parallax, 1999, vol. 5, no.

2, 3–16

Why Cultural Studies?

Lola Young

The Question ‘Why?’

Asking the question ‘why?’ is a fundamental part of cultural studies enquiry. The
‘why’ in the title of this paper is a double question: Ž rst, why has cultural studies
been constructed as a kind of ‘hate object’ in the academic world? And second,
importantly in a context of continued assaults on the subject, why choose to work
in the Ž eld? In order to address the issues raised by these questions, I will be
considering a number of problems that various commentators have raised about the
subject and suggest why I think cultural studies has provoked what have occasionally
been quite bitter attacks. I will then discuss in outline, some of the areas of socio-
cultural experiences to which cultural studies can make a serious contribution, before
oÚ ering some concluding remarks.

Trying to establish a workable deŽ nition of cultural studies as an academic discipline

immediately presents a real challenge to those involved in the study and teaching of
cultural studies because of the aversion to producing deŽ nitive responses to anything,
and because cultural studies has never entered wholeheartedly into the academic
world of discrete, hermetically sealed disciplines. An academic discipline is
conventionally deŽ ned as such by three criteria, summed up as: ‘the object of study...
the basic assumptions which underpin the method(s) of approach to the object of
study... the history of the discipline itself’.1

So is cultural studies a discipline? This question comes up in several articles in one

form or another. One ground-clearing response to this question is that cultural studies
never aspired to be a discipline in the traditional sense in the Ž rst place. Indeed the
interdisciplinary nature of cultural studies, which results in appropriating whatever
methods and insights are able to facilitate its analytical enquiry, is noted both as a
strength and a challenge.

The  uidity inherent in the term ‘cultural studies’, and the subsequent, seemingly
inŽ nite variations on the way in which the subject may be conceptualized
appropriated and packaged by other disciplines results in a desire for the boundaries
of the subject to be policed but that is not really part of the ethos of the subject.
Instead there is ample space for self-re ection on the problems and issues to address
– within the subject itself, and within the way it is taught – for productive, critical
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 dialogue. It was originally a radical, political project – associated with the late 1960s
and 1970s but in existence in a variety of forms before then – a project which sought
to resist institutionalization, even whilst courting it.2 ‘Antidisciplinary’, ‘trans-
disciplinary’, ‘interdisciplinary’ and ‘post-disciplinary’ have all been used by those
involved in the subject to describe its academic status. The arguments about
disciplinarity and cultural studies – and you’ll note that I refer to cultural studies as
a subject, a Ž eld of enquiry with particular concerns – have been well-rehearsed
elsewhere and I am not going to dwell on matters of method and historiography
here.3 However, I would like to make some observations regarding the vexed question
of what the ‘culture’ in cultural studies is.

Here the problem of deŽ nition is particularly acute: we may recall that this elusive
term ‘culture’ was dubbed by Raymond Williams ‘one of the two or three most
diÝ cult words in the English language’.4 How then do we proceed to deŽ ne the
parameters of a subject which takes this concept of culture as its object of study?

It is instructive to look back at what Williams wrote regarding the necessity for
considering developments in the range of meanings associated not only with culture,
but also the related areas of society and economics, since they too are part of this
discussion about what should be the proper concern of cultural studies. Williams
emphasises that each of these terms is relatively new but that signiŽ cant shifts in
meaning have occurred: thus,

‘Society’ was active fellowship, company, ‘common doing’, before it

became the description of a general system or order. ‘Economy’ was
the management of a household and then the management of a
community before it became the description of a perceived system of
production, distribution, and exchange. ‘Culture’ before these
transitions, was the growth and tending of crops and animals, and by
extension the growth and tending of human faculties. In their modern
development... each, at a critical point, was aÚ ected by the movement
of the others.5

Williams argues that there are certain advantages in the open-ended nature of
‘culture’ as opposed to the limitations imposed by ‘society’ and ‘economy’, but there
are, of course, inherent diÝ culties because of that characteristic  exibility and these
are implicit both in the critiques of cultural studies and in this essay: indeed the
associated problems are tightly woven into the fabric of the arguments presented by
all sides.

Over time then, this term ‘culture’ has gathered meanings in addition to referring
to what people grow – culture is what people of a certain class, with class pay to
enjoy: the ‘high’ arts of classical music, opera, ballet and Ž ne art. But there is also
culture understood as a ‘whole way of other peoples’ lives’: peoples from the distant
lands of the former Empire, the apparently blank spaces on the map of the world.
Then again – starting from when some of those ‘other’ peoples came to settle here
– multiculturalism teaches that ‘culture’ is an attribute of those others from elsewhere:
for some, this kind of culture is especially alien and threatening, for others, interest
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in it goes no further than the development of a taste for the ‘exotic’; others still
embrace these transformations that have taken place in British society, even whilst
they grapple with the complexities and implications of the profound social and
demographic shifts that have occurred as a result. Meanwhile, the concept of culture
as an appropriate object of study which includes the description and analysis of
working class cultures, of popular culture, of mass disseminated culture, has gained
credibility amongst a substantial number of educationalists and academics. Cultural
studies then, encounters problems as soon as an attempt is made to mark the
parameters of what may be studied. Added to the way in which the subject is
characterized by theoretical eclecticism, a rich, but unorthodox historical
provenance, and the rapid proliferation of diverse courses, texts and conferences, it
is no wonder that cultural studies is Ž gured as a challenge to academic
conventionalism.

