[csaa-forum] Is cultural studies inherently left-wing?
Mark Gibson
M.Gibson at murdoch.edu.au
Wed Jan 5 21:50:27 CST 2005
Just a few thoughts on Terry's provocation (and I should confess that
I saw it before he put it up on the list). It seems to me, Terry,
that there are at least five different propositions in what you are
saying, not all of them consistent with each other:
* That the terms 'left' and 'right' have become meaningless.
Cultural studies should therefore stop using them, including as a way
of thinking about itself.
* That the terms 'left' and 'right' are not meaningless, but the
left is sinking. Cultural studies should think about finding other
platforms before it is taken down with the rest of the ship.
* That the terms 'left' and 'right' are not meaningless, but
cultural studies' self-identification as 'left' has led it to develop
a fixed template for analysis which screens out important phenomena.
It should give up this self-identification in order to overcome the
problem.
* That the terms 'left' and 'right' are not meaningless, but
cultural studies has used them too narrowly. It has tended, in
particular, to see capitalism as inherently conservative. This has
closed off recognition of the potential for the market to offer
'progressive' possibilities.
* That the terms 'left' and 'right' are not meaningless, but cultural
studies has been too concerned with a purity of left political
positions. It has put principle before pragmatism, marginalising
itself from any serious input into mainstream political processes.
So one question is which one is it? The first, at least, cannot be
held together with the rest.
Another one, which might help us to see the implications: who would
we consider as a 'conservative' CS practitioner? Who might we be
sharing a session with at the next CSAA conference? Are we thinking
Michael Duffy or -- aagh -- Keith Windschuttle? (The latter has, in
fact, been tried -- that forum on journalism with Catharine Lumby and
John Hartley at UQ. From the reports I heard, it didn't have quite
the benefits that Button suggests the Labor party might gain from in
opening up its forums. But maybe the problem was precisely that it
was framed as a battle between a 'left' CS and a 'right' opponent?)
In a previous exchange with Terry, I suggested that some might want
to claim lefts which are not indebted to Marxism (his point 1) --
feminist, post-colonial etc. He responded that, from an outsiders
perspective at least, they are clearly from the same gene pool. That
may be right, but I think cultural studies does have another gene
pool -- what Terry Eagleton once described, in reference to the
Mayday Manifesto of Raymond Williams, E.P. Thompson and Stuart Hall,
as a 'liberal socialism'.
I don't agree with Laurie that 'of course' the roots of CS are in
Marx and the Frankfurt School. It's worth remembering that CS was
given its first institutional form by Richard Hoggart, who no-one has
ever seen as having any serious debt to Marxism. CS does have some
non-Marxist tributaries -- Laurie's point about Mass Observation is
a good one. I've long been interested in the possibility of
revitalising those. Local Hoggart equivalents might be found,
perhaps, in Craig McGregor or Donald Horne (who was in fact invited
to speak at the first CSAA conference, I think). I don't know Terry
if you'd accept that as an alternative way of addressing the problems
you perceive?
-- Mg
>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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>
>_______________________________________
>
>csaa-forum
>discussion list of the cultural studies association of australasia
>
>www.csaa.asn.au
>
>change your subscription details at
>http://lists.cdu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/csaa-forum
>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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--
Dr Mark Gibson
Lecturer, Cultural Studies
School of Media Communication and Culture
Murdoch University
Western Australia 6150
Editor, Continuum - Journal of Media and Cultural Studies
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/10304312.html
Convenor, 'Everyday Transformations - The Twenty-First Century Quotidian'
Perth/Fremantle, December 9-11, 2004
http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/cfel/csaa_conference.htm
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