Cultural Studies and the Politics of the Everyday

Crusoe's Footprints: Cultural Studies in Britain and America by Patrick Brantlinger; Everyday
Life in the Modern World by Henri Lefebvre; Philip Wander
Review by: Laurie Langbauer
Diacritics, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 47-65
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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CULTURAL STUDIES AND
THE POLITICS OF THE
EVERYDAY

LAURIELANGBAUER

Patrick Brantlinger. CRUSOE'SFOOTPRINTS:CULTURALSTUDIES

IN BRITAIN AND AMERICA.New York:Routledge,1990.
Henri Lefebvre. EVERYDAYLIFEIN THE MODERNWORLD. Trans.
Philip Wander. New Brunswick:Transaction,1984.

Promptingthis paper is a meditationabout the relationshipof feminism to

culturalstudies,especially the ways we define andthinkaboutthose terms-
andjust who that"we"mightbe. Feminismseems a good model for keeping
the great promise of multiculturalismfrom being codified into something
moremainstream,morefamiliar,morereassuring,thatsometimesgets called
cultural studies. It is a good model precisely because it has not been so
successful itself:feminismtoo (as anentitysomepeople claim in thesingular)
threatensto become a homogenized whole. In this paper,I want to ask, In
whatways do differentpracticesassume-perhaps as a goal, even a utopia-
a certain ideal of consensus? How does discomfort with real conflict-
radical disagreementunbridgeableby compromise-oblige critics unwit-
tingly to close off dilemmas they cannot solve, to pretendinstead (and at a
price, usually to others)thatthey can? In thinkingaboutthe use of the term
"theeveryday"in culturalstudies,the goals projectedby its construction,and
thepolitics forgedthroughit, I amwonderingtoo aboutways to reimaginethe
groundsof feminist politics and ways to deconstructfeminist utopias.
"Theeveryday"is a foundationalcategoryin culturalstudies,a category
so importantto thatfield, and so takenfor grantedby it, thatit is almost never
defined. Yet the everydayas a conceptualcategoryhas a history:one source
is in the work of Continentalthinkerssuch as the historianHenriLefebvre,
whose work is currentlybeing rediscoveredand translatedperhapsbecause
of culturalstudies'renewedattentionto theeveryday[seeLeFebvre,Critique
of EverydayLife]. Despite thatinterest,muchrecentworkin culturalstudies
sees itself as growing more directly out of the Centre for Contemporary
CulturalStudies at the University of Birminghamin England;the work of
RaymondWilliams and E. P. Thompson,among others,has been cited as a
heritagefor it by such critics as StuartHall, one directorof the Centre,and
Richard Johnson, essays that have influenced the work of such critics as
PatrickBrantlinger.Andall of thisworkdependsupon,butleavesunexamined,
the category of the everyday.
Categoriessuch as the everydayand utopiacome, of course, out of the
theoryof the left on whom the influence of Marxmakes such termscrucial.
The influence of Marx is clear in the work of Continentaltheorists of the

