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Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy:Is Anybody Else Bored with this Debate?

LAWRENCE GROSSBERG'

fhere is something disingenuous inthe title of Nicholas Garnham's critiqueof cultural studies. The famihal alterna-tives—reconciliation or divorce—implythat cultural studies and politicaleconomy were, at one time, "married"and, having recetitly separated, mustnow decide what to do.- But culturalstudies and polifical economy were neverso intimate; after all, intimacy is itself apowerful social determinant. They weremore like cousins who tolerated eachother. And Garnham's essay reads like itis "addressed to the failings of a way-ward child who is seeti to be in need ofstern parental (patriarchal) discipline."'Garnham is correct that cultural studieswriters commonly and almost ritualisti-cally distinguish themselves from their"reductionist" cousins. But he fails toacknowledge that every few years, somepolitical economist—usually one in-volved with Media, Culture, and Society inBritain—writes the latest version of theirattack on cultural studies, although thearticles have not changed much sincethe mid-1970s. And they raise the sametwo criticisms:^ First, because culturalstudies ignores the institutions of cul-tural production, it celebrates popularculture and gives up any oppositionalrole; second, because cultural studies ig-nores economics, it is incapable of under-standing the real structures of power,domination, and oppression in the con-temporary world,

I want not only to contest these criti-

Lawrence Grossberg holds the Morris DavisChair of Communication Stwiies at the Uni-versity of North Carolina.

cisms, hut also to challenge (iarnham'shistory of the relation between culturalstudies and political economy, for theyhave always been divided over the termsof an adequate theory ot culture andpower. The issue has always been howone thinks about the relationships orlinks between the different domains(forms and structures of practices) ofsocial life. Cultural studies did not rejectpolitical economy per se^discussions ofc:apitalism have always figured centrallvin its work; rather it rejected the waycertain political economists practice po-litical economy. At the same time, I agreethat there are particular positions in cul-tural studies that have become too cel-ebratory of culture, in part because thecommitment to the local and the specifichave overshadowed any sense ot thebroader social context of unequal powerrelations. And 1 agree that there hasbeen a tendency in some cultural studiesto ayoid detailed attention to the eco-nt)mic, in part because ot the tear otfalling back into reductionist models, Bulwithout a careful analysis of these devel-opments and their place within thebroader assumptive and politicalgrounds of cultural studies, the yahie ofsuch criticisms all but disappears,

(iarnham's argumeni uses a numberot ccjnjoined discursive strategies thathave become increasingly common weap-ons in political discourse (not onlv of theright against the left, hut of fractions ofthe left against one another). First, tosome extent, Garnham is criticizing cul-tural studies for being cultural studiesrather than political economy—lor hold-ing positions that ii admits lo holding—although (Tarnhams descriplions art

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usuallyjust enough off the mark to makethe positions sound silly. Thus, it is truethat "cultural studies sees gender andrace along with other potential markersof difference, as alternative structures ofdomination" to class, although I doubtthat many people in cultural studieswould argue that such differences are"in no way determined by those of class."In fact, what they are likely to argue isthat any difference, and how it is lived—whether race, gender, class, sexuality,and so forth—is articulated to and byother differences. And the ways in whichthey are articulated make a difference inthe formation of specific capitalisms (inparticular countries, for example) ratherthan to some abstract capitalism. Garn-ham's political economy becomes ahis-torical at just the points that matter: Ifcapitalist societies (rather than modes ofproduction) are variable, how does oneunderstand those variations? Why is itthat the USA is not the UK or Japan?These are not just superstructural prob-lems, but issues about the ways socialrelations develop beyond a simple bi-nary distinction between owners of themeans of production and waged labor.But Garnham is unable to consider suchquestions precisely because he refuses toengage the question of articulation,which is, of course, the principal way inwhich the relations between production,consumption, politics, and ideology aretheorized in cultural studies.

