1 Cultural studies:

two paradigms

r
fr
I

Stuart Hall
trn serious, critical intellectual work, there are no.absolute beginnings' and

fts

unbroken continuities....what we find, instead, is an untiJy but

unevenness of development. what is important
the
"r.older
significant breaks - where old lines of thoughr are disrupted,
cnnstelletislls displaced, and elements, old and new, are regrouped around a
diFerentsetofpremises and themes. .. . Such shifts in perspective reflect, not

furcteristic

onfy the results of an internal intellectual labour, but the manner in which real
historical developments and transformations are appropriated in thought, and
provide Thought, not with its guaiantee of 'correctress, but with its
fimdanental orientations, its conditions of existence. It is because of this
omplex articulation between thinking and historical realiry reflected in the
socialcategories of thoughtrandthecontinuousdialecticberween'knowledge,
od'poweri that the breaks are worth recording.
cuhural Studies, as a distinctive problematic, emerges from one such
moment, in the mid-1950s. rt was certainly not the first time that ire
cbaracrcristic questions had been put on the uble. euite the contrary. The two
books which helped to sake out the new terrain - Hoggart,s IJses of Liuracy
and williams\ Culturc and Society - were both, in different w?ys, works (in
part) of recovery. Hoggan's book took its reference from the'cultural debaiei
long susained in the arguments around 'mass society' and in the uadition of
work identilied with Leavis andscrutiny. Culture and. Societyreconstructed a
long tradition which Williams defined as consisting, in sum, of .a record ofa
number of important and continuing reactions to. . . changes in our social,
economic and political life' and offering 'a special kind of map by means of
which the nature of the changes can be explored'(williams, 1963, p. 16). The
bool$ looked, at firstrsimply like an updating of these earlierconcems, with
reference to the posr-war world. Retrospectively their .breaks' with the
Source: Media, Cuhure and Soclely, No. 2, lgBO, pp.5T-72.

20 Overview
traditions of thinking in which they were situated seems as important, if not
more so, than their continuity with them. The Uses of Literacy did set out much in the spirit of 'practical criticism' - to 'read' working class culture for
the values and meanings embodied in its pattems and arrangements : as ifthey
were certain kinds of 'textsl But the application of this method to a living
culture, and the reiection of the terms of the 'cultural debate' (polarized
around the higVlow culture distinction) was a thorough-going departure.
Culture and Society - in one and the same movement - constiftted a tradition

(rfu 'culture-and-sociery' uadition), defined its 'unity' (not in terms of

common positions but in its characteristic concems and the idiom of its

inquiry), itself made a distinctive modern contribution to it - and wrote its

epitapir. The Williams book which succeeded it - The Long Revolutiai'clearly indicated that the 'culture-and-society' mode of reflection could only
be completed and developed by moving somewhere else - to a significantly
different kind ofanalysis. The verydifficulty of some ofthe writing in Thc Long
Reaolution - with its attempt to 'theorize'on the back of a tradition resolutely
empirical and particularist in its idiom of thought . . . stems' in pan, from this
determination to. maue on. The 'good' and the 'bad' parts of TIE Long
Reaolutionboth arise from its status as a work 'of the breaki The same could be
said of E. P. Thompson's Making of the EnglishlVorkingClass, whichbelongs
decisively to this 'moment] even though, chronologically it appeared
somewhar later. It, too, had been 'thought' within certain distinctive historical
traditions : English marxist historiography, Economic and' Labour' History.
But in its foregrounding of the questions of culture, consciousness and
experience, and its accent on agency, it also made a decisive break: with a
certain kind of technological evolutionism, with a reductive economism, and
an organizational determinism. Between them, these three books constituted
the caesura out of which - among other things - 'Cultural Studies'emerged.
They were, of course, seminal and formative texts. They were not' however,
in any sense 'text-books' for the founding of a new academic sub-discipline
...Vhether historical or contemporary in focus, they were, themselves,
focused by organized *rough and constituted responses to, the immediate
pressures of the time and society in which they were written. They not only
took 'culture' seriously as a dimension without which historical
transformations, past and present, simply could not adequately be thought.
They were, themselves, 'cultural' in the Cultural artd Society sense. They
forced on their readers'attention the proposition that'concentrated in the .
wordcuhure arequestions directly raisedbythegreathistoricalchanges which
the changes in industry democracy and class, in their own way, represent, and
to which the changes in art are a closely related response' (Williams, 1963,
p. 16). This was a question for the 1960s and 70s, as well as the 1860s and 70s.

