Date:    Fri, 16 Sep 1994 14:58:24 -0400 (EDT)
From:    david wall <dwall@falcon.bgsu.edu>
Subject: institutionalized revolutionaries
To:      sterne jonathan <jsterne@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
cc:      badsubjects@uclink.berkeley.edu
........................................................................

In reply to Jonathan Sterne's comments regarding the Birmingham CCCS:

In short, while race and gender are defining characteristics of this
culture, beneath that, and informing and constructing those dominant
ideologies of race and gender, is the knotty issue of Class. Without
understanding the economically determined nature of relationships we
will never really begin to approach a solution to the problems embodied
in our racial and gendered relationships. I certainly don't mean this
in a reductive way; I don't for a second wish to imply that race and
gender are irrelevent or meaningless categories, which are *only*
economic in nature, quite the opposite. My argument is that
economically determined categories such as race and gender define us,
and our social relations, in absolutely fundamental ways, and for that
very reason we need to understand the ways in which those categories
themselves were and are the product of a new paradigm in human
relations brought about by the rise of capitalism, and we all know what
a long, strange trip it's been since then. This then, to finally
attempt to make this relevant to Jonathan Sterne's posting, is what
makes the work which has been, and continues to be, done by the
Birmingham school important. When JS refers to the CCCS work in "youth
culture" and "pop culture" he is missing the point that those
categories are examined, and to be examined, within the context of a
*class-based* culture. In isolating those examples he seems to
imply/assume that "youth culture" and "pop culture" exist as distinct
categories, free-floating formations in some neutral wider culture.
Culture, then, is defined by the fact that those distinct categories
exist within it, rather than by the relations which are economically
established between those categories. In this way the whole becomes
only the sum of its parts. The CCCS emphasis on class is important
because it deals with the determining factors which give rise to our
perceptions of race and gender, ie. a working class mass being
exploited by an owning class elite. "Youth" and "Pop" do, and can only,
exist within a culture based upon the notion of consumption; these
categories are clearly formations of capitalism a smuch as "race" and
"gender" are. There's no such thing as Pop culture wihtout a mass to
consume that culture thereby making it "Popular." (I realize that
popular can carry also a negative connotation in the sense of bad or
cheap etc, but why should that be so? Is it because the
economically-determined relations which define that culture as pop,
define the mass in the same way?) There's no way to create that which
the mass will consume without adequate means of production and
distribution. Production and distribution -- as we know it -- rely on,
of course, capitalism. I realize that Jonathan's posting was far more
substantive than my anal obsessing on his Birmingham School comments
would seem to demonstrate, however the articulation of class is
fundamentally important, particularly in the context of a dominant
ideology which tells us repeatedly that we live in a "classless"
society.

__________

Date: Fri, 16 Sep 1994 15:08:26 -0500 (CDT)
From: sterne jonathan <jsterne@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Birmingham and claims of legitimation
To: badsubjects@uclink.berkeley.edu
Cc: dwall@falcon.bgsu.edu
........................................................................

I agree with the spirit of what you've said, David. I've read quite a
lot of the Birmingham material, and I was not intending to get into a
debate about the _content_ of the CCCS work. Sure, it's important to
read, precisely because it emphasizes class in important ways, and also
because much of it is good, solid, interdisciplinary and politically
minded scholarship. But my argument was not for a dismissal of the
CCCS, but rather stood as a challenge to the notion that the CCCS are
the first or only people to do this, and therefore must stand at the
"centre" of a cultural studies curriculum: an assertion found
frequently (in either implicit or explicit form) in the writings of
current and former Birmingham people, in the work of those legitimating
their own current work in the name of Birmingham, and frequently used
in the service of legitimating current work. To cite three examples: 1.
in one of his books, John Clarke makes a point of providing the reader
with a bibliography of the work he did at Birmingham or with Birmingham
people -- all to demonstrate his ties to the Centre. 2. Cary Nelson, in
his article "Always Already Cultural Studies: Two Conferences and a
Manifesto" explicitly and repeatedly states that the one thing a person
must do in order to say he or she does cultural studies is engage with
the Birmingham school. 3. Tony Bennett, in his "Being in the True of
Cultural Studies" takes for granted the work at the Centre as the
origin and synecdoche for all the work currently done under the name
"cultural studies" -- as if one could generalize about the current
state of things by looking at one specific example. Now, all three of
the above authors also argue at one point or another that cultural
studies is "radically contextual." If indeed that is the case, then one
ought to start reading based on what context demands, and not based on
allegiance to traditions.

As far as Birmingham goes, I want to stress that I like their work.
Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams are wonderful examples of what a leftist
academic can do. BUT, they were neither the first nor the only people
to take class seriously in the study of mass culture, the politics of
distribution, the construction of identity, or the politics of culture
more broadly. Since the advent of American second-wave feminism, there
have been socialist voices within the movement -- that they've been
written out of many women's studies curriculua does not invalidate
their work; in the 1960s and 1970s, a group of radical Marxist
Geographers associated with the journal _Antipode_ began asking serious
questions about class and culture; the Subaltern Group of Indian
historians has been interested in precisely questions of class in the
production of modern India; there's a long-standing and interventionist
Marxist tradition in Anthropology; and then, of course, you've got the
other well known Marxist traditions -- Marx, Gramsci, and the Frankfurt
School to name three. Now, why is it that out this huge list of
traditions, the people associated with or using the name of the
Birmingham school feel so compelled to privilege BIRMINGHAM over all
these other intellectual "traditions"? Why is it that I get Stuart Hall
et al in class, but have to go outside of the classroom (or the field)
to read Marx, if we're talking about class? Don't you think a
familiarity with books like _Capital_ and _The German Ideology_ might
be just as central to understanding class as a familiarity with _The
Uses of Literacy_? I'm not saying that we should throw out or forget
the CCCS. I'm saying that the CCCS should not be put on a pedastal,
that it should be considered in CONTEXT and that it ought to not be a
single orienting axis for the critical study of American culture.
Stuart Hall argues something similar in his article "Cultural Studies
and its Theoretical Legacies" in _Cultural Studies_.  Finally, rather
than reading all these personal accounts of "what Birmingham meant to
me," I'd really rather see a decent historical or sociological
perspective. Carolyn Steedman starts off in that direction in her piece
in the same reader.

Finally, to nitpick, I would not say, a priori, that race and gender
are the defining axes of difference in American society -- rather they
are three among many. I would also not say that identity -- youth,
popular, whatever -- is simply a matter of consumption, despite the
sort of "consumption-happiness" that has resurfaced in the work of
writers like Angela McRobbie and David Morley. Finally, I don't
differentiate between popular and not-popular culture. I agree, it's a
fabrication. However, "popular," as a term, figures heavily in
Birmingham's vocabulary. That's one reason I'm in Communications -- I
don't have to have arguments about canons or "high/low" anymore -- I
can just study things. On the other hand, I now have to argue with
empiricists....


--Jonathan, who would prefer to display other kinds of cultural capital
  to legitimate himself, and has never shaken Stuart Hall's hand,
  although he'd be glad to.