Second, his interpretation and indict-ment of cultural studies depends on whatI would describe as sampling by conve-nience. The arguments of particular au-thors are selectively presented, and therange of work in cultural studies is alter-natively narrowed (systematically ignor-ing others) or expanded beyond thescope of any recognizable notion of cul-tural studies. An example of the latter:Garnham's judgment of the "baleful"educational influence of cultural studiesdepends upon an expansion of the ter-rain to include those who simply equatecultural studies witb the study of popu-lar culture sans politics. An example of

the former: While arguing that culturalstudies ignores economics, Garnhamseems to have conveniently forgotten thathe has already mentioned the collectiveNew Times project and my own analysisof the relationship between capitalismand culture in the New Right. But onecould add others here—such as the im-portant work of John Clarke, MeaghanMorris, Arjun Appadurai, Gayatri Spivak,Marcus Breen, and many others—as wellas the wide-ranging discussions of global-ization taking place. In fact, cultural stud-ies is both narrower and broader thanGarnham assumes, but that is, of course,because he never defines cultural studiesnor identifies exactly whom he is criticiz-ing. Instead it is simultaneously reifiedand selectively embodied.

Third, Garnham's interpretations ofparticular authors seem to operate by areductio ad extremis—that is, by juxtapos-ing two authors writing about relatedtopics, the more complex and moderateposition can be equated to the moreextreme and simplistic position. For ex-ample, I find it difficult to see how any-one can equate the following two bodiesof work. On the one hand is work onconsumption (and reception) in culturalstudies, which looks at the complex andeven contradictory nature of consump-tion and yes, often concludes that con-sumption can produce pleasures, that itcan be, in some ways empowering, butwhich need not and does not deny theexploitative, manipulative, and dominat-ing aspects of the market. Such workattempts to place local practices into thewider context of the social structures ofpower, even as it attempts to see howthose structures are lived and felt locally.On the other hand is work which, forwhatever reasons, argues that any act ofconsumption that is pleasurable, by defi-nition is an act of resistance. Both bodiesof work exist in cultural studies, but theyare not the same. It is this misequationwhich appears to legitimate much ofGarnham's critique, as well as that ofMcGuigan, whom Garnham cites. WhileI may agree that some work in cultural

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Studies has been caught up in a rathercelebratory mode of populism, I think itis absolutely necessary to distinguish thisfrom the more prevalent and nuancedposition oi' cultural studie.s. Moreover,Garnham ignores the fact that similarcritiques of such extreme positions havebeen made by writers, especially femi-nists, within cultural studies itself (includ-ing Angela McRobbie, Meaghan Morris,John Clarke, Judith Williamson, and mv-seif).

Finally, Garnham's indictment of cul-tural studies is often built on a critiqueby absence. Thi.s tendency is partituiarl)'common in the contemporary culture ofthe Left: Griticize a position for what itdoes not do or say. Obviously, it is onething to claim that a pc:)sition cannot talkabout something, but it is quite anotherto claim that it has not talked about it.Thus, Garnham accuses cultural studiesot paying too much attention to con-sumption, leisure, and everyday prac-tices and not enough to production,work, and institutions: "Where in con-temporary cultural studies are the stud-ies of the cultural producers and theorganizational sites and practices theyinhabit and through which they exercisetheir power?" On the one hand, I amtempted to answer that they are in politi-cal economy; that is, after all, what politi-cal econotnists do, so why should theywant cultural studies to do it? One could,after all, just as easily ask of politicaleconomy: Where are the studies of con-sumption and everyday lifie? But, on theother hand, it is important to answer:1 hey are there in the works of peopleyou have not cited, including l^orothyHobson, Angela McRobbie (on the tash-ion indtistry), Sean Nixon, Jody Ber-land, and so forth. And they are also inthe work of people studying organiza-tional cultures. But perhaps the prob-lem runs deeper, for what is assumedhere is a rather narrow and abstractconception of production. If the verynotion and practice of production ai ethemselves culturally produced,' and ifthe reiatiotis betweeti production and

consumption ate more complex and lessstable than (iarnham suggests, then ihemodel of cultural analysis hased on dseparation of production and c:oiisunip-tion is itself problematic, as is the reduc-tion of production to waged labor (whic;hignores what Marx himself had pointedout: the production involveci in con-sumption/reproduction).''

