion of the high by the low that
is marked by the creation of ‘grotesque’ hybrid forms. Here the challenge is not
simply to the high by the low but to the arbitrary character of the very act of
cultural classification by power. This is a challenge attributed by Hall to the very
concept of the ‘popular’ that transgresses the boundaries of cultural power (for it is
of value though ‘officially’ classified as low). Thus, aspects of spectacular youth
cultures such as Punk could be seen as carnivalesque subversions of the order of
power.
Links Dialogic, popular culture, power, resistance, youth culture

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1964–1988) There is a difference
between the study of culture and an institutionally located ‘cultural studies’ that
named itself as such. Though that naming marks only a cut or snapshot of an ever-
evolving intellectual project, this moment was the work undertaken at the Centre
for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham (UK).
CCCS was founded in 1964 as a postgraduate centre initially under the directorship
of Richard Hoggart (1964–1968) and later Stuart Hall (1968–1979). It is during the
period of Hall’s Directorship that one can first speak of the formation of an
identifiable and distinct domain called cultural studies.
The initial focus of CCCS was on ‘lived’ culture, with an emphasis on class
cultures that chimed with the work of Hoggart and Raymond Williams. However,
this moment of ‘culturalism’ – formed from an amalgam of sociology and literary
criticism – was surpassed by the influence of structuralism, particularly as
articulated with Marxism. Here the decisive intellectual resources were drawn from
Barthes, Althusser and, most crucially, Gramsci. The key conceptual tools were
those of text, ideology and hegemony as explored through the notion of popular
culture as a site of both social control and resistance. The substantive topics of
research included the mass media, youth subcultures, education, gender, race and
the authoritarian state.
Since the moment of CCCS cultural studies has acquired a multitude of
institutional bases on a global scale. Further, the influence of poststructuralism has
eclipsed structuralist Marxism as the decisive theoretical paradigm. In 1988, CCCS
ceased being a postgraduate research centre and became a university department
that included undergraduate teaching before it too was closed in the 1990s.