diacritics / spring 1992 diacritics22.1:47-65 47

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everyday, such as Lefebvre or Femand Braudel,and remainsstrong in those who came
afterthem, such as Michel de Certeau.The BirminghamCentrealso locates itself firmly
withinthis tradition,andStuartHall writesthatculturalstudiesas a whole is a field which
"essentially ... is determinedby the reception, development and transformationof
Marxisttheory"["Survey"6]. CatherineGallaghercites thecomplicationof theFrankfurt
School's suggestionsaboututopiaas especially influentialon "thegenerationof cultural
critics that came of age in the 1960s," and argues that such critics saw their role as
uncovering the hidden social contradictionsthat, to them, differentiateda fragmented
bourgeois culture(thatattemptedto pass as whole) from the real (but still utopic) social
totality-a utopia whose promise was encoded in the very desire for wholeness that
organizedtheeveryday[39]. Lefebvre'sandBritishculturalstudies'locationof thetraces
of thatutopic social totalityin everydaylife merely continuesthis tradition.
A survey of the left's role in definingculturalstudies also suggests thatthe ideal of
totality,of consensus,of a sharedandcommongoal, which groundssuchapproaches,also
works in spite of itself to annul difference. One source of such a critiquemight be the
deconstructionof closure and consistency distinguishing Continental poststructural
theorythat,as Britishculturalstudiesis well aware,begins to makethe discussion of the
categoryof the everydayeven by a structuralistcriticlike Lefebvredifferentfromits own.
As a numberof feministessays (forinstance,thoseby GayatriSpivakorMeaghanMorris,
both also influencedby the left) suggest, the abrogationof differenceremainsa specter
in any attemptto constitutecultureas a field. These feminist essays help us revise the
category of the everyday from a seemingly unproblematicground supportingshared
experience,theoreticalconsistency,and ultimatesocial harmonyto a site of irresolvable
difference, of conflict whose resolutionis not simply delayed, but theoreticallyimpos-
sible.
Theidea of difference-of andwithingender,race,even class-perhaps by necessity
cannotbe reassuringlyembracedunderany single system: examiningmodes of produc-
tion cannot completely account for genderoppressionand emphasizinggenderoppres-
sion will not takecareof racism. Seen in these terms,the new left, whateverits important
contributions,is not so new; it retainsa heritageof teleology and closure, a nostalgiafor
a once and futureharmonyand fullness, thatpoststructuralismputs into question. Yet
such questioningis often misinterpretedas attack. As GayatriSpivak has observed,the
poststructuralistcritiqueof culturalstudies can be "misreadas 'postmodernmodesties
replac[ing] Marxistcertitudes.'... This is therisk thatone mustrunin orderto understand
how muchmore complicatedit is to realize the responsibilityof playing with or working
with fire than to pretend that what gives light and warmth does not also destroy"
["Constitutions"145-46]. In negotiatingsuch impossible distinctions, one avenue of
approachmight be to investigatethe way thatculturalstudiesrepeatsthe very universal-
izing moves it wishes to put into question,the way thatit annulsdifferenceand invokes
consensus precisely at those momentsit conjuresup its talismanof the real, the category
of the everyday. Consideringculturalstudies'pervasivereferencesto theeveryday,then,
is one way to consider(if not tryto change)its politics. By politics hereI mean morethan
the idea of basic change, often associatedwith social interventionand collective action.
One poststructuralrevisionof thistermhasbeen BarbaraJohnson's,who, througha focus
on a feministdebateaboutirreconcilabledifference-the undecidablecontroversyabout
abortion-associates politics insteadwith undecidability,the very provincethe left often
derides as apolitical. "Thereis politics precisely because there is undecidability,"she
writes [194]. Perhapsanotherway to thinkaboutpolitics is to associateit with conflict-
not with settling conflict, which usually means dominationanyway, but with sustaining
it. Politics can also meancontestation,the fight not to nullify but to assertdisagreement,
the struggleto be heardratherthansilenced, to uncoverthe vision of unity and harmony
as whatseeks to silence, to show it upas somebodyelse's ideal. It is precisely thepromise

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of this politics thatmakes the idea of culturalstudies exciting and compelling to a critic
concerned with race and gender as well as with class, such as bell hooks. She writes,
"Usually scholars in the academy resist engagementsin dialogues with diverse groups
where there may be critical contestation, interrogation,and confrontation. Cultural
studiescan serve as an intervention,makinga space for formsof intellectualdiscourseto
emerge thathave not been traditionallywelcomed in the academy"["Culture"125].1To
do so mayrequireundoingthe complacenciesof commonalty;to allow for differencemay
mean continuallydestroyingthe sense of sharedgoals "we"build up in orderto have a
sense of"we." The everyday,a site whereculturalstudieshas traditionallylocated those
commonalties,also refuses them and, in this sense, keeps politics going.

The Everyday

"Culturecan no longerbe conceived outsidetheeveryday"["Leftist"82]. So writesHenri