It is in tact rather telling that produc-tion here is so tighdy equated wiih the-"cultural industries ' as if ihe commodili-cation of culture were somehow c:oni-piete. Fart of what cultural studies hasalways been about (especially in rhc verytradition of Williams/Hoggart/1 homp-son of which Garnham is so lonci) is theself-production of culture^the prac-tices by which people come, howeverimperfectly, to represent themselves andtheir worlds. Important work (tor ex-atnple, by Mike Apple, Henry (iiroux,Cameron McCiarthy, Peter McLaren, meducation; hy Bourdieu and his follow-ers; by Foucauldeans locjkiiig at statediscourse, and so forth) has also beendone on cultural production in what usecito be called the "ideological state appara-tuses." Production cannot simply be thecapitalized manufacture of cultural com-modities, (>>nsider the ANC s decisionlo extend the cultural boyc ft to peopleas well as commodities, apparently recog-nizing that the embodiecl and personi-fied practice ol production is as nnpor-taiit as the c:ommodities themselves.^

Obviously, there is more thati simplyrhetoric at stake here. Perhaps culturalstudies has paid too much attention ioconsumption, but ! tear that what is op-erating behind such claims is the ten-dency to dismiss consumption (or leisure)as somehow less important than produc-tion, perhaps even as trivial. Production,narrowly nnderstooci as the practices ofmanufacturing, and abstractly under-stocjd as the mode ot production is tooeasily assumed to be the real bottomline. Perhaps culttiral studies has over-emphasized the pleasure, frecdcjtn andempowerment of consumption (and re-ception), bill again, I tear that wh;it is

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operating behind such claims is the de-sire to return to a simpler model ofdomination in which people are seen aspassively manipulated "cultural dupes."Certainly, some people in cultural stud-ies have overemphasized the capacity forresistance in popular cultural practices,although I still see value in this work, notonly as a provocation in the face of astill-puritanical Left, but also as a strat-egy for helping people see that thingsare not always the way authorities de-scribe them, and moreover, that thingsdo not have to be the way they are.Certainly, cultural studies often writesmore about how systems of dominationare lived than about the systems of domi-nation themselves, and I agree that morework on the latter needs to be done. Butwithout such work on how domination islived, the Left is likely to fall back on oldassumptions—and old generalizations atfairly high levels of abstraction—aboutthe masses and everyday life.

On the other hand, it is simply nottrue to say that cultural studies does notlook at dominant cultural practices; infact, 1 am not sure what "dominant"—asopposed to popular—means in the con-temporary capitalist context. Does Garn-ham mean elite or legitimate (via particu-lar institutions of cultural capital)? Suchdifferences are themselves institution-ally constructed as both forms and ex-pressions of power. Garnham claims thatthe capitalist structure of ownership pre-vents certain meanings from circulating:While I agree that not all meanings circu-late equally along the same paths, I alsothink that there is little or nothing that iscommercially unthinkable, although in-(Teasingly, it may be regulated by thestate, moral agencies, and so forth. Ofcourse, the fact is that different mean-ings may be differently sought out, takenup, and invested in. Once again, Garn-ham glosses over the real theoretical dif-ferences between the assumptions that,on the one hand, production is determin-ing in the last instance, and on the otherhand, production has its political anddiscursive conditions and vice versa.

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Nor is it true to say that, in general,cultural studies adopts an uncriticalpopulism. Most of the work in culturalstudies that I read does not equate thepopular with pleasure and resistance. Itdoes not assume that all pleasure is goodor politically progressive; on the con-trary, it often recognizes that pleasurecan be manipulated by or at least articu-lated to repressive forms of power andexisting structures of inequality. And itrecognizes that pleasures may them-selves be repressive and regressive—forexample those derived from relations ofdomination over other groups in forma-tions of racism. Certainly this is a basicpremise of most cultural studies work infeminism, postcolonialism, and criticalrace studies.