There is an idealism inherent in cultural studies as a political project which has been
acknowledged 6 and which still provokes criticism: perhaps the subject’s early
practitioners initial ambitions were too great. And certainly the utopian tendency
should not mask the problems embedded in the assertions of ‘marginality’ and
‘disciplinary transgression’ which recur in historical accounts of the cultural studies
project: the conservatism of the academy militates against sustained, radical change.
It is an illusion to believe that cultural studies could ever become something other
than institutionalized once it set foot inside an institution: there is little scope for
transgression or operating outside of disciplining structures and practices in most
universities.

In spite of being viliŽ ed along with media studies, amongst others, as being a ‘Mickey
Mouse’ subject, cultural studies has nonetheless been popular with students and
widely in uential. Over the last ten or so years, ideas and analyses which are now
Ž rmly embedded in media discourses have increasingly come to resemble closely the
kind of cultural textual analysis that has been nurtured through cultural studies. It
is somewhat ironic then that there have been repeated attacks on the subject in the
media ( The Daily Mail, The Observer, The Guardian, The Times Higher Education Supplement,
The New Statesman, and Radio 4’s Start the Week [tx 2/3/98]). It is also the case that
critical and theoretical paradigms derived from, and in uenced by cultural studies,
have seeped into the study of a wide range of disciplines: History, English Literature,
Geography, Sociology and so on. I am not suggesting that cultural studies was solely
or even primarily responsible for the changes in thinking suggested here: it has been,
however, a key element in the movement of disciplinary boundaries, and is
symptomatic of wider shifts in political and intellectual sensibilities. Before I discuss
those shifts in more detail, I want to consider some of the areas in which cultural
studies has been found to be lacking.

What is the Problem?

So what are the problems with cultural studies? It is criticized by those – broadly
speaking on the right – for bringing political issues of ‘race’ of gender, of class and
of sexuality – into the Arts and Humanities in particular: it is characterized as a
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 refuge for black people, gay people, women and other self-named oppressed groups
who whine about their victimhood, even whilst they celebrate it. Black Studies,
Women’s Studies, Irish Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies and Cultural Studies are
all put into the same category and consigned to the dustbin labelled ‘politically
correct’. However, others – often from a left-of-centre political tradition – claim that
the main problem with cultural studies is that it has no identiŽ able, deŽ nable politics.
It is also accused of cultural relativism which apparently renders its practitioners (a
sub-species, according to the co-editors of one collection of academic essays on the
subject7 ), unable to distinguish between EastEnders and Shakespeare, or LL Cool
J and Beethoven. Some critics complain that theory has disappeared from cultural
studies whilst others still focus on the language of the subject which is regarded as
elitist, opaque and inappropriately abstract, others still mourn what is perceived as
the abandonment of a highly abstracted theory.

This rich mix of sometimes contradictory accusations cannot simply be dismissed:

in some respects it makes for a fascinating cultural studies case study in itself. How
many other academic subjects or disciplines have been subjected to such attention
and scrutiny? What other area of study in a university has had so much demanded
of it by so many diverse people? It is as if cultural studies’ resistance to being a
traditional discipline turns it into a blank screen onto which various prejudices and
anxieties about, and preoccupations with a whole range of problems have been
projected. Some of these anxieties have been generated by the very much transformed
university sector, and some have taken place in the broader social and political world.

The aim in this section is to address some of these areas of discontent. I should note
here that the points of contention to which I have just referred are important but I
do not wish to spend my time going through in great detail each individual issue:
rather, my intention is to indicate the anxiety latent in some of these criticisms. I
am arguing that the problems which some commentators have voiced are not actually
solely about ‘cultural studies’ but about much larger issues, which are a little less
easy to grasp and tackle. One of the reasons for not presenting a detailed rebuttal
from, as it were, a ‘cultural studies’ perspective is that these matters have been and
are continually being addressed by academics in the Ž eld: in fact that is another
criticism, of course, that too much time is spent discussing the Ž ner points of what
cultural studies is, should or might be.8

Politics/Power

A repeated criticism of all things ‘post-modern’ – a theoretical turn closely associated

with cultural studies – is that ‘real politics’ have been reduced to cultural politics, and
the politics of representation, and that cultural production and analysis has been
depoliticized through the lack of engagement with economic processes: this is a
complicated set of questions to address but I will try and tease out the main features.

