[csaa-forum] Is cultural studies inherently left-wing?
liz jacka
liz.jacka at uts.edu.au
Wed Jan 5 15:55:36 CST 2005
Dear Terry
What is a "progressive political outcome" and how do you tell?
Liz Jacka
On Wednesday, January 5, 2005, at 11:29 AM, Terry Flew wrote:
> Fellow CSAA members
>
> Here is a conversation starter that I wanted to post for 2005.
>
> Cheers
> Terry
>
> __________________________
>
> IS CULTURAL STUDIES INHERENTLY LEFT-WING?
>
> Terry Flew
>
> Cultural studies is commonly seen, by both its friends and its
> critics, as an intellectual adjunct of the political left. For its
> critics, which in Australia include newspaper columnists such as
> Andrew Bolt, writers such as Keith Windschuttle, and academics such as
> Gregory Melleuish, cultural studies presents the spectre of obscure
> and complex theory and political correctness which, they argue, is in
> danger of strangling intellectual diversity in the arts and > humanities.
>
> Leading cultural studies academics, such as Graeme Turner and Elspeth
> Probyn, have responded to these polemical arguments by pointing to
> both the diversity and the social value of ideas emanating from
> Australian cultural studies. It is also pointed out that cultural
> studies is one of the relatively small number of academic fields in
> which Australian researchers can claim genuine, internationally
> recognised intellectual leadership.
>
> Yet there is a deeply rooted tension in these responses. On the one
> hand, there clearly are a diverse range of positions, perspectives,
> and range of issues considered within cultural studies, and this
> diversity would be well known for those working within the field. On
> the other hand, cultural studies academics have consistently drawn
> attention to the alignment of their work with left politics. If the
> gist of the critics' arguments is that one cannot do cultural studies
> research if one has have political views other than those of the left,
> then they would seem to have a point.
>
> Cultural studies academics have on many occasions affirmed their
> affinity with a left-wing politics. Stuart Hall's observation that the
> purpose of cultural studies was to develop 'organic intellectuals' who
> could critique capitalist hegemony, on behalf of 'emerging historical
> movements' that possessed the numerical clout to challenge capitalism,
> provides a template for many of the introductory textbooks and readers
> that attempt to define what cultural studies is. More recently, at the
> 'Crossroads in Cultural Studies' conference in Champaign-Urbana,
> Illinois, the conference organisers insisted that, for cultural
> studies academics and researchers, 'to remain silent is to be in
> collusion with this (Bush) regime'.
>
> I should make it clear that I am not arguing that academics working in
> the field of cultural studies should not be politically engaged.
> Similarly, the issue here is not whether a gathering of cultural
> studies academics may tend to have a left-of-centre political leaning.
> Groups of people, whether they be teachers, graziers, building
> workers, real estate agents, talk back radio hosts, or retired
> military officers, may well tend in a certain direction politically,
> and Cass Sunstein's 'law of group polarisation' suggests that this is
> to some extent inevitable.
>
> My question, rather, is whether cultural studies as an academic field
> and an area of teaching, research and scholarship, is inherently
> left-wing? By this, I am referring to three inter-related points:
>
> 1. That the theoretical and methodological resources of cultural
> studies are such that they are not comprehensible in the absence of a
> left-wing political standpoint;
> 2. That the degree of alignment of arguments within cultural studies
> to a left-wing political standpoint is such that you can determine the
> intellectual validity of intellectual arguments on the basis of their
> relationship to left-wing politics;
> 3. That if one did not hold to left-wing political views, it would be
> impossible in principle to have one's work considered to be within the
> field of cultural studies, however much it dealt with the study of
> culture.
>
> If these three points have come to be constitutive of what cultural
> studies is and does, and what it means to be a cultural studies
> research and academic, then I would suggest ten reasons why
> identifying cultural studies as an intellectual field which takes
> inherently left-wing political positions is unwise, even for those
> sympathetic to such left-wing arguments and principles.