Cultural studies: two paradigrns 2l

And this is perhaps the point to note that this line of thinking was roughly
coterminous with what has been called the 'agenda'of theearly New teit, to
which theie writers, in one sense or another, belonged, and whose texts these
were. This connection placed the'politics of intellectual work'squarely at the
centre of Cultural Studies from the beginning - a concern from which,
fornrnately it has never been, and can never be, freed. In a deep serrse, the
'settling of accounts' in cuhure and society the first p.n oi Tlu Long
Reuolution, Hoggart's densely particular, .orr.r.,. study of ,o-. ,rp..o oi
working-class culture and Thompson's historical reconstruction of the
formation of a class culture and popular traditions in the 1790-1830 period
formed, between them, the break, and defined the space from whiclr,a new
area of study and practice opened.. . .
'Culture' was the site of the convergence. But what definitions of this core
concept emerged from this body of work? ...The fact is that no single,
trnproblematic definition of 'culture' is to be found here. The concept remains
a complex one - a site of convergent interests, rather than a logically or
concepftlallyclarified idea. This'richness'is anareaofcontinuingtensionand
difliculty in the field. It might be useful, therefore, briefly to resume the
characteristic stresses and emphases through which the concept has arived at
its present state of (in)-determinacy.. ..
Two rather different ways of conceptualizing 'culture' can be drawn out of
the many suggestive formulations in Raymond l7illiams's Long Rezsolution.
The first relates 'culture' to the sum of the available descriptions through
which societies make sense of and reflect their common experiences. This
definition takes up the earlier srress on 'ideasl but subjects it to a thorough
rcworking. The conception of 'culture'is itselfdemocratizedandsocialized. It
no longer consists of the sum of the 'best that has been thought and saidl
regarded as the summits of an achieved civilization - thatidealofperfectionto
which, in earlier usage, all aspired. Even 'art' assigned in the earlier
framework a privileged position, as rouchstone of the highest values of
civilization - is now redefined as only one, special, form of a general social
process: the giving and aking of meanings, and the slow development of
'common' meanings - a common culture: 'culturei in this special sense, .is
ordinary' (to borrow the title of one of Wiltiams's earliesratrempts to make ttris
general position more widely accessible - see Williams, l95g). If even the
highest, most refined ofdescriptions offered in works ofliterature are also 'part
of the general process which creates conventions and institutions, through
which the meanings that are valued by the community are shared and made
active' (Williams, 1 965, p. 55), then there is no way in which this process can be
hived offordistinguished or setapartfrom the other practices ofthehistorical
piocess ...Accordingly, there is no way in which the communication of

22 Overview
descriptions, understood in this way, can be setasideandComparedexternally
with other things. 'If the art is part of society, there is no solid whole, outside it,
to which, by the form of our question, we concede prioriry. The art is there, as
an activity, with the production, the trading, the politics, the raising of
families. To study the relations adequately we must study them actively, seeing
all activities as particular and contemporary forms of humanenergy'Qbid, P.

6l).
this first emphasis takes up and re-works the connotation of the terrn
'cufture' with the domain of ideas', the second emphasis is more deliberately
anthropological, and ehrphasizes that aspect of 'culture'which refers to social
practices. It is from this second emphasis that the somewhat simplified
definition - 'culture is a whole way of life' - has been rather too neatly
abstracted. r00illiams did relate this aspect of the concept to the more
'documentary' - that is, descriptive, even ethnographic - usage of the terrn.
But the earlierdefinition seems tomethe more cenralone, intowhich'wayof
life' is integrated. The important point in the argument rests on the activeand
indissoluble relationships between elemen$ or social practices normally
separated out. It is in rhi context that the 'theory of culture' is defined as 'the
study of relatioirships between elements in a whole wayoflife'. 'Culture'is not
d practice; nor is it simply the descriptive sum of the 'mores andfolkways'of
societies - as it tended to become in certain kinds of anthropology. It is
threaded through a// social practices, and is the sum of their inter-relationship.
The question of what, then, is studied, and how, resolves itself. The 'culture' is
those patterns of organization, those characteristic forms of human energy
which can be discovered as revealing themselves - in'unexpected identities
and correspondences'as well as in'discontinuities ofanunexpectedkind'(lbld
p.63) - within or underlying all social practices. The analysis of culture is,
then, 'the attempt to discover the nature of the organization which is the
complex of these relationships'. It begins with 'the discovery of patterns of a
characteristic kind'. One will discover them, not in the art, production,
uading, politics, the raising of families, reated as separate activities, but
through 'studying a general organisation in a particular example' (ibid p.6l).
Analytically, one must srudy'the relationships between these patterns'. The
purpose of the analysis is to grasp how the interactions between all these
practices and panerns are lived and experienced as a whole, inanyparticulaf
period. This is its'strucnrre of feeling'.
It is easier to see what Williams was gening at, and why he was pushed along
this path, if we understand what were the problems he addressed, and what
pidalls he was trying to avoid. This is particularly necessary because Tlw Long
Reoolution (like many of $filliams's works) carries on a submerged, almost
'silent'dialogue with alternative positions, which are not always as clearly

If

Cultural studies: two paradigrns

23

identified as one would wish. There is a clear engagement with the 'idealist,
and 'civilizing' definitions ofculture - both the equation of'culrure' w ithideas,

intheidealisttradition;andtheassimilationofculturetoanideal, prevalentin
the elitist terms of the 'cultural debate'. But there is also a more extended
engagement with certain kinds of Marxism, against which williams's
definitions are consciously pitched. He is arguingagainsttheliteraloperations
of the base/superstructure metaphor, which in classical Marxis m ascribed the
domain of ideas and of meanings-to the 'superstructures,, themselves
conceived as merely reflective of and determined in some simple fashion by
'the base'; without a social effectivity of their own. That is to san his argument
is constructed against a vulgar materialis m and an economic determinis m. He
offers, instead, a radical interactionism: intffect, the interaction ofall practices
in and with one another, skirting the problem of determinacy. The distinction
between practices is overcome by seeing them all asvariantforms ofpraris of
a general human activity and energy. The underlying panerns which
distinguish the complex of practices in any specific society ar any specific rime
are the characteristic'forms of its organisation' which underlie rhem all, and
which can therefore be traced in each.
There have been several, radical revisions ofthis early position: and each has
contributed much to the redefinition of what Cultural Studies is and should
be. we have acknowledged already the exemplary nature of wiliiams's
project, in constandy rethinking and revising older argumenrs - in going on
thi"king. Nevertheless, one is struck by a marked line of continuity through
these seminal revisions. One such moment is the occasion ofhis recognition of
Ltrcien Goldmann's work, and through him, of the arrayofmarxistthinkers
who had given particular attention to superstructural forms and whose work
began, for the fi rst time, to appear in English translation in the mid- I 960s. The
ootrast between the alternative marxist traditions which sustained writers
like Goldmann and Lukdcs, as compared with Williams's isolated position and
the impoverished mamist tradition he had to draw on, is sharply delineated.
But the points of convergence - both what they are against, and what they are
about - are identified in ways which are not altogether out of line with his
earlier arguments. Here is the negative, which he sees as linking his work to
Goldmann's: 'I came to believe that I had to give up, or at least to leave aside,
what I knew as the Marxist tradition: to attempt to develop a theory of social
totality; to see the study ofculture as the study of relations between elements in
a whole way of life; to find ways of srudying strucrure. .. which could stay in
touch with and illuminate particular art worls andforms, butalsoforms and
relations of more general social life; to replace the formula of base and
superstrucnrre withthe moreactive ideaofafield of mutually if alsounevenly
determiningforces'(williams, 1971, p.lO). And here is thepositive-thepoint