It is alleged that analyses of culture have deteriorated into celebrations regarding

the consumer’s desire/pleasure and their power to subvert dominant discourses in
television, in clothing and style, cinema and cyberspace. In a number of the
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discussions generated by academics not involved in the subject, it is this aspect of
cultural studies which attracts much criticism 9 and yet this area of work is not
considered to be exemplary cultural studies by many of those active in the Ž eld:
indeed, there has been much criticism within the subject of overly eulogistic accounts
of popular cultural consumption. For example, Richard Johnson, former Head of
Cultural Studies at Birmingham University clearly locates the need for political
engagement and what that entails:

we have to Ž ght against the disconnection that occurs when cultural

studies is inhabited for merely academic purposes or when enthusiasm
for (say) popular cultural forms is divorced from the analysis of power
and of social responsibility.10

And the need for political engagement is widely acknowledged. It is not the intention
that cultural studies be divorced from the political realities of ‘everyday’ life, or
‘whole ways of life’ as related to popular cultural forms, and still, at the centre of
cultural studies is the desire to make a diÚ erence in the academy and outside of it,
that goes beyond liberal-humanist concepts of ‘knowledge for knowledge’s sake’.
Tony Bennett is explicit about that aspect of cultural studies’ aspirations,

The ambition of cultural studies is to develop ways of theorizing

relations of culture and power that will prove capable of being utilized
by relevant social agents to bring about changes within the operation
of those relations.1 1

However, for some commentators, all this talk of culture and power is empty and I
want to explore several comments by Frederic Jameson in his essay on the now
canonical text Cultural Studies. Jameson argues that ‘power’ as a concept is overused,
and its deployment is dependent on a rather crude understanding and analysis of
the ways in which structures of dominance operate, resulting in what he calls the
‘narcissistic intoxications of its knee-jerk invocation’.1 2 Harsh words. And here again,
those who struggle with these concerns are placed in a diÝ cult position. If cultural
studies were to lay claim to pursuing all the possible conŽ gurations and vectors of
power and privilege embedded in ‘culture’, then it would stand accused of
‘epistemological imperialism’.1 3

The problem being articulated here is not, however, just a question of political
engagement, rather it is a matter of a particular conceptualization of ‘politics’ and
what constitutes acceptable political aÝ liation. Along with several other critics, 1 4
Jameson’s problem with cultural studies – although he makes several diversions on
the route to presenting this problem – is Ž nally connected to its perceived rejection
of Marxist/economic analysis as the subject has developed. It is claimed that this is
a fatal break with its origins even though it is clear from accounts written by Stuart
Hall and Raymond Williams, that there was never an easy, taken-for-granted Ž t
between Marxism and cultural studies: assertions that there was a greater political
clarity in some ‘golden age’ of cultural studies is a misreading of the subject’s genesis
and various political trajectories. The subject’s evolution was much less tidy, more
diverse than such a mythical teleology suggests.
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 In a consideration of the question of the appropriate political formation within which
cultural studies should organize, Bennett proposes a less Ž xed, less deterministic
approach to the study of cultural formations which goes against accepted axioms of
historical materialism,

the stress here is on contingency, on the forms of social life and conduct
that result from the interaction of multiple historical conditions and
forces, without the form of their interaction being subject to any
general form of determination, and therefore explanation, arising from
the eÚ ects of an underlying causal mechanism – be it that of a mode
of production, the principles of structural causality, patriarchy or, for
that matter, the putative unity of culture as a whole way of life.1 5

Jameson’s views on the relation between cultural studies and the politics of power
are unequivocal but his approach to another disputed area within cultural studies –
cultural identities and identiŽ cation – is much more ambivalent. It is to this area of
debate that I will now turn.

The in uence of post-modern and post-structuralist theories of identity formation,

and subjectivity has been widespread and generated much useful discussion of the
lack of Ž xity of subject positions, pointing to individual and group abilities to adopt
multiple, contradictory points of identiŽ cation. Although I would want to contest the
ease with which the notion of hybridity has entered cultural studies discourses on
‘race’ and ethnicity, and the relative lack of interrogation to which it has been
subjected, the very metaphor does seem to be indicative of a certain contemporary
condition. The unsettling cluster of ideas invoked by hybridity connects with a general
sense of loss – the loss of certainty, the loss of Ž xed points by which to navigate the
bumpy terrain of diÚ erence – and the undermining of carefully delineated categories,
the breaches in walled, heavily policed boundaries.