Cultural studies does not assume thatopposition, resistance, struggle, and sur-vival (coping) are the same; but it doesassume that the possibilities for the firsttwo depend in complex ways on the reali-ties of the last two. The question of therelations and tensions among these formsof effectivity is important and needs tobe explored. Perhaps most important isthe question of what it is that mobilizesopposition. But I see no evidence thatGarnham is either interested in address-ing these questions, or capahle of doingso. For cultural studies, the fact thatpeople do use the limited resources theyare given to find better ways of living, tofind ways of increasing the control theyhave over aspects of their lives, is signifi-cant, not only in itself, but also in termsof understanding the structures of powerand inequality in the contemporaryworld and the possibilities for challeng-ing them. Cultural studies does assumethat people live their subordination ac-tively; that means, in one sense, that theyare often complicit in their own subordi-nation, that they accede to it, althoughpower often works through strategiesand apparatuses of which people aretotally unaware. Be that as it may, cul-tural studies believes that if one is tochallenge the existing structures ofpower, then one has to understand how

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that complicity, that participatioti mpower, is constructed and lived, and thatmeans not only looking at what peoplegain from such practices, but also at thepossibilities for rearticulating such prac-tices to escape, resist, or even opposeparticular structures of pc^wer. Culttiialstudies refuses to assume that people arecultural dupes, that they are entirelyand pa.ssively manipulateci, either by themedia or by capitalism. But it does notdeny that they are sometimes duped,that they are sometimes manipulated,that they are lied to (and believe the lies,sometimes knowing that they are lies).

In both cases, Garnham's version ofpolitical economy, while apparently ad-vancing a classical Marxist position, re-fuses in practice to think about the con-tradictory nature of social practices. ForGarnham, apparently, capital determinesin a mechanical way from start to tuiish.Political economy thus has no way ofthinking about contradiction (except inthe most abstract, ahistorical from, suchas the class contradiction) and therefore,it has no way of thinking about whythings change, fhis, in my opinion, j,snot Marxist in the least!

fhus Garnham's position still leavesunanswered many important questionsabout how this domination, cc>nsent, andso forth, are accomplished and why theyare successful (that is, how such attemptsare able, sometimes, to help people oc-cupy the positions they want). Perhapssome people in cultural studies exagger-ate the possibilities or the freedom tointerpret and use popular practices. Bulthe choice is not, as Garnham wcjuicihave it, hetween freedom and determina-tioti. Certainly economic practices andrelations determine the distribution ofpractices and commodities (although notentirely by themselves), but do they de-termine which meanings circulate andwhich do not? I doubt il. Those articula-tions are muc:h more complex and diffi-cult tcj describe. The tact that certaininstitutions (and individuals) would liketo cc:)ntrol how people interpret texts orwhat thev do with them does not mean

that stu:h "intentions' actually deter-mine what people do and think, that is.the effects of practices. Are the real ef-fects determined? Of course, but in veryc:oinplex ways, across a multiplicity ofplanes and dimensions, of codes ancistructures, as the lesull of particularstruggles to articulate particular sorts ofprac:tic:es to particular sorts oi eftects,This relation between origins and effectsis, as we shall see, a crucial issue betweenpolitical economy and cultural studies.

Here we are beginning to t^fi u, iht-crux ot the matter: Gultural studies be-lieves that culture matters and that iicannot simply be treated (dismissed) asrhe transparent—a( least to (he crilicpublic face of dominative and manipula-tive capitalists. Cultural studies empha-sizes the complexity and contradictions,not only within culture, but in the icia-tions betweeti people, cullurt-, andpower. Now 1 am sure that Garnhamwould quickly respond ihai ptjliticaleconomy also believes that culture mai-ters, but il is obvious from Garnham spaper that c ulture matters onlv as a com-modity .idd an ideological UKA ot nut-nipulation. And it is clear a,s well ihatpolitical econcjmy has little room for com-plexity and contradiction—odd tor aMarxist position. Here I waul to con-sider two moments in Ciarnham s aigvi-tnent which, I think demotistrale theverv real difference between poliiicaleconomy and cultural studies.

