[csaa-forum] Cultural studies and left politics: the state of play

[Terry Flew]

Its always interesting to see who is in the office in January, clearing out 
the filing cabinet and reorganising the bookcase. I was worried when we 
hadn't heard from Jason Jacobs, but now Jason is in, so it may be useful to 
do a half-time (or, given the season, perhaps tea break) summary of the 
issues raised so far in response to my earlier post.

Liz Jacka raised an important point about whether there is an inherent 
problem in seeing the humanities in its entirety through the lens of 
cultural studies, and whether the whole left/right problematic is a false 
one, arising from a tendency for cultural studies people to self-dramatise, 
and "feel the pain of everyone". In sending the earlier post to an online 
journal, I got feedback from the sub-editor questioning the use of 
'Cultural Studies academics' (with upper case), as compared to 'academics 
who study culture' (all lower case). And, yeah, I can be a communications 
theorist (they study that in Business schools!), a humanities scholar, a 
researcher into the creative industries etc.

But cultural studies (or CS, in upper case) is nonetheless an interesting 
test case for these arguments, partly because it is prominent in Australia 
(we are internationally competitive at it, as they say),  because it and 
its variants (media studies, communications etc.) have moved up the 
humanities food chain very quickly over the last two decades, and it has 
been the most overt in seeing theory and politics as deeply intertwined. 
Perhaps also, contra Ned Rossiter, cultural studies may be a bit like the 
Hotel California - people check out any time they like, but they never 
fully leave. Certainly CSAA conferences, such as Mark Gibson's successful 
Murdoch Uni. event, continue to get an impressive turn-out.

Australian cultural studies conferences are certainly not burdened with the 
'pledge of allegiance' (or pledge of non-allegiance) politics that seem to 
characterise some of the big US events, such as the 'Crossroads' conference 
in Champaign-Urbana. But the globalisation of cultural studies through the 
academic publishing market is, if anything, tightening the linkage between 
cultural studies and a version of left politics. I have with me Cultural 
studies: From Theory to Action, edited by Pepi Leistyna from University of 
Massachusetts and published by Blackwell. This collection is notable from 
having 70 pages of additional resources - not the bibliography, but a 
collection of activist Web sites (19 pages), journals that 'go against the 
grain' (17 pages), and suggestions for further reading (34 pages, or, at 
about 40 books per page, over 1200 books). At one level, such a cataloguing 
exercise is very impressive. At the same time, there is something 
relentlessly monotheistic, and a bit depressing, about such an enterprise.

I find Liz's point about writers such as Gerard Henderson presenting an 
'equal time' case for fight-wing views in the humanities an interesting 
one. Curiously, it reminded me of the arguments of about a decade ago for 
greater cultural representativeness in Australian TV dramas. For those who 
remember these debates, the best arguments were not the quota-based ones 
(e.g. x per cent of Australians are of Greek background, therefore x per 
cent of lead roles etc. etc.), but rather the ones which argued that more 
culturally diverse casting would give you better programs that more people 
would want to watch. So maybe an undergraduate cultural studies unit would 
benefit from students reading, say, Samuel Huntington's The Clash of 
Civilizations - which is definitely a book about culture - even if they 
ultimately disagreed with all of its arguments. They would at least know 
what they are disagreeing with. At the same time, the catch here is that 
the demand for political performativity denies the change to be a 'real' 
intellectual with good ideas, as compared to 'left-wing' or 'right-wing' 
ones. Is Claudia Karvan an actress or a 'Greek-Australian' actress? Michael 
Moore makes 'left-wing films', whereas Martin Scorsese just makes films etc.

I think that my beef is not necessarily about cultural studies being 
'left-wing'per se, but more of a sense that, if being critical is central 
to the enterprise,  then maybe there's a need to be better at it, which 
does need ideas drawn from a wider range of sources. From the Australian 
perspective, I suspect that the 'macro' driver of this is wondering why the 
political skills of John Howard have been so greatly underestimated by his 
critics. While not wanting to play the antipodean game of unfavourably 
comparing something local to trends in Britain, it is notable that the left 
in Britain always took Thatcherism seriously as a political-intellectual 
project, and of course cultural studies academics played a leading role in 
all of that. Whereas in Australia, I think people who actually know a bit 
better concede too much, out of some vague, counter-productive sense of 
solidarity, to the Philip Adams-Bob Ellis polemics about Howard being a 
mean little man with a 1950s mindset.