Of course, the suggestion that the ideas to which we try and cling so tightly such as
‘purity’, ‘nature’ and ‘authenticity’ are socially produced constructs, coupled with
the embrace of  uidity and the rejection of Ž xity and cultural stasis is precisely what
drives some commentators wild! It is therefore, not surprising that on this matter,
Jameson’s essay reads as an uneasy account of his diÝ culties in aligning himself with
a project which he sees as ‘not terribly receptive to unmixed identities as such, but
seems, on the contrary, to welcome the celebration... of the mixed.’ 1 6 The issue that
elicited this comment is the omission – in the book Cultural Studies – of contributions
from scholars associated with groups such as Afro-centrists, black nationalists and
separatist feminists in the collection of essays derived from the Cultural Studies
conference at the University of Illinois. 1 7

It is due in part to the diÝ culties of negotiating what is perceived as their diÚ erence
– a ‘diÚ erence’ reinscribed by Jameson – that Afro-centrists and radical feminists
separate oÚ into what appear to Jameson to be homogeneous groups with apparently
‘unmixed identities’. This act of splitting oÚ may be seen as a disavowal of intra-
group diÚ erence, a denial of the contradictions of multiple identiŽ cations: and in
some respects denial is at the heart of this section of Jameson’s critique. He appears
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to have no analytic framework for considering his own implication in the paradigm
he has constructed. I raise this because this palpable uneasiness is an undercurrent
elsewhere in critiques of cultural studies particularly in Britain. It emerges in a rather
diÚ erent form in Golding’s and Ferguson’s essay (1997) which oÚ ers a vitriolic
commentary on the alleged shortcomings of cultural studies. Particularly notable is
the use of racialized metaphors such as ‘hot-gospellers’, ‘diaspora’ and ‘sub-species’
to refer to those working in the subject area. In this country the whole discourse
around ‘race’ and ethnicity, in terms of professional relations with both colleagues
and students, is highly circumscribed within our universities.

Since the 1970s, in both Britain and the USA, there has been a concerted eÚ ort to
insert feminist and black analyses and experiences into cultural studies. Paul Gilroy
makes an important point about the strands of romantic nationalism in writers such
as E. P. Thomson, Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart, whose work is
considered foundational to cultural studies, and he argues that ‘locating and
answering the nationalism, if not the racism and ethnocentrism, of English cultural
studies becomes a directly political issue.’18 I have argued elsewhere that cogent
analyses of the operations of racism seem to have slipped down the agenda in much
of what is known as post-colonial theory and discourse, and in some cultural studies,
and that more multifaceted studies of the complex interactions of various
manifestations of power, privilege and discrimination are needed. This kind of
multiply in ected analysis is not something which should be the exclusive preserve
of those who appear on that by now familiar list of ‘others’, so-called ethnic minorities,
people with disabilities, women and so on. External commentators from the press
may caricature cultural studies as ‘victim’ studies but they should note that the
struggle to get the subject to take account of gender, ‘race’, sexuality and class has
not been easy and is not over by any means. An added problem for black cultural
studies academics, scholars and intellectuals is that they are especially vulnerable to
criticism in these debates about what constitutes political action. Attacks on the ‘petit-
bourgeois intellectual’ have a particular resonance for black academics working in
the cultural sphere: in addition to accusations of not privileging the needs of those
with less social, Ž nancial and cultural capital, there are the suggestions of ‘betraying
the ‘‘race’’ ’ by not working in a ‘frontline’ discipline clearly connected to a particular
black/class politics (one African American academic notes how black intellectuals
and academics are called upon to explain why we are not athletes, singers or
dope-heads).

Two Ž nal points here. First theory and students. General laments about the alleged
demise of ‘theory’, which is said to have been supplanted by cultural studies is, I
think, related to the notion of the educator as expert. It is noteworthy that much of
the criticism directed against cultural studies from within the academy largely ignores
the question of where students Ž t into these debates regarding its alleged deŽ ciencies.
Indeed as has been noted elsewhere, scant attention has been paid to the practice
of teaching and students in many disciplines in higher education altogether in the
past.19 We now have students (and lecturers) entering the academy from diÚ erent
access points and their experiences, concerns and interests may diÚ er considerably
from many of our colleagues. It is right and proper that – in the same way that other
subjects ought to be constantly re-evaluating what it is that they oÚ er their students
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 – cultural studies engages with the issues which arise from greater access to Higher
Education. Henry A. Giroux argues that cultural studies can be a means of exposing
‘how education generates a privileged narrative space for some students and a space
that fosters inequality and subordination for others.’ 2 0 If the cultural studies teacher
represents anything then she or he should exemplify an attempt to resist the role of
transparent mediator of knowledge and information. In any case, we need to be
wary of being seduced by the apparent authority wielded by the rhetorical  ourishes
of post-structuralist deconstructionism. Current cultural studies has developed
alongside radical reformulations of language which have encouraged us to demystify
the workings of discourse: how then could we simply leave the place of theory and
abstraction unquestioned?