24 Overview
where the convergence is marked beween Williams's'structure offeeling' and
Goldmann's 'genetic strucnrralism': 'I found in my own work that I had to
develop the idea of a structure of feeling. . . But then I found Goldmann
beginning. . . from a concept of strucnrre which contained, in itself, a relation
beween social and literary facts. This relation, he insisted, was not a matterof
content, but of mental structures: "categories which simultaneously organize
the empirical consciousness of a particular social Broup, and the imaginative

world created by the writer". By definition, these strucnlres are not

individually but collectively created' (ibid p.l2). The stress there on the
interactivity of practices and on the underlying totalities, and the homologies
beween them, is characteristic and significant. .. .
A second such'moment' is the point where Williams'reallytakesonboard
E.P. Thompson's critique of Tlu Long Reaolution (Thompson, 1962) thatno
'whole way of life' is without its dimension of stmggle and confrontation
beween opposed ways of life - and attempts to rethink the key issues of
determination and domination via Gramsci's concept of 'hegemony'. This
essay ('Base andSuperstructure in Marxist Cultural Theoryi Williams, 1973)
is a seminal one, especially in its elaboration of dominanq residual and
emergent cultural practices, and its return to the problematic of determinacy
as 'limits and pressures'. None the less, the earlier emphases recurrwithforce:
'we cannot separate literarure and art from other kinds of social practice, irr
such a way as to make them subiect to quite speciai and distinct laws'. . . . And
this note is carried forward - indeed, it is radically accented - in Williams's
most sustained and succinct recent statement of his position: the masterly
condensati ons of Marrism and Literature. Against the structuralist emphasis
on the specificity and'autonomy'of practices, and their analytic separation of
smieties into their discrete instances, lTilliams's stress is on'constitutive
activity' in general, on'sensuous human activity, as practice', from Mam's
first 'thesis' on Feuerbach; on different practices conceived as a 'whole
indissoluble practice'; on totality. 'Thus, contrary to one development in
Man<ism, it is not "the base" and"the superstructure" that need to be studied,
but specific and indissoluble real processes, within which the decisive
relationship, from a Marxist point of view, is that expressed by the complex
idea of "determination"' (\Filliants,1977, pp. 30-31, 82).
...The organizing terrain of Thompson's work - classes as relations,
popular struggle, and historical forms of consciousness, class cultures in their
historical particularity - is foreign to the more reflective and'generalizing'
mode in which uililliams typically works....Thompson also operates with a
more'classical' distinction than $Tilliams, between'social being'and'social
consciousness' (the terms he infinitely prefers, from Marx, to the more
fashionable 'base and superstructure'). Thus, where tJTilliams insists on the

Cultural studies: two paradigrns

25

absorption of all practices into the totality of 'real,

indissoluble practicel
Thompson does deploy an older distinction between
what is.culture, and
what is 'not culture'. 'Any theory of culture must include
the concept
dialectical interaction between culture and something
"f;l;
yer
that is zor culture.'
the definition of culture is nor, after all, so far remouJd
frorn williams,s: .\)fe
must suppose the raw material of life experience to
be at one pole, and all the
infinitely complex hurran disciplines and systems, articulare
and inarticutate,
formalised in institutions or dispersed in the least
formJ6;;;;";
"handle", transmit or distort this raw materiar to be at the other,.
birrril"rty,
with respect to the commonality of 'practice'which underlies
all the distinct
practices: 'It is the active process - which is at the same
time the process
through which men make their history - that Iaminsistingupon'(Thompson
1961, p.33). And the two positiorr.o*. close together
around - again certain distinctive negatives and positives. liegatively, agaiosl
the
'base/superstructure' metaphor, and a reductionist or ,economistic,
definition. of determinacy: .. . 'The dialectical intercourse
between social
being and social consciousness - or between..culture', arrd*not
culture,, _ is at
the heart of ahy comprehension of the historical process within
the Marxist
tradition.. . The tradition inherits a dialecic thaiis right, but the particular
mechanical metaphor through which it is expressed is irorrg.
This metaphor
from constructional engineering . . . must in any case be inadequate
to desiribe
the flux of conflict, the dialectic of a changing social process. . .
All the
metaphors which are commonlyoffered havea tendency to
leadthemind into
schematic modes and away from the interaction of being-consciousness,.
...
And more positively - a simpre staremenr which,o"yl. taken as defining
virtually the whole of rhompson's hisrorical work, from T he
M aking to w hi;
and Hunters, The Pouerty of rheorjt and beyond .capitali.t
,o".i.ty *L
founded upon forms of exploitation which are simultaneously
economic,
rnoral and cultural. Take up the essential defining productive
relationship. . . and turn it round, and. it reveals itselfnow inoneaspect(wagelabour), now in another (an acquisitive ethos): and now in anott
e, ftne
alienation of such intellecnral facilities as are not required by the
worker in his
productive role)' (Thompson, 1965, p.356).
He1e, then, despite the many signi{icant differences, is the
outline of one
significant line of thinking in cultural srudies - some wo uld,say
, thedominant
paradigm....In its different ways, it conceptualizes culture-as
irrt.rrnorr.r,
with all social practices; and those practices, in turn, as a common form
of
human activity: sensuous human praxis, the activity through which
men and
women make history. It is opposed to the base-superstruffure
way of
formulating the relationship between ideal and material forces, .rp."i"[y
where the 'base' is defined as the determination by ,the economic;
in any