>
> The first problem with defining cultural studies as inherently
> left-wing is that, historically, it links the field to the 'big
> theories' of the anti-capitalist left, most notably Marxism, in ways
> that, in practice, many cultural studies practitioners would not agree
> with. While the origins of cultural studies are certainly linked to
> the rise of the 'New Left' in the 1960s and 1970s, its relationship to
> Marxism has always been a tense one. Pioneer theorists such as Stuart
> Hall have always emphasised the extent to which, in its particular
> focus upon popular culture and the complexities of ideology, there has
> always been a history of critical argument with the Marxist
> intellectual and political tradition. At the same time, more orthodox
> left-wing academics, such as critical political economists, have long
> expressed the concern that, in its focus upon the pleasures of
> consumption and popular culture, cultural studies is not left-wing
> enough.
>
> This bring me to the second problem, which is that defining cultural
> studies as 'left-wing' in advance can cause a loss of insight into the
> complexities of culture itself, by flattening everything onto a
> pre-existing political power grid. For popular culture will never be
> left-wing, however you define it, because most people won't pay enough
> money in a capitalist economy to receive the products of left culture.
> At the same time, it is not inherently right-wing, either, as the
> significant number of people with left politics in the media and
> entertainment industries attests to. Historically, cultural studies
> theorists have dealt with this by saying that these media and cultural
> forms are contradictory, thereby leaving the left/right categories in
> place and fitting popular culture around them. But I no longer think
> that this argument is adequate. Programs such as South Park, for
> example, cheerfully satirise people and positions from across the
> political spectrum.
>
> Third, approaching your subject-matter from a pre-given political
> standpoint will inevitably weaken the analysis, by losing sight of
> important insights that don't fit the established framework. One of
> the best books on Australian politics in recent years has been Judith
> Brett's Australian Liberalism and the Moral Middle Class. Brett's book
> starts from the commendable premise that, rather than assuming that we
> already know what the Liberal Party of Australia stands for (big
> business, the middle class, political conservatism etc.), researchers
> should work through the documentary and archival records of the
> Liberal Party to identify important and neglected strands of the
> Party's history, as well as reasons why it has been so successful in
> Australian politics. Brett's point in doing this has been to draw
> attention to how little is known about the Liberal Party' history
> particularly when compared to the Australian Labor Party because
> political history tends to be predominantly written either by Labor
> supporters or by their left critics.
>
> Importantly, Brett is able to separate her analysis of the foundations
> of John Howard's current political success (such as his ability to tap
> into popular nationalist sentiments across the spectrum of Australian
> society) from the question of how she feels personally about the
> policies of the Howard Liberal government. In doing so, Judith Brett
> seems to have been one of the few to overcome what has been a
> collective clogged artery among Australian humanities intellectuals.
>
> Fourth, a left-wing oriented cultural studies may be on the wrong side
> of history. This is not simply because conservative governments are
> being returned to power in the United States and Australia, but
> because of its way of constructing the political spectrum. The
> concepts of left and right have their origins in the politics of the
> pre-revolutionary France of the late 18th century, and sit very oddly
> in other parts of the world, particularly in a post-Cold War
> environment. Recent elections in Eastern Europe and the nations and
> regions of the former Soviet Union (notably Ukraine) are the obvious
> examples of this.
>
> Fifth, the political left is prone, as is the political right, to
> overgeneralising about contemporary cultural phenomenon. The rise of
> spiritualism in various forms, in apparent opposition to secularism,
> is a tendency widely taken to be associated with the rise of the
> political right, but it has many manifestations, including New Age
> spirituality, progressive Christianity, the rise of Buddhism in the
> West etc., which may tilt in other political directions. Similarly,
> the demand for greater parent choice in school education is often
> presented as a rejection of the state school system driven by
> consumerist greed, but clearly also involves a demand for the
> decentralisation of power and a closer connection between parents,
> teachers and curriculum that could be seen, in other contexts, as
> being about democratising eduction.
>
> Sixth, there is a tendency to assume that support for more
> market-based approaches to public policy is synonymous with political
> conservatism. Yet in many parts of the world, economic liberalisation
> and a greater role for the commercial market has been associated with
> the relaxing or lifting of authoritarian political controls. The
> development of commercial media in China may be the most conspicuous
> instance of this, but there are enough instances of this worldwide to
> suggest that the idea of 'commercial democracy', and a link between a
> greater role for commercial markets and political democratisation is
> far from simply a fantasy of the political right.