Ihe tirst IS what 1 would describe asCiarnham's intentional misreading of tlu-origin.s of Brilish cultural stucik-s. Garn-ham is certainly correcl to dc^scribe theemergence of cultural studies as pan olan oppositional, broadly socialist, politi-cal movement. But Garnham seems toequate "broadly socialist" with politicaleconomy. C-ulturai studies may have been(and 1 would hope still is) opposed tocapitalism, its structures of inequality andexploitation, but that dc:)es not mean thatil eyer bought into political ecc>nomy as amodel oi cultural explanation. Ou thecontrary, thiere is plenty of eyidence thaiils founding figures (especially Hogt^art

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and Williams) quite intentionally dis-tanced themselves from any attempt toexplain culture in purely economicterms. Both cultural studies and the NewLeft, with which many of its leading fig-ures were affiliated, distanced them-selves from Marxism and its various mod-els of culture, even while they operatedwithin the space that it opened. Andwhile it may be true that Thompson,Williams, and Hoggart all assumed thatpower in British society was organizedentirely on the single dimension of classrelations, this was not true of other im-portant figures, such as Stuart Hall, norof the New Left in general (which was,for example, concerned with issues ofrace and imperialism). And even the factthat they may have held such a view doesnot make it either correct nor constitu-tive of cultural studies. In fact, as early as1968, the Centre for Contemporary Cul-tural Studies was exploring issues of thegendered relations of power, without as-suming that these were merely epiphe-nomenal expressions of deeper, morereal, bottom-line economic or class rela-tions. Nor do I think that the founders ofcultural studies as a group were as confi-dent as Garnham suggests about whotheir friends and enemies were.** In fact,Garnham fundamentally misunderstandsthe nature of cultural studies when heasserts that "cultural studies as a mean-ingful political enterprise . . . is unsus-tainable outside the founding problem-atic." In fact, cultural studies as ameaningful political enterprise is sustain-able only so long as its problematic isdefined contextually, and thus is con-stantly open to challenge and change.Cultural studies is not a stable and closedenterprise; of course, unlike Garnham, Iwould also argue that political economyis also neither stable nor closed, that it isitself contested terrain.

Again, I am not denying the impor-tance of a critique of capitalism to cul-tural studies, nor am I denying the pre-scriptive view that cultural studies shouldbe "broadly socialist." I am denying, how-ever, that such commitments should or

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even did entail particularly strong linksto political economy, at least as I under-stand it or as Garnham defines it here. Itis impossible that the two developmentsthat Garnham identifies as central tocontemporary cultural studies—more so-phisticated theories of textuality and ide-ology and the widening of the concept ofdomination and subordination from classto include race and gender, and soforth—should "invalidate" the originallinks with political economy, since thoselinks were not there in anything like theway Garnham needs for his argument.Moreover, even if they were, it wouldnot matter; for the fact that cultural stud-ies starts with a particular position can-not define its future—that is indeed oneof its peculiarities and strengths.

This leads me to the second site thatillustrates Garnham's dismissal of cul-ture: namely, the extraordinarily off-hand way he dismisses issues of identityand difference other than class, whileignoring that class itself is a culturallyconstructed identity. Here the conceptof class conflates an abstract relation (de-fined at the level of the mode of produc-tion), a social relation, and an empiricalreferent. I do not quite know how todescribe the glib way Garnham glossesdecades of sustained intellectual and po-litical work, as if it added up to nothingmore than the recognition that black isbeautiful—a recognition that, I mightadd, has in fact had important effects,despite Garnham's sarcasm. And thenhe glibly adds, "the same goes for gen-der." It is telling that Garnham's view oflabor recomposition is that women en-tered waged work "increasingly at theexpense of white male labor;" this is atelling indicator of what "class" is reallyabout for Garnham—"at the expenseof indeed."