-1-r

26 Overview
simple sense. It prefers the wider formulation - the dialectic between social
being and social consciousness: neither separable into its distinct poles. . . . It
defines 'culture' x both the meanings and values which arise amongst
distinctive social groups and classes, on the basis of their given historical
conditions and relationships, through which they'handle'and respond ro rhe
conditions of existence; andasthelived traditions and practices through which
those 'understandings' are expressed and in which they are embodied.
williams brings together these two aspecrs - definitions and ways of life around the concept of 'culture' itself. Thompson brings togerher the'two
elements - consciousness and conditions - around theconceptof'experience'.
Both positions entail certain difficult fluctuations around these key rerms.
Williams so totally absorbs'definitions ofexperience'inroour'walnoflivhg',
and both into an indissolublb real material practice-in-general, as to obviate
any distinction between'culture' and'not-culture'. Thompson sometimes
uses 'experience' in the more usual sense of consciousness, as the collective
ways in which men 'handle', transmit or 'distort' their given conditions, the
raw rnaterials of life; sometimes as the domain of the 'lived', the mid-terrn
between 'conditions'and'culture'; and sometimes as the obiectiveconditions
themselves against which particular modes of consciousness are
counterposed. But, whatever the terms, both positions tend toreadstructures
of relations in terms of how they are 'lived' and'experienced'....This is a
consequence of giving culture-consciousness and experience so pivotal a place
in the analysis. The experimtial pull in this paradigm, and the emphasis on the
creative and on historical agency, constitute the two key elements in the
humanistn of the position outlined. Each, consequently accords 'experience'an
authenticating position in any cultural analysis. It is, ultimately, where and
how people experience their conditions of life, define them and respond to
them, which, for Thompson defines why every mode of production is also a
culture, and every struggle between classes is always also a struggle between
cultural modalities; and which,forwilliams,is whata'culturalanalpis',inthe
final instance, should deliver. In 'experience', all the different practices
intersect; within 'culrure' the different practices inreract - even if on an
uneven and mutually determining basis. This sense of cultural totality - of the
whqle historical process - over-rides any effort to keep the instances and
elernents distinct. Their real interconnecticin, under given historical
conditions, must be matched by a totalizing movement 'in thought', in the
analysis. It establishes for both the strongest protocols against any form of
analytic abstraction which distinguishes practices, or which sets outtotestthe
'acnral historjcal movement'in allits intertwinedcomplexityandpanicularity
by any more sustained logical or analyrical operation. . . .In their tendency to

Cultural studies: two paradigms

22

reduce practices to praris and to find common and homologous ,forms,

underlying tlre most apparently differentiated areas, their movement
is
'essentialising'. They have a particular way of undersanding the totality
though itis with a small't'rconcreteandhistoricallydetermir,"t
inits
r,ro.u.n
correspondences. They understand it .expressively'. And since
they
constantly inllect the more traditional analysis towards the experiential levei,
or read the other structures and relations downwards from the vantage point
oi
how they are 'lived', they are properly (even if not adequately oi r,ruy;
characterizfd as 'culturalist' in their emphasis: even when all the.rr."t,
qualificatiois against a roo rapid 'dichotomous theorizing, have been
"rrd
entered....
The 'culturalist' strand in Cultural Studies was internrpted by the arrival on
the intellecnral scene of the'structuralisms'. These, possibly more varied. than
the 'culturalisms', neveftheless shared certain positions and orientations in
common which makes their designation under a single title not altogether
misleading. It has been remarked that whereas the'culturalist'paradigm can
be de{ined without requiring a conceptualreferencetotheterm'ideology'(the
word, of course, does appear: but it is not a key concept), the.structurjist'
interventions have been largely articulated around the concept of .ideology':
in keeping with its more impeccably Marxist lineage, ,culture, does not fig".e
so prominently. $Thilst this may be true of the Marxist structuralists, it is at
best less than half the truth about the strucnrralist enterprise as such. But it is
now a common error to condense the latter exclusively around the impact of
Althusser and all that has followed in the wake of his interventions where
.'idmlogy' has played a seminal, but modulated r6le: and to omit the
significance of Lvi-Strauss. Yet, in srict historical rerms, it was L6viStrauss, and the early semiotics, which made the first break. And though the
Mamist strucnrralisms have superseded the latter, they owed and continued
to owe' an immense theoretical debt ...to his work. It was Ldvi-Strauss's
strucnrralism which, in its appropriation of the linguistic paradigm, after
Saussure, o{fered the promise to the'human sciences ofculture' ofa
laradigm
capable of rendering them scientific and rigorous in a thoroughly
*"y.
".* weie
And when, in Althusser's work, the more classical Marxist themes
recovered, it remained the case that Marx was 'read' - and reconstituted
through the terms of the linguistic paradig m.rnReading C apital,for example,
the case is made that the mode of production - to coin a phrase - could best be
understood as if 'structured like a language' (through the selective
combination of invariant elements). The a-historical and synchronic stress,
against the historical emphasis of 'culturalism', derived from a similar source.
So did a pre-occupation with 'the social, sui genris' - used not adiectivally but
substantively: a usage L6vi-suauss derived, not from Marx, but from

Durkheim...