The Ž nal point in this section concerns claims that cultural studies has avoided
questions of discrimination which are, it is argued, key to cultural analysis. This
matter of relativism is a diÝ cult one because so much is at stake in passing judgement,
in ‘discriminating’. I argue for a strategic relativism as an antidote to the arrogance
of those who claim to be able to evaluate objectively what constitutes valid social,
cultural, scientiŽ c and religious expression. Cultural studies is perceived to have been
in the forefront of, and aligned itself with, various movements which have sought to
problematize, decentre and destabilize the authority of Euro- and andro-centric
norms and values. Those who have built their public reputations as intellectuals on
their claim to being the arbiters of taste and quality – having learnt not to problematize
their privilege and power but to naturalize their positions and universalize their
judgements – of course they do not then want to be told their newspaper columns,
their radio and television programmes, are based on a narrow, self-serving world-
view which seeks to maintain the boundaries of acceptable taste and practice.

This brief exposition has indicated that cultural studies is hard to pin down in many
respects, and that the refusal of Ž xity is embedded in it. There are divisions which
make it hard to generalize about the subject area, some of which are evident in other
subjects for that matter. This raises a number of questions about the nature of the
case against cultural studies. Are those other subjects and disciplines castigated in
similar terms for their lacks, and banalities? Are those critics within the academy,
and in opposition to cultural studies on the grounds of its perceived lack of ‘politics’
sure that they are accountable in their teaching and scholarly work with regard to
the ways in which they respond to the predicaments which their students and
readership face?

Some claims made about cultural studies seem rather extravagant and diÝ cult to
prove: claims, for example, that it is responsible for dissipating political energy, and
concentrating ‘only’ on the politics of cultural practices. It is clear from these critiques
that there are competing deŽ nitions of what constitutes the political, and what the
subject area’s relationship with speciŽ c kinds of organized politics ought to be. What
is important is that however diverse it is, the practice of cultural studies requires a
certain kind of commitment, since, as Stuart Hall puts it, ‘there is something at stake
in cultural studies, in a way that I think, and hope, is not exactly true of many other
very important intellectual and critical practices’.21
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 Hard questions, difŽcult answers

Does the distaste for the subject express something other than a fear that academic
work is being ‘depoliticized’, ‘dumbed down’, or made ‘politically correct’? ‘Real’
disciplines are perceived as hard work, as distinct from the soft/easy job of watching
endless episodes of EastEnders that in its caricatured versions, cultural studies entails.
Perhaps the lament of a drift towards the study of popular culture (as epitomised by
the study of the pleasures of soap operas), is part of a fear about the feminisation of
intellectual work. The study of ‘culture’, especially that concerned with critical
enquiry into forms of mass media, autobiography, identity and belonging, the texture
of everyday experience, is considered ‘soft’, and less susceptible to quantiŽ cation.
Cultural studies engages with the ‘low’, interrogating established patterns of ‘race’,
gender and class privilege. ‘Real’ disciplines, on the other hand, concentrate on facts,
Ž gures and the fantasy of unmediated objective knowledge. Clearly, attempting to
grapple with the imprecise nature of the soft underbelly of social and cultural
experiences, the sometimes unpleasant, untidy, ‘unlovely’ aspects of a problem or
idea or deeply held belief about the individual and group self does not always make
for comfortable reading.2 2

To contextualize the attacks on cultural studies, particularly those in the press, it is

worth considering brie y the backdrop against which such critiques have been
formed. First, the process of the erosion of familiar divisions between left and right
politics have been intensiŽ ed over recent years: a problem that cultural studies has
is in trying to manouevre its way through the signiŽ cantly changed (and continually
changing), and highly contested political reconŽ gurations of contemporary life.

Another key change to which I have already referred is the arrival of black settlers
from the Caribbean, Africa and Asia from the 1940s to the 1970s: this presence has
had a signiŽ cant impact on the self perceptions of white Britons, and also on the
shaping of cultural studies: as Paul Gilroy observes, ‘The entry of blacks into national
life is itself a powerful factor in the formation of cultural studies’.2 3 Shifts in the
notion of British ‘cultural identity’ have been eÚ ected through other, major
transformations external and internal to Britain. I am thinking here of the reluctant
engagement with the rest of Europe through the European common market as was
(now community); the change in the balance of power and cultural authority between
the USA and Britain/Europe; decolonization and the ensuing sense of loss of the
former empire and its apparent certainties; the development of national mass media
and its subsequent supra-national globalization. The emergence of cultural studies
is part of that context.