By contrast, I look at how Howard and Downer have positioned Australia in 
relation to the Asian tsunami crisis, and I see very contemporary politics 
being played out. Since the foundations of Howard's political success have 
been primarily in the Australian suburbs, including a lot of suburbs where 
cultural studies is taught on the local campus, I think I'd be hoping for 
something more analytically sound than gestural disdain, particularly since 
Australian cultural studies has long claimed to know interesting things 
about suburban cultures. For example, it seems useful to me to think about 
the First Home Owners Grant as being as much a cultural policy (suburban 
affluence, aspirationalism, mortgages, growing demand for tradespeople, 
outdoor BBQs etc) as an economic policy.

Which brings up Mark Gibson's point about whether the problem is with the 
mapping of left/right onto the intellectual terrain of cultural studies, 
and Warwick Mules' related point that, rather than defensively jumping at 
whatever Andrew Bolt, Keith Windschuttle or whoever say in the popular 
media, the best responses would be to demonstrate the scholarship, rigour 
and intellectual curiosity of the best traditions of academic work, 
particularly in response to the corporatising university. To take Warwick's 
point first, I must admit I often go AWOL when the 'Enlightenment values' 
debate starts up, as I'm seriously not sure if I am for or against them 
(perhaps,as Mao Zedong allegedly said about the impact of the French 
Revolution on humanity, its too early to tell yet!). I think the catch here 
is not so much the corporatising university, although its definitely 
relevant, as the democratising of access to higher education, which 
generates a related need to find easier ways to get the bulk of students 
through a program (such as the very pedagogical cultural studies 
textbooks). If I had a 40% failure rate for an undergraduate unit because I 
really wanted the students to really extend themselves intellectually, I 
think the Director of Teaching and Learning (sorry, Learning and Teaching) 
may want to have a few words. That said, I think that the sorts of values 
Warwick refers to have been making a comeback anyway, and have as many 
supporters on the political right as the left, under the guise of the 'New 
Humanism', which was discussed recently in Continuum 18:2 (2004).

In terms of Mark's five possible ways of interpreting what I am saying 
about left/right and cultural studies, I think my own answer is in the 
territory of 3, 4 and 5 - left self-identification for cultural studies is 
too self-marginalising, loses insight into too many interesting 'cultural' 
things, and generates too automatic an analysis of complex phenomena. 
Mark's option 2 - that the political left is a shot bird - is certainly an 
animating concern. I have an image here of Family Ties 2005, of the 
cultural studies academic out the front talking about hegemony and 
'Policing the Crisis', possibly even using overhead transparencies (the 
horror!), while the class sit at the back of the theatre trading shares and 
donating to the Hillsong Church through their mobile phone/PDA devices. I 
don't think that the broader salience of 'left' and 'right' is declining, 
although definitions shift considerably over time and across countries. It 
is interesting to note, for instance, that it is only really from the 1960s 
that 'right' and 'left' become meaningful ways of categorising the 
Republican and Democratic parties in the U.S., with factors such as 
geography and ethnicity being much more important markers of the two 
parties prior to then.

[By the way, Mark, the event you mentioned was the 'Media Wars' seminar, 
which ran at QUT in November 1998, where John Hartley, Catharine Lumby, 
Graeme Turner and Keith Windschuttle shared the podium. The event is well 
described by Graeme Turner in Journalism 1(3) (2000), who saw it as a 
failure, albeit an interesting one. All papers except Windschuttle's can be 
found in Media International Australia No. 90 (1999). Keith's contributions 
can be found in various issues of Quadrant. Interestingly, if the seminar 
saw few differences resolved, the dinner afterwards resolved even less, and 
probably wasn't even an interesting failure.]

Anyway, tea break is over, and the new ball is due. I'm interested to see 
who is padding up to go in next ...

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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