Hartley on American Cultural Studies

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am working on an article on Cultural Studies and as part of that task am
reading through John Hartley's introduction "Cultural Exceptionalism"
Freedom, Imperialism, Power, America" to Hartley and Roberta Pearson's :
American Cultural Studies: A reader. OUP: New York, 2000: 1-13.

Hartley is now Dean of the Faculty of Creative Industries here at QUT. He
is my boss and my impressions so far are that he is an interesting case. He
is full of that entrepeneurial destructiveness that I believe Schumpeter
talked about.   Hopefully I will get around to writing more about some of
the other articles in the book.  But for now I want to raise some of the
issues mulled over in Hartley's introduction.

For a start I was surprised that he used the category of imperialism.  My
initial thought was that here we have indeed a brave challenge to the
beast, one indeed mounted by a mainstream intellectual.  However I was of
course disappointed.  Hartley fails to come to grips with the politics of
imperialism - indeed the concept is not clearly defined at all. The nearest
we get is the phrase -

"the imposition of global mass culture on a previously highly
differentiated patchwork of indigenous cultures, in the service of the
commercial and military expansionism of the US military-industrial complex.
(pp4-6)"

Hartley then consider the phenomenon of those who consider American Culture
liberatory and gives the interesting example of the fad for American jazz
in those clubs that opposed the Nazis.


The nearest we get to explanation of the twin poles of liberation and
imperialism is

"The cause of the gravitational pull of America was easily
identified.  What linked the liberationist and imperialist poles was
*power*.  The USA was the great attractor of the modern socio-cultural
universe.`  For that reason it could prove (or promise) to be liberatory
for those whose own powers were increased by identification with it.  But
that same powerful attraction was imperial for those who sought to maintain
independent orbits. (pp 6-7)"


Needless to say we do not have a clear definition of power.  Foucault is of
course dragged in with his obnoxious identification of power with agency to
further confuse the issue (pp7-8).
Nevertheless I think we need to acknowledge America as the leading force
behind modernity.  This can indeed seem liberatory to someone mired in
tradition. Thus Hartley offers us a very bitter little portrait of Britain
as a society choked by tradition (p3).

But of course the point to make here is that America has promoted a
capitalist modernity and which, because it is capitalist rather than
socialist, contains core features that are intrinsically threatening to
life as we know it on a number of levels.


The raising of the dilemma of the impact of American modernity leads onto
the question "was America imperial or liberatory?'  The reply is believe it
or not and I quote exactly

"The answer was...well, yes!" (Hartley,2000:7).

Someday I will chase up Marx on Proudhon's grasp of the dialectic. From
memory I feel that it captures the essence of such bastardised dialectical
thinking as Hartley attempts here.

So how do I think Hartley's introduction should have proceeded?  Well
having raised the issue of imperialism I think he should have treated this
in a non-idealist way.  He could have turned to Magdoff or Chomsky
to  reveal the material reality of American imperialism. Although Vietnam
in mentioned en passant, there is no attempt to show it as illustrating the
process.  Similarly there is mention of the Cold War but there is no
understanding of the onset of the post WW2 phase as Truman's attempt to
solve the problems of a post war economy.

Having given a proper analysis of the Cold War I then would have said
something about the Cold War and Culture.  Firstly I would have noted its
destruction of that  American Cultural Studies which grew out of the
Popular Front and were of course sponsored by the CPUSA.

I then would have taken the instance of Abstract Empressionism.  Here the
struggle between Senator Dondero and Schlesinger is crucial.  Dondereo was
a traditionalist and a conservative.  He lost out in the battle to attack
modernity and the CIA went with Jackson Pollock and promoted America as the
land of the culturally exciting and the free. The Stalinists were as always
of great assistance with their adherence to the kitsch that Socialist
Realism descended into under the guidance of the Great One.

Interestingly in Australia the conservatives won and cultural modernity was
driven back until the late 60s.

Parallel to the export of Abstract Expressionism was of course the witch
hunt in the American Academy. This was above all devastating in the
humanities and its effects are still seen clearly today.  Thus I have met
hundreds of American students.  Almost invariably I have liked them, but
they simply know nothing of their country's history or culture.  They do
know an amazing deal about weapons and guns.  In that sphere they are
extremely impressive, but labor or cultural history are strictly terra
incognita.

So given the parlous state of American humanities why a reader on American
Cultural Studies?  Why are we taking American Cultural Studies seriously?
What does it have to give the world? Fundamentally it is the reification of
the New Media Technology and its concomitant in the .com economy. Add to
this an acceptance of globalisation as all you know on earth and all you
need to know.

As an illustrative example here at QUT in Brisbane we are desperately
trying to get on the New Economy - Creative Industries band wagon.  So the
Arts Faculty was abolished and Hartley was crowned Dean of Creative
Industries.  It is however all smoke and mirrors.  The corridors teem with
tricksters.  Who dare point out that the Emperor has no clothes? And that
the band wagon is really a sinking ship?

How did this all happen?  It certainly looked different in the 70s. The
idea of American hegemony in the arena of Cultural Studies would have
beenlaughable. Stuart Hall was in Birmingham and Gramsci was King.


But then the illusions spread by the student revolt were still a vibrant
memory. The advent of Thatcher though in the UK led to the sword being put
through the beautiful people.  Cultural Studies found its way to Australia
and there the leading practitioners abandoned Marx and rediscovered the
joys of Social Democracy.  In 1989 they launched Policy was launched as the
alternative to Critique and the rest is history.

Today Policy too has gone along with the illusions in Social Democracy. All
that remains is a bloody minded commitment to the Status Quo and an almost
McCarthyite bitterness towards those who remain Marxists.  That means as I
have said the publication of Readers in American Cultural Studies and much
talk of the New Economy.

regards

Gary


Moreover French theory has been introduced to knock on the head any Marxism
which may have re-emerged in the late 60s.  The concerns of the great
emancipatory movements of the 60s - women, gays, blacks - have been morphed
into the trivial. Thanks again partly to the influence of the always
obnoxious Foucault - the local and the partial have been fetishised.  In
Cultural Studies to raise the totality is to be totalitarian.