The period during which these transformations have taken place has not been easy
for anyone, and at least some of the anxieties expressed in relation to cultural studies
– as indicated earlier – are related to the fear that an emphasis on cultural diÚ erences
has undermined political solidarity. Cultural studies is charged with preventing the
development of ‘political solidarities beyond the particularisms of cultural
diÚ erence’.24 But the broadly anti-ethnicist, anti-essentialist work of diaspora
intellectuals such as Paul Gilroy, Kobena Mercer, Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Henry
Louis Gates Jr and Cornel West (all associated with cultural studies) has consistently
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 advocated political alliances across the boundaries constructed out of discourses of
diÚ erence, and opposed the crassness of identity politics, whilst trying to articulate
and negotiate the experiences and impact of racism, class oppression, sexism and
homophobia. The point is that there are diÝ culties and contradictions which are
hard to reconcile with certain forms of political analysis, and these problems account
for – to some extent – the  ight from socialist/marxian economistic, class-based
analyses. Cornel West notes that in North America, ‘Class is still around, even though
it has been unable to constitute an identity that has the saliency and potency of other
identities’.25 In England class has had, in the past, the appearance of potency as a
central experience around which to organize: perhaps some of the anger generated
by cultural studies is due in part to its laying bare the fragility of that formation
especially as it relates to issues of gender, sexual and racial/ethnic diÚ erence. The
foregrounding of these aspects of experience should not be seen as anomalous to
cultural studies’ development: rather, they represent an invigorating presence,
encouraging a more active understanding of the complexities of subjectivity and
social engagement as constituted in and through colonial, post-colonial and neo-
colonial relations.

What Can Cultural Studies Do?

Studying Black British Expressive Cultures

Ongoing work on black British cultural production and diasporic or black Atlantic
conŽ gurations has been productively located within cultural studies. A condensed
history of developments in the sphere of black cultural production and consumption
points to a very rich mix, a cross-fertilization between the cultural politics of black
Ž lm, photography, Ž ne art and the political activism of gay groups, black feminism
and articulations of diaspora consciousness. The importance of this critical work in
the cultural sphere is that deeply held assumptions about nationhood, national
identity and the notion of a singular national culture were radically and productively
interrogated. More work is needed though, on black-focussed ideologies and texts
that do not necessarily accord with anti-essentialist, hybrid perspectives on culture.

Whilst cultural studies does not only concern itself with textuality, we should note
how, black people in particular believe in the power of the text to shape the ways
in which we are perceived and treated. Although many academics do not see
representation as a site of struggle key to identity formation, media depictions of
black issues and celebrities arouse great passions. Whether we think about the familiar
images of Jamaicans landing at Tilbury Docks 50 years ago; the reporting of the
Black People’s Day of Action in 1981 regarding the death of 13 black teenagers in
New Cross and of disturbances in Brixton, Toxteth, Southall and Tottenham; the
protests about the way in which the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery is marketed as a
recuperative exercise in Spielberg’s Ž lm Amistad, and the controversy sparked by
Tarrantino’s use of the blaxploitation genre in Jackie Brown; all the heated discussions
which occur in classrooms, in bars, and in the press, radio and television should alert
us to the continued signiŽ cance of the politics of representation in terms of shaping
the ways in which we think about the racialized conŽ guration of contemporary
Britain.
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Scrutiny of the work in cultural studies that has engaged with black expressive
cultures, reveals that a signiŽ cant number of writers and academics write from within
the sector: criticism and analysis is generated by artists themselves, often in
conjunction with theorists. Another important factor here is the extent to which
black academics are actively involved in the production of culture through trying to
improve the context in which black artists work by serving on boards of trustees,
advisory panels, and lobbying funding bodies. Organizations such as the Black Film
Bulletin, Autograph (the association of black photographers), the African Dawn and
inIVA (Institute of International of Visual Arts) are all too keenly aware of how the
politics of ‘race’ and the politics of representation, and politics per se are inextricably
intertwined.

Cultural Policy, Students and Work

The point about interconnections between work outside the academy and work
within it is related to the next area I want to address. The task of describing, analysing
and demystifying the operations of powerful organizations and institutions,
particularly those responsible for allocating large sums of money to the creative and
cultural sector in Britain and in mainland Europe is one in which cultural studies
could be more actively involved. Analysis of surveys, statistics and other data
regarding the distribution of Ž nancial support, together with the analysis of policy,
structural and organizational aspects of those bodies, is carried out on an ad hoc basis
by consultants (some of whom are located in universities) but these are often produced
for the organization with all the constraints that entails. Decoding that information,
much of which is in the public domain would be of service to a number of
constituencies lobbying for change.

Some colleagues – particularly those based at more traditional establishments – Ž nd

the suggestion that cultural studies academics should become involved with those
who work in the media, in government oÝ ces, in the legal profession, derisory, and
‘chilling’,26 but the days when academics felt it was desirable to be detached from
the grubby world of work, commerce, and the operations of the state are rapidly
passing thankfully.2 7 Decisions made by the London Arts Board, the various Lottery
Funds, the Arts Council of England, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport,
the government’s Task Group on the Creative and Cultural Industries, the European
Community and so on, indicate the breadth and scope of the shifts in the way in
which culture as an idea has changed and developed and the implications with regard
to the distribution of resources.

