In mass societies, cultural productions are at the service of the ruling classes. This is the conviction of the British philosopher and sociologist Stuart Hall, one of the main figures of Cultural Studies. It remains to be seen how this codification of social reality works.
Stuart Hall (born in 1932 in Jamaica) founded in the United Kingdom the New Left Review and directed the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies de Birmingham, founded by Edward P. Thomson and Richard Hoggart. The collection of articles established by Maxime Cervulle by Editions Amsterdam makes it possible to enter the general project of Cultural Studiestheoretical current which involves both a sociological analysis of mass societies, a semiological understanding of cultural productions and a philosophical reflection on social domination.
The fourteen texts gathered in this work (the oldest is in 1974, the most recent in 2002) are distributed in four parts: the first deals with the theoretical foundations of Cultural Studies and debates that animated the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies ; The second (undoubtedly the richest and most convincing) proposes an analysis of the ideological role of the media in mass societies (and in particular the role they played in the overthrow of the values produced, in the United Kingdom, that that at the end of the 1970s) ; The third endeavors to understand, through the study of black popular culture and Caribbean diasporas, which defines a cultural identity ; The last part includes two articles, one devoted to “ postcolonial », The other to the multicultural question.
How can we understand popular consent ? More precisely, how to understand that can form in mass societies of consensus in favor of ruling classes ? How to explain, for example, that in the United Kingdom, the popular classes have joined Thatcherism ? The General Project of Cultural Studies intends to answer this type of question. This is necessary to stop, as does the Marxist tradition, to envisage culture as a superstructure. If the Cultural Studies have a unit, it is due to the desire to work with And against Marxism (p. 20). Culture does not residually reflect economic power relations. It must be thought more as a dialectic between social consciousness and social being: it encompasses both “ The meanings and values that are formed among characteristic classes and social groups, based on their relationships and their historical conditions given “, And “ lived practices and traditions, through which these “ understanding Express themselves and in which they are embodied (P. 43). Such a definition supposes that we place the question of ideology at the heart of reflection on cultural productions, provided, however, of conceiving it, as Gramsci does, more in terms of hegemony than in terms of constraints exerted on the masses by dominant ideas. This displacement is necessary ; To stick to the classic Marxist analysis of ideology, which combines ruling classes and dominant ideas, one cannot understand the free consent of the dominated. The notion of “ false consciousness “, By which classical Marxism explains that the masses are ideologically deceived by the dominant classes, is not satisfactory. It is based on a simplistic conception of consciousness, as if it were enough for the masses to dispel the veil of ignorance which blinds them to see reality as it is. In addition, it assumes that Marxist intellectuals, unlike the masses, escape illusions.
To think of culture as hegemony is thus to go beyond functionalism which consists in seeing in the media only instruments at the service of the ruling classes. Free from any external constraint, the media, which are responsible for the description and definition of events occurring in the world, fix the language from which the meaning is produced (p. 95). This is what structuralism teaches according to Stuart Hall: things do not contain their own meaning, it is produced by language, which is a social practice. The media give meaning, and that is why they ensure hegemony: ideology is less a determined whole of coded messages than a system for coding reality (p. 100). It is in this way, for example, that they build a racist ideology: not by echoing an openly racist conception of the world, but assuming that the world is only intelligible to “ Categories of breed (P. 197).
It is against such constructions that black cultural policies have set up. For a long time, underlines Stuart Hall, these policies consisted in denouncing the stereotypical and fetishized character of the representation of blacks, and in opposing a positive image to it. But changing representation relationships does not substantially modify the still dominant cultural racism. It is for this reason that a policy of representations must be implemented, organized around the recognition of “ The immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and political experience of black subjects “(P. 206), to show that the notion of” breed In any way, cannot justify a cultural policy. Black cultural identity is plural, made up of differences, discontinuities, ruptures. The notion of districtforged by Jacques Derrida, makes it possible to account: the meaning is always beyond the fence which makes it possible. Black cultural identity is not essentialized ; It is historic, it is incessant production of oneself, “ culture is not affected by ontology, of being, but to become (P. 262). It is for this reason that the resistance to cultural homogenization linked to globalization is effective: Western models are only universalized by translating into multiple forms. Modernity once was transmitted from a unique center ; Today, underlines Stuart Hall, she no longer has a center (p. 263).
The two articles that make up the fourth part of the collection do not advance very original proposals. However, they have the virtue of presenting, on the two subjects covered, a synthesis of the problems and the issues linked to them. The first text is devoted to “ postcolonial ». If he is the subject of many criticisms, in particular because the prefix “ post »Is equivocal (new historical periodization or epistemological rupture ?), Nevertheless, it moves our attention and envisages colonization not as an external phenomenon to European societies but as a process deeply inscribed in their culture, as it is in that of the colonized (p. 273). The second focuses on the question of multiculturalism, of which Stuart Hall envisages an application in our modern societies: if it is necessary to recognize, against the liberal tradition, the differences which compose them, we must however be careful not to essentialize the communities and to enclose individuals in traditions deemed immutable. This double requirement is what Stuart Hall calls “ the democratic or cosmopolitan limit of alternatives both liberal and community (P. 326).