Garnham's protests to the contrary,his position here strikes me as quite re-ductionist, as if class and economics(Garnham, by the way, conflates these)were all that really mattered."* He as-sumes a universal answer to the questionof the nature of the determination be-

tween economic and tether social refla-tions. This ayoids whal McRobbie (inpress) describes as the "more awkwardtheoretical questions such as the natureof the political relationships which canand do exist between emergeni socialidentities. . . . Much of the left prefersinstead to rely on the assumed centralityof class as providing a kind of underpin-ning for the politics of race t>r sexuality,"I hus, Garnham asks whether culturalstudies practitioners [wouldj deny thatthe major political/ideological strugglesoi the last decade in advanced capitalistcountries have been around - , . iiai-rowly economic issues," in tact, ot course,all scjrls of issues having to dcj with race,gender, and sexuality come to mind—aswell as issues of indigenous peoples, ofdisabled persons, ot ecology and environ-mentalism—but that is beside ihe pcjint.Garnham goes on to claim that suchissues of "identity politics" are them-selves rooted in "the restructuring of thelabor market," and later he claims thatmodern forms ol racial and gendereddomination—in their genesis, tbrms, andstakes—are "founded" on economicdomination. If race and gender are "t.xt>-nomic" as well as social relations, I won-der what sort of economic relations theyare? And how would Garnham accountfor them theoretically? that they are notdetached trom issues of capitalism isclear, but that they are "narrowly eco-nomic" is tar from clear.

Obviously the changes, not only in thelabor market but in the fbrms of labor,are one of the conditions ot possibility(determinants) of the various contempo-rary "identity" issues. And the distrihu-tion of economic capital is absolutely ci u-c iai to the creation and maintenance olinequality. But does that mean ihat eco-nomics and class are in any sense ad-equate descriptions of all structures otpower? rhe fact that modern tcjrms ofrace and gender relations are them-selves articulated in complicated ways byand to capitalist relations (including butnol limited to class) does ncjt mean thatthey are only or even primarily eco-

nomic. No one in cultxnal studies denit-sthe economic realilies of rac:ism or sex-ism, although they ate iikely to thinkthat such inequalities cannot be diieriKmapped by or onto class relations. More-over, tfiev may also think thai those inactualities are constructed in a yariety ofways, along a yariety of dimensions, bt-sides the distrihution of labor anci capi-tal, atid that some of those other wavscentrally inyolve cultural piactices. Un-real issue is what it means to say thaisomething is grounded OT founded insomething else: It need not be a descrip-tion otOrigins, since as (iai nham admits,racism and sexism preceded capilalisin,but il also need not deiine ;i sutlicic;nicondition or explanation, Ihat is, thefact that 1 ace and genciei arc articulatedto economics (and may be articulated loclass) does not say much ahcjut the appro-priate ways of accounting tbi, or strug-gling against, structures of dominationorganized around race and gender

I'hus, while I do agree with Garnham(along with a number of key figures incultural studies like Meaghan Morris)that too much wcnk in cultural studiestails to take economics seriously eiujugh,1 am also convinced that politicaleconomy—at least this version ot i t -fails to take culture seriously enougli.And ironically, I think it also fails to rakecapitalism seriously enough. Moreoyci.the way iti which cultural studies takeseconomics seriously musl be raciicallyditferent from the assumptions andmethods of political eccjnomy. For cul-tural studies does nctt believe that allforms of power can be explainect by capi-talist relations or in economic terms,' ^

Despite Ciarnham s denials that politi-cal economy is either rcductionisi(whether economist or classist) or retlec-tionist (built on a base/superslt ucturemodel), 1 think his argument at leastestablishes that his yersion ot politicaleconomy is too redtictionist and refiec-tionist ibr cultural studies. (I apologize ifthis merely continues the "immense anddamaging condescension oi c uitiiralstudies," but then. I am run the one

