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History of English Literature

Notes tensions arising out of everyday life and to detect frustrations which might otherwise actualize
themselves in opposition to the system into channels which serve the system.
It is because the effects of culture are so often unconsciously absorbed, that the need for a Cultural
Studies emphasising critique arises. As we pointed out earlier in this essay, the disciplines that
claim selected aspects of culture as their subject restrict that subject arbitrarily--for instance, by
constituting the field of literary study as a canon. Simultaneously, they have placed a wedge
between professionals and the public in the service of the ruling classes as in the case of literary
study where so-called, 'low' culture is excluded from the research domain. Nor should we now
continue to be fooled by the admission of films, popular novels, soap operas and the like into the
curricula of literature departments. As long as such cultural artifacts are examined as merely the
materials that make up a fixed culture, their disciplinary descriptions will do no more than create
storehouses of knowledge having almost nothing to do with lived culture, much less its
transformation. Only a counter-disciplinary praxis developed by intellectuals who resist
disciplinary formation is likely to produce emancipatory social practices.
The problem with suggesting that Cultural Studies be counter disciplinary is that it cannot be
housed in universities as they are presently structured. Hence, the need for counter-institutions.
There would be various sorts of collectives, variously membered study groups, counter-disciplinary
research groups, even societies and institutes.
It is unlikely that the disciplinary structures and mechanisms of universities will disappear in the
near future. However, it would be a mistake to locate Cultural Studies within them. Our alternative
would be to treat disciplines as peripheral to our main concerns while nonetheless obtaining some
important concessions from their administrators. This is a tactical matter which has to be negotiated
situation by situation. However, we can go even further and develop models of collaborative
inquiry that extend beyond the university in order to combat hegemonic public spheres and to
form alliances with other oppositional public spheres. In the context of Cultural Studies it will not
be appropriate simply to generate idiosyncratic interpretations of cultural artifacts.

Did u know? The most important aim of a counter-disciplinary praxis is radical social change.
We should not be resigned to the roles that universities assign us. The resisting intellectual can
develop a collective, counter-disciplinary praxis within the university that has a political impact
outside it. The important tactical question at this moment in the history of North American
universities is how to get Cultural Studies established as a form of cultural critique. Our suggestion
has been the formation of institutes for cultural studies that can constitute an oppositional public
sphere.

32.3.3 Salient Features
Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field.
This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School, but especially from the
structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach
concentrates on the production of meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and
identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. In a Marxist view, those who
control the means of production (the economic base) essentially control a culture.
Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American
developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption
of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches
suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This
view is best exemplified by the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Case of the Sony Walkman,
which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings
that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist and art historian Griselda Pollock
contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis. The writer Julia
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