AlAN WOLFE
The Culture of Cultural Studies
"Cultural studies" is the latest wave to wash over humanities departments
in the United States, following French literary theory and the new his–
toricism. Inspired mostly by British writers such as Raymond Williams,
Richard Hoggart, and Stuart Hall, cultural studies examines the ways
popular culture shapes ordinary people's perceptions of the world - and
how it provides tools of "resistance" against the hierarchies of advanced
capitalism. Although borrowing from its own coterie of Continental
thinkers, especially Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault - let alone the
theorists of the Frankfurt School - compared to the deterministic logic of
poststructuralism, cultural studies is refreshingly humanistic.
It
is less
pompous and can, at times, even display a sense of humor, and it recog–
nizes the importance ofwriting in ways accessible to the uninitiated.
The rise of cultural studies is a reaction among the politically engaged
against the defeatism inherent in post-structuralism. The practitioners of
high theory within the academic left tend to be elitists; unabashed career–
ists, they gravitate toward academic professionalism and rarefied
speculation. By contrast, cultural studies advocates are populists, en–
sconced in the less prestigious universities and committed not to the
didactic seminar, but to the explicit politicization of the classroom. The
typical academic task of the one is to read a single text, usually a written
one, deeply and intensively, while for the other it is to jump from one
(often visual) text to another, making startling, if not always sensible,
connections between them. If deconstructionists and other high theorists
find allies in departments of philosophy, cultural studies reaches out to so–
ciology, anthropology, film studies, communication, and schools of
education. For the former, multiculturalism was primarily epistemologi–
cal, rooted in a theory about the perspective of the other; for the latter,
multiculturalism is more like the ethnically-balanced slate of a political
machine. Cultural studies enthusiasts more likely to write about rap mu–
sic, Malcolm X or Nike commercials than to comment on de Man or
Heidegger.
There is a missing generation in cultural studies. Some of its promi–
nent representatives, such as Stanley Aronowitz, were political activists in
the 1960s, or even earlier. Others are much younger: Andrew Ross and
Michael Berube were children when Berkeley erupted. Cultural studies