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accusing someone of being complicitouswith the Right.) No one in cultural stud-ies denies that economic relations andpractices "shape in determinate ways theterrain upon which cultural practicesrake place"—they may even in part helpto shape the cultural agenda, but alwaysand only in part. The question is, whatfollows from such statements? For thefact of the matter is, that for politicaleconomy, in every instance, in every con-text, somehow, almost magically, the eco-nomic appears to be the bottom line, thefmal and real solution to the problem,the thing that holds everything togetherand makes everything what it is. That iswhy, I believe. Hall argues that suchreductionism and reflectionism are in-irinsic to Marxism (and by extension, topolitical economy). Everything seems tobe locked into place, guaranteed by, eco-nomic relations. Garnham's own vocabu-lary betrays this: The fact is that "differ-ent modes of production will have adifferent set of. . . superstructural rela-tions." Consequently, and somewhatironically, Garnham castigates Hal! forusing the Regulation School. The prob-lem is that Hall reads them as anti-reductionists who refuse to assume anecessary correspondence between re-gimes of accumulation and modes ofregulations (which do not exactly corre-spond to base and superstructure), whileGarnham seems to think that as politicaleconomists, they must assume necessarycorrespondences, and hence, they mustbe reductionists in Hall's terms. Thequestion is not whether Hall's reading iscorrect but whether it is possible to havea political economy theorized aroundarticulation rather than strict determina-tion or necessity.

And while Garnham denies the chargeof functionalism—denies that super-structures are created "because the modeof production requires them"—he doesassume a preexistant compatibility be-tween the base and superstructure.Moreover, he speaks about the economy•'entailing" particular modifications ofcultural practices to particular ends. This

sounds pretty close to functionalism tome. Finally, Garnham claims that ratherthan the superstructure merely reflect-ing the base, they are "linked" (presum-ably mediated) through the category ofmaterial interest; but presumably this isitself determined by and functional forthe mode of production. For culturalstudies, on the other hand, it is preciselybecause no specific fit or pregiven com-patibility can be discerned between thebase and the superstructure that thequestions of cultural studies (and of cul-tural politics) become important. Howcan the variability of actually existingcapitalism (and the practices withinthem) be explained? Thus, cultural stud-ies argues that interests are themselvesculturally produced, that part of what isinvolved in political struggles is the ar-ticulation of particular subject groups(particular identities) to particular inter-ests. There are no originary and authen-tic interests, immediately and unprob-lematically defined by economic position,capable of linking the base (econom-ics—or is it merely production for Garn-ham?) to the superstructure (or doesconsumption fall here under culture?).But this is_Drecise]v what Garnham seems

to assume and needs in order to thendifferentiate between such interests andthe sort of needs and interests that areproduced through cultural practices.

Thus the category of false conscious-ness returns—actually it has never leftpohtical economy. According to Garn-ham, without such a notion (and therelated notion of truth), intellectuals haveno valid role. And cultural studies ofcourse rejects such notions. As I havesaid, cultural studies does not deny that,at times, people are duped, that theycome to believe things that they oughtnot to believe. The question is whetherthis can serve as an adequate theory ofideology and/or culture, whether thevanguardist claims of Garnham's politi-cal economist—to know "the" truth—can be legitimated, or even whether theyconstitute a particularly effective politi-cal strategy. If people are so easily ma-

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nipulated, how can they be educated, oris the leftist critic merely to remanipu-late people? A great deal has alreadybeen written in cultural studies on itst efusal ot notions of false consciousness.For Garnham to merely assert that sucha notion is necessary for any politics isthe height of condescension, to say noth-ing of ethnocentrism. My point hete isnot to defend the rejection of false con-sciousness, or merely to attack it cjiiceagain (as elitist, and so fbrth). Rather mypoint is that Garnham's insistence onfalse consciousness merely reaffirms thereadings of political economy he so vehe-mently claims to challenge.

But in the end, what is at stake is notso much the relations between culturalstudies and political economy, but ratherthe ways in which questions ot econom-ics^and of contemporary capitalism inparticular—are to he articulated intoanalyses of the politics of culture. For ina sense, cultural studies did not rejectpolitical economy, it simply rejected cer-tain yersions of political economy as inad-equate. And such yersions are character-ized, not merely by their logic ofnecessary correspondences (reduction-ist and reflectionist), hut by their reduc-tion of economics to the technologicaland institutional contexts of capitalistmanufacturing (with occasional ges-tures—and little more—to marketing,distribution and retailing), by their re-duction of the tnarket to the site of com-modified and alienated exchange,'-^ andby their rather ahistorical and conse-quently oversimplified notions of capital-ism. After ail, tt) describe contemporarycapitahsm as dependent on waged laborand commodity exchange is, well, ratheruninformative, as is the observation thatcontemporary culture is increasinglycommodified. To pt)int to the conditions

