Theory, politics, and the human "race"

Steward Hall, as a cultural critic, was interested in the material forces that drive culture. This links him to Marx. He differed from Marx, however, in the fact that he strove to “move intellectual and political paradigms from a sole focus on economic factors to a more complex understanding of the multiple determinants of people’s allegiances, attitudes, and beliefs” (1779).

As I read the Norton introduction says, his “founding work in cultural studies characteristically came to the world in the form of edited volumes in which eight to twelve authors address a topic, arguing with each other but also moving toward and overarching delineation of the factors that need to be considered if the topic is to be adequately analyzed” (1779). This sense of conversation is necessary to the whole idea of cultural criticism. Culture is always changing because people are constantly contributing to it. For this reason, cultural criticism will never contain an axiom. It will always be a growing collection of conversations encompassing more and more factors that determine and are determined by culture.

Cultural criticism will also always resist definition because it is a criticism of criticism, which changes with every critique. Hall deals with the politics of theory, a politics that inevitably changes as it is described.

Another interesting factor of cultural criticism is that it necessarily shifts the critical focus from the high art of modernism to the things that most influence the public. This means that the critical focus is on the utterances of popular culture, namely, contemporary art, especially video and other emerging urban art forms.

His focus on materialism and progressive conversation has a hint (or more) of Hegel in it (not a surprise). He seems to understand Hegel better than Hegel understood himself, because he knows that his thinking will not lead to a definitive answer. He actually calls himself a police of the theory, making sure that it never becomes conclusive. Thus, his work is “self-consciously nondogmatic, restless, and open to new ideas and changing social conditions” (1779).

Hall’s notion that art is not merely a cultural production but also a cultural determinant provides a sense of political hope. This opens the door for artists like Banksy to change the way a culture thinks. Banksy is outside of the economic structure, even undermining it by using vandalism as an art medium. This fits with the Cultural Critic’s fears of institutionalization.

British graffiti artist Banksy is a cultural critic, wrestling with many of the same tensions that Hall describes.

Hall focuses on a very concrete example of the tensions of cultural criticism: AIDS. “It’s a site at which not only people will die, but desire and pleasure will also die if certain metaphors do not survive, or survive in the wrong way. Unless we operate in this tension, we don’t know what cultural studies can do. It has to analyze certain things about the constitutive and political nature of representation itself, about its complexities, about the effects of language, about textuality as a site of life and death” (1793).

Banksy’s work is very explicitly a site of life and death. He deals with the weight of culture, but also has a rebellious sense of humor. You can tell that sometimes he is just being creative, making something different out of what is already there. On the other side of the coin, he generates disturbing social commentary by juxtaposing images of children with soldiers, weapons, or machinery.

“It [cultural criticism] constantly allows the one [political tension] to irritate, bother, and disturb the other [theoretical tension], without insisting on some final theoretical closure” (1792).

The playfulness of his work is subversive, opening up potentially new meanings for the things that he marks such as this elephant.

"The human race is an unfair and stupid competition. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some people are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising some people have given up competing altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk food and shout abuse. What we need in this race is a lot more streakers." –Banksy

This quote shows a theoretical view of language, by recognizing the deconstructive pun in the word “race.” At the same time it is a decisive political commentary, suggesting a propositional meaning.

What interests me most about the selection we read, “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies,” is the fact that it is an analysis of the development of theory itself as a cultural utterance. This mixing between theoretical and artistic practice opens up the door for us to analyze art itself as a kind of cultural theoretical practice. Art is a criticism of culture that is produced by the culture.

Banksy isn't completely outside of institutions either. Fox recruited him to write an opening for the Simpsons, which critiqued Fox. They used 95% of his material despite its politics because, like Banksy, they have a sense of humor that is on the edge.