28 Overview
the terms of
This suucturalism shared with culturalism a radical break with
simpler parts of the
the base,/superstructure metaphor, as derived from the
of the superstructures'
Gerrnan ld.eology. And though 'It is to this theory
to contribute, his
aspired
scarcely touched on by Marx' to which L{vi-Strauss
of
conuiburion was such as to break in a radical way with its whole terms
we
and
did. Here reference, as finally and irrevocably as the 'culturalists'
include Alihusser in this characterization culturalists and

must

stmcturalists alike ascribed

to the

domains hitherto defined as

.superstrucrural' a specificity and effectivity, a constittltive primacy, whichr

pusrrea them beyond the terms of reference of 'base' and 'superstructure'.
Lvi-Strauss and Althusser, too, wereanti-reductionistandanti-economistin
their very cast of thought, and critically anacked that transitive causality
which, for so long, had passed itself off as 'classical Marxism'.
L6vi-Straus, wo.t.d consistently with the term 'culture" He regarded
rationalizations''
'ideologies' as of much lesser importance: mere 'secondary
correspondences
of
level
the
at
Like williams and Goldmann, he worked, not
and structures '
between the contentof a practice, but at the level of their forms
But the manner in which theie #ere conceptualized were altogether at
tVilliams or Goldmann's 'genetic
variance with either the 'culturalism' of
ways. First,
structuralism'. This divergence can be identified in three distinct
and
in
thought
he conceptualized 'culture'as the categories and frameworks
of
iu"g"ug.rhrough which different societies classified out their conditions
the relations
exisrence - above all (since L6vi-Strauss was an anthropologist),
manner
thoughtofthe
between the human and the natural worlds. Second, he
and practice through which these categories and mental frameworks were
produced and traniformed, largely on an analogy with the ways in which
iu.rg.r"g. itself - the principal medium of 'culture' - operated. He identified
*t *t *"t specific to them and their operadon as the 'production of meaning' :
they were, above all, signifuing practices. Third,... he largely gave up the
question of the relation between signifying and non-signifylng Practices of
between tulture' and 'not-culture" to use other terms - for the sake
of
concentrating on tl:re imemal relations within signifytt g practices by means
which the categories of rrleaning were produced. This left the question of
determinacy, oi totality, largely in abeyance. The causal logic of determinacy
was abandoned in favour of a structuralist causality - alogic of arrangement' 9f
internal relations, of articulation of parts within a structure' Each of these
j1thusser's work and that of the Marxist
aspecrs is also positively present in
in
structuralists, even when the terms of reference had been regrounded
Marx,s ,immense theoretical revolution'. We can see this in Althusser's
seminal formulations about ideology - defined as the themes, concepts and
representations through which men and women 'live', in an imaginary

Cultural studies: two paradigrns

29

relation, their relation to their real conditions of existence (see Althusser,

I 971 ) . . . . 'Ideologies' are here being conceptualized, not as the contents and
surface forms of ideas, but as the unconscious categories through which
conditions are represented and lived. We have already commented on the
active presence in Althusser's thinking ofthe linguistic paradigm -thesecond
element identified above. And though, in the concept of'over-derermination'
- one of his most seminal and fruidul contributions - Althusser did return ro
the problems of the relations between p:--tices and the question of
determinacYr... hs did tend'to reinforce the'relative autonomy' of different
practices, and their internal specificities, conditions and effects at the expense
of an 'expressive' conception of the totality, with its rypical homologies and
correspondences.
Aside from the wholly distinct intellectual and conceptual universes

within
which these alternative paradigms developed there were cenain points
where, despite their apparent overlaps, culturalism and structuralism were
starkly counterposed. We can identify this counterposition at one of its
sharpest points precisely around the concept of 'experience', and the r6le the
term played in each perspective. Whereas, in'culturalism', experience was the
ground - the terrain of 'the lived' - where consciousness and conditions
intersected, structuralism insisted that'experience'could not, by definition,
be the ground of anything, since one could only 'live' and experience one's
conditions in and through the categories, classifications and frameworks of the
culture. These categories, however, did notarisefromorinexperience: rather,

experience was their 'effbcr'. The culturalists had defined the forms of
consciousness and culture as collective. But they had stoppedfarshortofthe
radical proposition that, in culture and in language, the subjecr was 'spoken
by' the categories of culture in which helshe thought, rather than'speaking
them'. These categories were, however, not merely collective rather than
individual productions: they were for the structuralists, a nconscious structures.
That is why, though Ldvi-strauss spoke only of 'culture', his concept
provided the basis for an easy translation, by Althusser, into the conceptual
framework of ideology: 'rdeology is indeed a system of"representations", but
in the maiority of cases these representations have nothing to do with
"consciousness":... it is above all as strucnrres that they impose on the vast
maiority of men, not via their "consciousness"... it is within this ideological
unconsciousness that men succeed in altering the "lived" relation between
them and the world and acquiring thatnew forrnofspecificunconsciousness
called "consciousness"' (Althusser, 196% p. 233).lt was, in this sense, that
'experience' was conceived, not as an authenticating source but as an effect:
not as a reflection of the real but as an 'imaginary relation'. It was only a short
step. .. to the development of an account of how this 'imaginary relation'