>
> Seventh, sometimes the market may be more attuned to a progressive
> political outcome. While the cultural policy debate of the 1990s
> challenged some of the reflex anti-statism found in the 'resistance'
> strands of cultural studies, it arguably did so by reinforcing a
> notion that governments were best equipped to deliver cultural
> democracy. As such, it was perhaps too focused upon the official
> institutions of public culture (museums, art galleries etc.),
> middle-class forms of cultural consumption (public broadcasters rather
> than commercial media or pay TV), and a 'top-down' understanding of
> how culture is created and cultural resources distributed. What is
> apparent is that, not only is there a lot of 'bottom-up' culture being
> created and distributed from multiple sites, much of it commercially,
> but that the cultural or creative industries are not simply a handful
> of global corporate behemoths living off the copyrighted culture of
> others. Indeed, digital media technologies, by blurring lines between
> producers and consumers, may indeed be harbingers of an upsurge in
> 'do-it-yourself' (DIY) cultural production and distribution.
>
> Eighth, what is considered to be 'left' in cultural studies is well to
> the left of current party politics, in Australia or elsewhere. Had a
> Cultural Studies Party (CUSP) ran in the 2004 Australian Federal
> Election, its platform would presumably have been well to the left of
> that of a Mark Latham-led Labor party, or indeed any of the state
> Labor governments. Perhaps it would be more aligned to a 'party of
> principle' such as the Australian Greens, but the evidence, both
> historically and in the current electoral climate, suggests that about
> 10 per cent of the population, at best, are likely to direct their
> votes in such a way. For the other 90 per cent, tax and public
> spending, economic prosperity and national security will continue to
> shape how they vote, and, at this point in time, the conservative
> parties are delivering a stronger message to more people at present.
>
> Ninth, what is considered to be left-wing or right-wing changes
> considerably over time. Some discussion ensues recently on the
> Cultural Studies Association of Australasia mailing list on whether
> Herald-Sun columnist Andrew Bolt was a Hawke government staffer in the
> 1980s, and whether this 'left' past was contradictory with his current
> conservative viewpoints. In the 1980s, no-one considered the Hawke
> government to be left-wing, with people on the left tending to be
> either reluctant supporters or vocal critics. The Clinton
> Administration in the U.S. was, of course, denounced as 'neo-liberal'
> by the left while it governed in the 1990s, until a conservative
> republican administration was elected. Even the Whitlam Labor
> government of the 1970s, seemingly the paragon of Australian leftism,
> was denounced at the time by a significant minority as being
> right-wing and pro-capitalist.
>
> Finally, if you have left-wing political views and teach cultural
> studies, listen to your critics. Rather than denouncing people who
> disagree, or trying to ignore them which won't work, as they are in
> many cases better at accessing the popular media engage them in
> dialogue and debate. If your own arguments are strong, this experience
> should reinforce them. If they are not, it is best to find out why
> not, by subjecting them to people with differing political and
> intellectual views.
>
> Former Labor cabinet minister John Button, in his diagnosis of what is
> wrong with the Australian Labor Party, Beyond Belief, suggested to his
> local ALP branch that, rather than inviting yet anther Labor Senator
> to speak to the branch, they should instead invite Tony Abbott. His
> point was that the turnout would be high, the debate would almost
> certainly be lively, and, hopefully, those who attended would leave
> with a clearer sense of why they were ALP members. It is certainly
> better than strategies of denial, dismissal or exclusion of opposing
> points of view. Needless to say, John Button's ALP branch didn't take
> up his suggestion. But its not a bad one for that.
>
> Intellectual life benefits from the vigorous exchange of a diversity
> of views, not the restatement of established orthodoxies. Rather than
> automatically assuming that cultural studies is a left-wing
> intellectual field, it may be time to ask what a cultural studies that
> is not self-evidently left-wing may look like.
>
> Dr. Terry Flew
> Senior Lecturer and Discipline Head, Media and Communication
> Acting Head of Communication Design
> Course Co-ordinator, Creative Industries postgraduate coursework
> degree program
> Reviews Editor, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies
>
> Creative Industries Faculty
> Queensland University of Technology
>
> GPO Box 2434
> Brisbane Queensland 4001
>
> Location: The Hub Z6-510 Kelvin Grove Urban Village
> Phone: 61-07-3864 8188
> Fax: 61-07-3864 8195
> Mobile: 0405 070 980
> Email: t.flew at qut.edu.au
> Research profile:
> http://www.creativeindustries.qut.com/people/staff/
> next.jsp?userid=flew&secid=Introduction
>
> CRICOS No: 00213J
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