ol existence ot capitalism as providing anadequate explanation of anything is totorget that Marx described them as "whatevery child knows." Such a politicaleconomy seems to assume thai capitalism is a universal structure which, despite minor variations (for example, inwhat is being commodified), remains unchanged and stahle. In tact, cultut a! stud-ies did nt)t reject political economy s interest in capitalism. It rejected thispolitical economy; it rejected both Usdescription of the ect)noiny and its visionof the place cjf ttie economic in culturaland political analyses,

(>)ntetnporary cultural studies is, I be-iieye, returning to questions of econom-ics in important and interesting ways.Such work needs to be encouraged anddeveloped even further. Whal culturalstudies does not need is to return tosome relationship that never actually ex-isted (and would not haye been verygood if it had). So I must tlecline theinvitation to rec:oncile, and point outthat we dt>n't need a divorce because wewere neyer married. I would hope in-stead that we could learn to liye to-gether, it not in the same neighborhood,at least in the same region. We might nollike each other's taste or trayel the sameroutes, but we can share a sense of thegeography of powei- and the power ofgeography. We can criticize particularyersions ot each other's projects. Moregenerally, we can criticize each othei sassumptions; we can even criticize eachother's political positions. But when westart accusing each other of eyacuatingpolitics all together, of heing traitors tothe Left (that is, playing into the Right),then we have truly forgotten who theenemies are and wfiere our allies (whomay or may not be our friends) are to hvfbiind.

NOTES'1 am grateful to Stuart Hall, Angel'i McRobbie, anci especially John Clarke for tfieir

invaluable advice and suggesticjiis,'• Of course, the details and implications of this metaphor^the particular set of gendered.

heterosexual relationships—are left unexamincd.

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^John Clarke, personal correspondence.^Interestingly, U.S. political economists, especially in the field of communication, for the

most part, have been so dismissive of cultural studies that they ignore it entirely.

''See discussion of Sean Nixon's work in McRobbie (in press).

''Garnham's use of the "circuits" arguments (regarding the relation of production andconsumption) is decidedly disappointing and unproductive. He would have been well advisedto look at John Clarke's argument (1991) that consumption is not the same as exchange.•'Consumption involves social practices after and beyond the exchange relation (includingforms of production to realize specific use values). There is a significant issue about whethercapitalists care about use values beyond their ability to realize exchange values" (John Clarke,personal correspondence).

^This paragraph is largely a paraphrase of arguments made to me by John Clarke in hiscomments on an earlier draft of this paper,

' In fact, my guess is that most people in cultural studies remember the 1960s and 1970s as atime when cultural studies had virtually no friends. Perhaps the problem today is that culturalstudies has too many "friends" who are happy to tell us what it should be or what it is doingwrong.

•'I am grateful to John Clarke for this ohservation.

"*As Stuart Hall has pointed out (persona! correspondence), this position is "pre-Althusserian, pre-Gramscian." It seems to have ignored the various attempts within politicaleconomy of the 1970s and 1980s to save it from its own crude reductionisms.

'' For example, in my own work (Grossberg, 1992) I have argued that while capitalism doesnot explain either the emergence or the efficacy of particular cultural formations, it is the casethat the formations are currendy being rearticulated to and hy (that is, heing deployed in theservice of) particular contradictions and struggles of contemporary capitalism.

' Angela McRobbie (in press) has described the marketplace as the "collision place ofcapitalist commerce with popular desires," and as "an expansive popular system."

REFERENCESClarke, ]. (1991). Old times new eucmies. New York: Routledge.

Cirossberg, L. (1992). We gotta get out of this place: Popular conservatism and postmodernculture. New York: Roudedge.

McRobbie, A. (in press). Looking back at New Times and its critics. In D. Morley 8c K. H. Chen(Eds.), Stuart Hall and cultural studies. London: Roudedge.