30 Overview
served, not simply the dominance of a ruling class over a dominated one, but
(through the reproduction of the relations of production, and the constitution
of labour-power in a form fit for capitalist exploitation) the expanded
reproduction of the mode of production itself. Many of the other lines of
divergence between the two paradigms flow from this point : the conception of
'men' as bearers of the structures that speak and place them, rather than as
active agents in the making of their own history: the emphasis on a structural
rather than a historical 'logic';.. . the recasting of history as a march of the
structures: .. . the structuralist'machine'...
There is no space in which tofollow through the many ramifications which

have followed from the development of one or other of these 'master

paradigms' in Cultural Studies. Though they by no means acctunt for all, or
even nearly all, of the many strategies adopted, it is fair to say that, between
them, they have defined the principal lines of development in the {ield. The
seminal debates have been polarized around their thematics; some of the best
concrete work has flowed frorn the efforts to set one or other of these
paradigms to work on particular problems and materials. Characteristically,... the arguments and debates have most frequently been overpolarized into their extremes. At these extremities, they frequently appedr
only as mirror-reflections or inversions of one another. Here, the broad
typologies we have been working with - for the sake ofconvenient exposition become the prison-house of thought
Without suggesting that there can be any easy synthesis between them, it
might usefully be said at this point that neither 'culturalism' nor
'structuralisrn' is, in its present manifestation, adequate to the task of
constructing the study of culture as a conceptually clarified and theoretically
informed domain of study. Nevertheless, something fundamental to it
emerges from a rough comparison of their respective strengths and
limitations.
Ttre great strength of the structuralisms is their stress on 'determinate
conditions'. They remind us that, unless the dialectic really can be held in any
particular anallnis, between both halves of the proposition - that 'men make
history.. . on the basis ofconditions which are not oftheirmaking'-theresult
will inevitably be a ndive humanism, with its necessary consequence: a
voluntarist and populist political practice. The fact that 'men'can become
conscious of their conditions, organize to struggle against them and in fact
transform them - without which no active politics can even beconceivedr let
alone practised - must not be allowed to override the awareness ofthe fact that,
in capitalist relations, men and women are placed and positionedinrelations
which constitute thgm as agents.'Pessimism of the intellect,optimismofthe
will' is a bener sarting point than a simple heroic affirmation. Structuralism

Culturalstudies: two paradigms 3I

does enable us to begin ro think - as Marx insisted of
- the relations of a
strucrure on the basis of something other than their reduction
to relations hips
between 'people'. This was Marx's privileged level ofabstraction:
that which
enabled him to break with the obvious but incorrect srarting point
of.political
economy' - bare individuals.
But this connects with a second strength: the recognition
by structuralism
not only of the necessity of abstraction as rhe instrument of thoughr
rrrrr"gt
which 'real relations' are appropriated, but also of the presence, in Marr<,s

work, of a continuous and complex movement between dffirint leaels

of
abstraction It is, of course, the case - as 'culturalism' argues that, in historical
realiry' practices do not appear neatly distinguished out iuto their respective

instances. However, to think about or to analyse the complexity of

the real, the
act of practice of thinking is required; and this necessitates the use
ofthe

power
of abstraction and analysis, the formation of concepts with which to cut into
the complexiry of the real, in order precisely ro reveal and bring'to light
relationships and sttuctures which cannot be visible to rhe naive
n.aked ele,
and which can neither present nor authenticate themselves.. .. of
.o,rrr.,
strucnrralism has frequently taken this proposition to its extreme.
Because
thought is impossible without 'the power of abstraction', ir has confused
this
with giving an absolute primacy to the level of the formation ofconcepts
and
-

at the highest, mosr absrracr level of abstracrion only: Theory with

.T,
a capital
then becomes judge and jury. But this is precisely to lose ttre insight
lust won
from Marx's own practice. For it is clear in, for example, copiat,'rtrat ttre
nethod - whilst, of course, raking place 'in thought, (as Marx asked
in the l g57
Introduction, where else?) - rests, noton the simpleexerciseofabstraction
but
rn the movement and relations which the argumenr is constantly establishing
beqween different leuels of absraction: ar each, the premises in play
must b!
listinguished from those which - forrhe sake oftheargument have to
be held
:onstant.. .. This merhod is adequately represented,inneitlur the absolutism
rf rheoretical Practice, in strucnrralism, nor in the anti-abstraction (of E.p.
lbompson's) 'Poverty
rheory' position into which, in reacrion,
ulnrralism appears to have been driven or driven itself. Nevertheless it is
ntrinsically tlaoretical, and must be. Here, structuralism's insistence that
:hought does not reflect realiry, but is articulated on and appropriates
it, is a
Ecessary starting point. An adequateworking through of the consequences
of
his argument might begin to produce a method which takes us outside the
termanent oscillations between abstraction,/anti-abstraction and the false
lichotomies of Theoreticism zs. Empiricism which have both marked and
lisfigured the strucnrralism,/culturalism encounter to date.
Strucnrralism has another strength, in its conceptionof ,the whole'. There
I a sense in which, though culturalism constantly insists on the radical

