The Progressive Elements of Cultural Studies

One of the primary objectives of Cultural Studies is to espouse working class politics. This is based on Marx’s Theory of Base and Superstructure wherein the economic base dictates the politics and culture of a given society. Working class politics is biased towards the proletariat and engages in formulating and practicing theories to foment social change. Cultural studies also aims to study culture or how people live their everyday lives based on material circumstances and specific contentions.

In this framework, culture is considered as part of the general mode of production. This mode of production consists of the forces of production and relations in production. These two aspects are constantly in contradiction with each other. At a certain level of development, the relations of production will be an obstacle to the progress of the forces of production. Louis Althusser goes on to assert that there are cultural conditions that reproduce the mode of production in the realm of culture.

The gradual turn of events led Cultural Studies to have two tendencies which have become subjects of debate and study. Cultural Studies took a leaning towards being institutionalized. In this manner, challenging the existing system became less of a fact because this critical theory gradually became accommodated, if not subsumed by the dominant system. There was an emphasis on functionalism in the study of social institutions atomized or taken as a whole. It has been observed that the struggles won in this framework are only tactical ones.

The leaning towards semiotics and the disregard for the element of class was also pervasive. All actions may be a symbol of resistance. However, to determine the concrete gains of a struggle, class and class analysis are indispensable.

Cultural Studies’ tendency to base its study on identity instead of class was also met with resistance from scholars.

This critical theory also recognizes the culture of consent and the culture of resistance. Through the lens of mass culture both have become pasteurized and hegemonized. Through the wide proliferation of information, the masses are taught to imbibe the ideology of the dominant as they gradually forget their own problems. This is the basis of the masses’ consent.

Aijaz Ahmad points out that the culture of resistance is very difficult to generate and detect. For instance, there are many ‘nationalisms’ in the world but not all ‘nationalisms’ are liberatory.

Cultural Studies takes on the problem of representation. While Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak note that intellectuals can not speak for the masses and that speaking for them is a form of violence, Mao Tse Tung and Frantz Fanon believe that intellectuals can speak for the masses only if they immerse and integrate themselves among their ranks. Moving forward, Caroline Hau points out that the question of intellectuals learning from the masses is not an epistemological one but an ontological one. It is about the being of intellectuals and not what they know.

The debate between late capitalism and monocapitalism in the framework of cultural exchange is also one of the points of interest in Cultural Studies. The concept of late capitalism was coined by Ernest Mandel. For him, capitalism is the only mode of production existent because pre-capitalist modes of production are not existent anymore. In this manner, cultural exchange is easier because of the existence of space to problematize ethnicity and to express culture. This may be characterized by the ‘global village’ where there is purportedly no discrimination and exchange is natural among all cultures as if everyone involved considers all cultures equal to their own.

Monocapitalism is a Leninist-Maoist concept that emphasizes the existing contradiction between hegemony and those who are oppressed. Monocapitalism recognizes the state as the manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. In the field of economics, this concept notes that the world is in the final stage of capitalism, or imperialism. Proof of this is the chronic crisis of which Third World countries are not immune to. Furthermore, the bilateral dominance of Britain and the USA during the invasion of Iraq as well as the political crisis of soft powers in the current multipolar world underline the need to instigate conflicts to feed military-industrial complexes.

In terms of knowledge sharing, International Property Rights preserve the hegemony’s money-making prowess of commercializing information, technology, and breakthroughs while safeguarding their own. Cuba has come up with a program for eliminating tuberculosis but international pharmaceutical industries worth billions would not even cast a nonchalant glance on this medical milestone that can potentially benefit millions of people.

Sans institutionalization and assimilation into the mainstream, cultural Studies, as a framework, posits progressive notions of culture grounded on the economic base and struggle based on class interests.