Given our location in academic institutions, working with students, we have to

consider more carefully the relationship between what we teach, how we teach it
and what it is we are equipping students to think and to do: we must not lose sight
in doing so of the critical edge that cultural studies has, but we cannot ignore or be
disdainful about students’ aspirations. Raymond Williams felt that cultural studies
had a key role to play in work experience in post-16 education; indeed he saw it as
the ‘future of cultural studies’ for post-16 Further Education.2 8 Cultural studies has
to participate in these developments through initiating debates, forming alliances
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13
 publicising problems and so on, as well as assisting those who aspire to work in that
sector to understand the critical roles they could play as agents of change.

Culture and Science

The remaining area to raise (very brie y here) is that of science and technology.
How can we begin to get to grips with the signiŽ cance and impact of the changes
in the applications of science which have taken place over the last 20 years or so?

Cultural studies has a part to play in the social education of scientists which is
gradually being seen as an imperative by some members of the scientiŽ c community.
However, not every scientist greets such developments with open arms: the reactions
to a growth in sociological analyses and critiques of science from some scientists in
the USA and to some extent in Britain, demonstrates how high the stakes are when
science is subjected to the scrutiny usually reserved for ‘culture’ and its foundational
precepts declared to be socially constructed. Much of the kind of work which our
students are likely to do (and which touches on all our lives), is structured around
new technologies and scientiŽ c developments. Therefore, even though we may have
‘art’ and ‘culture’ as our primary foci, as we discuss these matters, it is virtually
impossible to avoid considering the politics of scientiŽ c enquiry and its impact on
all communities.

The aim of raising these areas is not to prescribe: some of this work is already being
carried out and other, important areas will emerge but I do see these as particularly
pressing issues with which to engage more actively.

And Žnally...

The diÝ culty in deŽ ning what cultural studies is, or what it might be, or what it
aims to do means that all kinds of practices sneak in under that heading: some work
is weak and badly focussed, but this is not a problem exclusive to cultural studies.
The desire to remain a broad,  uid, responsive subject area, with a degree of political
engagement exists in tension with a desire to have a rather more tightly policed
discipline, the boundaries of which are vigorously monitored and maintained.
Cultural studies can be annoying because it blurs the distinctions of binary oppositions
in a way which can undermine the certainties and deeply held beliefs which people
have (even though these are often denied) and renders the underpinnings of such
beliefs more visible. It moves us away from what has been characterised as the ‘glacial
disengagement’ of the apparently disinterested academic.29

The uneasiness occasioned by the calling into question of the legitimacy of

established, traditional loci of power and authority within the academy is hard to
overestimate. The whole question of ‘the canon’, of what constitutes good taste and
of who has the right to intervene in these issues has been much troubled by studies
of the multiple meanings generated by audiences for mass-disseminated culture, by
feminism, by queer theory, by the insistence on the place of self-determined
Young
14
contributions from black people. In Britain there is a diÝ culty with thinking about
what an intellectual is: certainly, it seems that it is particularly disturbing to accept
that someone might be one on the basis of writing, thinking and scholarship on these
despised constituents of society.

Particularly important for me, is that cultural studies maintains a connection with
those people working on similar concerns outside the academy: this is key to its
vitality and its integrity in both senses of the word. Also important is cultural studies’
refusal to oÚ er quick remedies. Public debate and argument about what popular
culture is, what it should be and what it does is a major component of discourses on
morality, pleasure, state intervention and education. The best of cultural studies can
make a signiŽ cant contribution to our understanding of the complexities of
contemporary life through the historically situated analysis of power relations: it has
to engage with identity, textuality and representation, to quote Stuart Hall ‘as a site
of life and death’.3 0 Such practice locates the subject not as a luxury or as something
frivolous but as a necessary and vital Ž eld of enquiry. The tasks implied in the ‘doing’
of cultural studies are not peripheral to an understanding of the politics of power
and inequity of the societies in which we live, but an absolutely central part of it.