of

32 Overview
particularity of its practices, its mode of conceptualizing the 'totality' has
something of the complex simplicity of an expressive totality behind it.* fEs
complexity is constituted by the fluidity with which practices move into and
out of one another: but this complexity is reducible, conceptually, to the
'simplicity' of praxis - human activity, as such - in which the same
contradictions constantly appear, homologously reflected in each.
Structuralism goes too far in erecting the machine of a 'Strucnrre', with its
self-generating propensities, . . . equipped with its distinctive instances. Yet it
rppresenrs an advance over culturalism in the conception it has of the
,r...tt"ty complexity of the unity of a structure.... Moreover, it has the
concepnral ability to think of a unity which is constructed through the
differincesbetween, rather than the homology of, practices' Here, again, ithas
won a critical insight about Marxns method: one thinks of the complex
passages of the I 857 Introduction to the Grundissa where Marx demonstrates
.Lo*iiispossibletothinkofthe'unity'ofasocialformationasconstructed,not
out of identity but out of dffirmce. Ofcourse, the stress of difference can - and
has - led the structuralisms into a fundamental conceptual heterogeneity, in
which all sense of structure and totality is lost. Foucault and other postAlthussereans have taken this devious path into the absolute, not the relative,
autonomy of practices, via their necessary heterogeneity and'necessary noncorrespondence'. But the emphasis on unity-in-difference, on complex uniry
be worked in
- Marx's concrete as the 'unity of many determinations' - canproblematic
of
another, and ultimately more fruidul direction: towards the
relative autonomy and 'over-determination', and the study of articulation.

Again, articulation contains the danger of a high formalism. But it also has *re
considerable advantage of enabling us to think of how specific practices
{articulated around contradictions whichdonotallarise inthesameway'atthe
same point, in the same moment), can nevertheless be thoughttogether.T1l
structuralist paradigm thus does - if properly developed - enable us to begin
really ta conxe?tualize the specificity of different practices (analytically
distinguished, absuacted out), without losing its grip on the ensemble which
they ionstirute. Culturalism constantly aflirms the specificity of different
practices - 'culture' must not be absorbed into 'the economic': but it lacks an
adequate way of establishing this specificity theoretically'
The third strength which structuralism exhibits lies in its decentering of
'experience' and its seminal work in elaborating the neglected category of
*[The concept of 'expressive totality' was developed by Althusser in his critiquc of Hegelian
forrns of Marxism. Aicording to these, the structure of the social whole is said to be determined
by an essential or single contr-adiction - between the forces and the relations of production, for
instance. Ideologicaiand poiitical contradictions are then viewed as the 'expressions'- that is,
particular fo.ms-of the appearance - of this essential and determining contradiction.J

Cultural studies: two Paradigms 33

.ideology'.

is difficult to conceive of a Cultural Studies thought within a

Man<ist paradigm which is innocent of the carcgory of ideology'- Ofcourse,
culturalism constantly makes reference to this concept: but itdoes not infact
lie at the centre of its conceptual universe. The authemicating power and
reference of 'experience' imposes a barrier between culturalism and a proper
conception of ideology'. Yet, without it, the effectivity of 'culture' for the
reproduction of a particular mode of production cannot be grasped. It is true
that there is a marked tendency in the more- r'ecent structuralist
as the
conceptualisations of ideology' to give it a functionalist reading
indeed
necessary cement of the social formation. From this position, it is
as culturalism would correctly argue - to conceive either of
impossible
ideologies which are not' by dSfinition, 'dominant': or of the concept of
,*99L (the laner's appearance in Althusser's famous ISA's article being - to
y., another phrase - largely 'gestural'). Nevertheless, work is already
"oin
beinj done which suggests ways in which the field of ideology may be

It

adequately conceptualized as a terrain of struggle (through the work of

Gramsci, and more recentlyr of Laclau - see Laclau,1977), and these have
structuralist rather than culturalist bearings'
Culruralism's strengths can almost be derived from the weaknesses of the
strucuralist position already noted, and from the latter's strategic absences
and silences. It has insisted, correctly, on the affirmative moment of the
in
development ofconscious struggle and organization as a necessaryelement
the analysis of history, ideology and consciousness: against im persistent
down-grading in the siructuralist paradigm. Here, again, it is largely Gramsci
who has prouid.d os with a set of more refined terms through which to linkthe
.unconscious' and given cultural categories of ocommon sense' with the
largely
foimation of more active and organic ideologies, which have the capacity to
intervene in the ground of common sense and popular uaditions and, through
such interventions, to organize masses of men and women. In this sense,
crrlturalism properly resrores the dialectic between the unconsciousness of
culnrral categories and the moment of conscious organization: even if, in its
characteristic movement, it has tended to match structuralism's overernphasis on 'conditions' with an altogether too-inclusive emphasis on
of
'consciousness'. It therefore not only recovers - as the necessary moment
defined
any analysis - the process by means of which classes-in-themselves,
primarily by the way in which economic relations position'men'as agents
.o*. active historical and potitical forces-for-themselves: it also - against
its own anti-theoredcal good sense - requires that, when properlydeveloped,
atwhich
each moment musr be understood in terms of the level of abstraction
the analysis is operating. Again, Gramsci has begun to point a way through this
false poiarization in his discussion of 'the passage between the structure and

u.ry different proposition from dismantling the

such analyrir.
"
rnodes of production and social
whole of the social processes of particular
at the level of unconscious
formations, arrd .econstituting th.- exclusively
psychoanalYtic Processes''''

B;;;iJi,

Cultural studies: two Paradigms 35

A second development is the attempt to retum to the terms of a more
classical 'political economy' of culture. This position argues that the
.orr..rrtr"tion on the cultural and ideological aspects has been wildly overdone. It would restore the older terms of 'base/superstructure', finding, in the
last-instance determination of the cultural-ideological by the economic, that
hieiarchy of determinations which both alternatives appear to lack. This
position insists that the economic processes and structures of cultural

production are more significant than their cultural-ideological. aspect: and

ihat these are quite adequately caught in the more classical terminology of
profit, exploitaJon, surplus-value and the analysis ofculture as commodity' It
retains a notion of ideology as 'false consciousness''
There is, of course, some strength to the claim that both structuralism and
culturalism, in their different ws]s: have neglected the economic analysis of
culturaland ideological production. All the same, with the renrm to this more
.classical'terrain, many of the problems whichoriginallybesetitalsoreappear.
The specificity of the effect of the cultural and ideological dimension once
a
more iends to disappear. It tends to conceive the economic level as not only
.necessary'but a'sufficient'explanation of cultural and ideological effects. Its
all the carefully
focus o1 ih. analysis of the commodity form, similarly, blurs
estabiished distinctions between different practicesJ since it rsthemost'gmeric
deductions are
aspects of the commodity-form which attract attention. Its
thlrefore, largely, confined to an epochal level of abstraction: the
the commodity-form hold true throughout the
generalizatiot t
"Uo,t,
a whole. Very linle by way of concrete and coniunctural
Lpitalist epoch as
of
anatysis can be derived at this high-level 'logic of capital' form
abstraction....
The third position is closely related to the structuralist enterprise, but has
followed the path of 'difference' through into a radical heterogeneiry.
Foucault's work - currently enioying another of those uncritical periods of
discipleship through which British intellectuals reproduce today their
dependency on ysterday's French ideas - has had an exceedingly positive
effLgt: above all because - in suspending the nearly-insoluble problems of
determination Foucault has made possible a welcome return to the concrete
of
analysis of particular ideological and discursive formations, and the sites
of
much
for
account
&eii elaboration. Foucault and Gramsci between them
the most productive Work on concrete analysis now being undertaken in the
field: theieby reinforcing and - paradoxically - supporting the sense of the
concrete historical instance which has always been one of culturalism's
principal strengths. But, again, Foucault's example is positive only if his
geo.r.l epistemological position is not swallowed whole. For in fact Foucault
so resolutety suspends iudgment, and adopts so thoroughgoing a scepticism

36 Overview
practices, other than,qhe
about any determinacy or relationship beween
him, not as an agnostic on these
largely contingent, thai we are entitled to see
t1 the necessary non{orrespondence of
l rlrriorrr, bulas deeply comminedsuch
a position neither a social formation'
From
all practices ro one
"rroih.t.
constantly
,t. State, can be adequately thought. And indeed Foucaultis
against his well"o,
irlirrg into the pit which ie had dug forhimself. For when across certain
defended epistemological positions he stumbles
moments of
mafor
.correspondences' (for-exampie, the-simple fact that all the
on the prison, sexuality,
transition..he,,.has traced in each of his studies economy - allappear to converge
medicine, the asylum, language and political
capitalism and the bourgeoisie
around exactly tfrat poitit *Lr. industrial
into a vulgar
*"r.. their fateful, historical rendezvous), he lapsespositions
he hras
reductionism, which thoroughly belies the sophisticated
of wheeling in through the back door
elsewhere advanced. He is quite capable
the classes he recently expelled from the front'
cultural Studies
I have said enough to indicate that, in my view, the line in
elements in the
which has anemp"ted to thinh forutards from the best
of some of the concepts
srructuralist and culturalist enterprises, by way
meeting the requirements of
elaborated in Gramsci,s work, comes closest to
by now also be obvious'
the field of study. And the reason for that should
do, as self-sufficient
Though neither structuralism nor culruralism will
the field which all the other
paradigrrrs of study, they have a centraliry to
(in their divergences as well as their
contenders lack b#uu., b.*..n them
core problemof cultural Studies'
convergences) they address what must be the
coupled
ft .y.irrrr"rr,ty ,"*rn us to the terrain marked out by those strongly
They pose, together'
but not mutually exclusive concepts culture,/ideology.
of different
specificity
the
the problems consequent on trying to think both
a
pr"oi.., and the forms of the articulated uniry they constitute' They makeare
They
metaphor'
aorrrr"rra, if flawed, rerurn to the base'/superstructure
all
the problems of a
correct in insisting that this question - which resumes
matter: and that, on the
non-reductive deierminacy - it .h. heart of the
Studies to supersede
solution of this problem wiil turn the capacity of Cultural
Theyconfront the endless oscillations between idealism and reductionism'
between conditions and
even if in radically opposed ways - the dialectic
level, they pose thequestionoftherelationbetween
consciousness. At
".roitt.t
process ' They continue to hold
the logic of thinking and the 'logic' of historical
culrure' In their sustained
out the promise ofi prop.rly materialist theory of
out no promise of an easy
and mutually reinforcing antagonisms they hold
if at all, is the space, and what
synrhesis. But, betweer, ah.*, ,h.y define where,
be constinrted' In cultural
are the limits within which such a synthesis might
Studies, theirs are the'names of the game''

Cultural studies: two paradigrns

37

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--

MARX, K, Grundrisse: Foundations of the citique af political Econamy,

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