Notes

1
J. Storey, ‘Cultural Studies: An Introduction’ in
J. Storey, ed., What is Cultural Studies? A Reader
(London: Arnold, 1996), p.1.
2
S. Hall, ‘Cultural Studies and its Theoretical
Legacies’ in Grossberg et al, eds., Cultural Studies
(London and New York: Routledge, 1992); S. Hall,
‘Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking
Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies’, in
J. Storey, ed., What is Cultural Studies? A Reader,
pp.336-343; R. Williams, ‘The Future of Cultural
Studies’ in What is Cultural Studies?, pp.168-177.
3
Grossberg et al, 1992; Storey, 1996; and
J. McGuigan, ed., Cultural Methodologies, (London:
Sage, 1997).
4 11
R. Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and
Society (London: Fontana, 1988).
5
R. Williams, Marxism and Literature, (Oxford:
OUP, 1985), p.11.
6
See for example, McNeil, 1997 and Chicago
Cultural Studies Group, ‘Critical Multiculturalism’,
in D. T. Goldberg, ed., Multiculturalism: A Critical
Reader (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), pp.114-140.
7 14
See P. Golding and M. Ferguson, ‘Cultural
Studies and Changing Times: An Introduction’, in
Ferguson and Golding, eds., Cultural Studies in
Question (London: Sage,1997), p.xiv.
8
It is interesting to note here the strategy of one
of the more recent and, it has to be said, least
constructive, academic attacks on cultural studies.
The editors of Cultural Studies in Question (Golding
and Ferguson, 1997) incorporate a number of
quotations and references to support their
contemptuous analysis of the subject: curiously,
most of those cited are themselves committed to a
critical engagement with the project of cultural
studies.
9
L. Berlant and M. Warner, ‘Introduction to
‘‘Critical Multiculturalism’’ ’, in D. T. Goldberg,
ed., Multiculturalism ; Golding and Ferguson, 1997;
F. Mulhern, ‘The Politics of Cultural Studies’, in
E. Meiskins Wood and J. Bellamy Foster, eds., In
Defence of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998).
10
R. Johnson, ‘What is Cultural Studies Anyway?’,
in J. Storey, ed., What is Cultural Studies?, p.79.
T. Bennett, ‘Toward a Pragmatics for Cultural
Studies’, in J. McGuigan, ed., Cultural
Methodologies , p.52.
12
F. Jameson, ‘On Cultural Studies’, in Rajchman,
ed., The Identity in Question (London and New
York: Routledge, 1995), p.286.
13
J. Butler, Bodies that Matter, (New York and
London: Routledge, 1993).
See, for example, A. Sivnandan, ‘All that Melts
into Air is Solid’, in Communities of Resistance: Writings
on Black Studies for Socialism (London: Verso, 1990),
pp.19-59; Golding and Ferguson, 1997; Mulhern,
1998.
15
Bennett, 1997; p.53.
16
Jameson, 1995; p.263.
17
Grossberg et al, eds., Cultural Studies (London and
New York: Routledge, 1992). It is not clear which

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15
 other disciplines have welcomed such ideologies
with open arms elsewhere in the academy. Perhaps
more importantly, it is questionable as to whether
those groups would wish to be represented at such
a gathering so closely associated with the ‘ uidity’
and ‘impurity’ that Jameson describes.
18
P. Gilroy, ‘Cultural Studies and Ethnic
Absolutism’; p.190.
19
J. E. Canaan and D. Epstein, ‘Questions of
discipline/Disciplining Cultural Studies’ in Canaan
and Epstein, eds., A Question of Discipline: Pedagogy,
Power, and the Teaching of Cultural Studies (Colorado
and Oxford: Boulder, 1997), pp.1-10.
20
H. A. Giroux, ‘Doing Cultural Studies in
Colleges of Education’, in Canaan and Epstein,
eds., A Question of Discipline, p.28.
21
S. Hall, ‘Cultural Studies and its Theoretical
Legacies’, Cultural Studies, p.278.
22
This term appeared in an article mainly devoted
to denouncing Irish Studies but also managing to
accommodate Media, Women’s and Postcolonial
Studies. The author states: ‘there is something
unlovely about young people seeking academic
degrees in how the world has done them wrong.
Irish studies are particularly popular in the new
Lola Young is Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. Currently
Chair of the judging panel for the 1999 Orange Prize for Fiction, she has written
and broadcast widely on issues relating to ‘race’, gender and representation in Ž lm
and other cultural forms. Lola Young maintains an active involvement in the
production and criticism of black arts and culture.
Young
16
universities and in areas with large immigrant
populations. Not all Irish, by any means. Greek
Cypriots and West Indians are drawn to the subject
in signiŽ cant numbers. This is where the worry
comes in.’ B. Maddox, ‘A Fine Old Irish Stew’ in
New Statesman, 29 November 1996, pp.21-22.
23
P. Gilroy, ‘Cultural Studies and Ethnic
Absolutism’, Cultural Studies, p.190.
24
F. Mulhern, ‘The Politics of Cultural Studies’,
in E. Meiskins Wood and J. Bellamy Foster, eds.,
In Defence of History: Marxism and the Postmodern
Agenda (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998),
p.50.
25
C. West, ‘A Matter of Life and Death’, in
Rajchman, ed., The Identity in Question, p.18.
26
F. Jameson, ‘On Cultural Studies’, p.267.
27
How Jameson reconciles his position as an
employee in an ISA is not clariŽ ed. See Tony
Bennett’s robust response (1996).
28
Williams, 1996; 176. It should also be noted
that Williams had a long standing association with
what was then the Arts Council of Great Britain
(Williams, 1996).
29
Jameson, 1995; p.279.
30
Hall, 1992; p.285.