Lefebvre,identifyingthe studyof culturewith the studyof the everyday. Britishcultural
studies has in a sense paralleled Lefebvre; he certainly fits into the "structuralist"
influence thatStuartHall finds formativein culturalstudies, and EdwardBall suggests
thatan emphasissimilarto Lefebvre's on "la vie quotidiennemay be familiarto English
readersas the targetof critiquewithin the body of 'CulturalStudies' that has grown up
in Britainsince the 1950s"[29]. Lefebvre'sdiscussionof the everyday,however,doesn't
just informsuch work;it also helps us to reflect on and problematizeit. Just what is the
everyday-or cultureforthatmatter-and whatmightLefebvreandculturalstudiesmean
by the relationbetween them?
Such questions are difficult to answer because their terms seem undefined. And,
according to Lefebvre, defining the everyday might not be easy. People meet with a
certain opacity, a resistance in comprehendingthe term the everyday, he suggests,
because thatopacity is partof its meaning. Lefebvrecan only gestureto it: for him, the
everydayis "theunrecognized' ["Leftist"78], whatis "practicallyuntellable"[Everyday
24]. Invoking the everyday is an attempt to invoke "lived experience";"It is lived
experience [le vecu] elevated to the statusof a concept and to language"["Leftist"80].
Yet, in equatingtheeverydaywiththe"real,empirical,practical"[Everyday1 ], Lefebvre
also recognizes that "the real"is precisely what cannot be represented. Everyday life
eludes metaphor,"evadesthe gripof forms"[Everyday182]. "Writingcan only show an
everyday life inscribedand prescribed"[Everyday 8] because "everydayinsignificance
can only become meaningfulwhen transformedinto somethingotherthaneverydaylife"
[Everyday98]. Althoughin his Marxismand TotalityMartinJay singles out Lefebvreas
one of the Western Marxists to whom the concept of totality is central, in Lefebvre's
discussion of the everydaythe possibilityof such totalityis also put into question.2With
the introductionof the everyday,Lefebvre's structuralismbecomes poststructuralism.
The opacityof theeveryday,then,is crucial. It reflectsthe poststructuralrecognition
thatall anyone can do is gestureto the real;subjectscan not experienceit unmediatedand
untransformedby expectation, by representation,or by their own attention to it. In
resisting definition,the everydaybecomes a categorythatforegroundsthose mediations
and, in that sense, becomes a position or markerratherthana stable referent. And as a

1. Fora relatedcritiqueoftheimperialism
ofculturalstudies,seeJose'David
Saldivar,"The
Limitsof CulturalStudies."
2. Thisis a contradictioninLefebvre'sworkthatJayattemptsto resolvewiththe(similarly
contradictory)ideaof an openandindeterminate totality[296-99]. Jay emphasizes
Lefebvre's
otherworkbutbarelymentionsEverydayLifein theModernWorld,perhapsbecauseit beginsto
deconstructtheverystructures Lefebvreelsewhereconstructs.

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shifting marker,it tends to point in many, even opposite, directions. What it marksis
precisely the impossibility of its definition. For Lefebvre, it exposes "irreducibles,
contradictionsand objections that intervene and hinder the closing of the circuit"
[Everyday 75]. By making the invisible visible, by giving form and content to an
experienceso vague and seemingly naturalthatpartof its significanceis thatits subjects
cannotdefine it, by defining,or theorizing,the everyday,it is transformedinto what it is
not: "Itis notpossible to constructa theoreticalandpracticalsystem such thatthe details
of everyday life will become meaningfulin and by this system" [Everyday98].
Yet attentionto the everyday is importantbecause it is there that we can see how
society works. Lefebvrearguesthat"dailylife is the screenon which oursociety projects
its lightandits shadow,its hollows andits planes,its powerandits weaknesses"[Everyday
64-65]. Everydaylife is one mediumthroughwhich capitalismestablishesitself: "The
pyramidalstructureof modem society rests on the broadbase of everyday life which is
the lowest level" [Everyday57]. The everyday'scontradictionsare crucialto Lefebvre,
however; the everydayencodes society's power as well as its weaknesses. Attentionto
theeverydaythereforebecomes a formof "culturalrevolution"[Everyday204]. To make
the everyday into an object of study carrieswith it "the distinct advantageof orienting
oneself towardthe future"["Leftist"75]. It marksa change thatis utopic in the way that
"we are all utopians, so soon as we wish for somethingdifferent"[Everyday75]. This
utopia grows out of an attentionto the everyday, a defamiliarizationof it, because, for
Lefebvre,suchdefamiliarizationis itself whatrevolutionizesculture:"Arevolutiontakes
place when and only when... people can no longerlead theireverydaylives" [Everyday
32]. The very attemptto put the everydayinto a system, constantlyrefinedby its refusal
and deconstructionof that system, becomes a model of representationor theory trans-
formedby theresistantandelusive realthatit also transforms,andprovidesLefebvrewith
what he considers an adaptive and creative political practice. He insists that "the
limitations of philosophy-truth without reality-always and ever counterbalancethe
limitationsof everyday life-reality withouttruth"[Everyday14].
In insistingon a system,Lefebvrestill gesturesto totality,but his system continually
calls its own notionof totalityinto question. Althoughhis strategyis to "gathertogether
culture's scatteredfragmentsfor a transfigurationof everyday life" [Everyday38], the
stylistic twists and turns of Lefebvre's own mercurial prose and his emphasis on
contradictionsuggest thatpartof thattransfigurationis a stubbornrefusalof coherence,
an insistence on fragmentation.Emphasizingsuch "contradictionsof lived experience"
(as Alice Kaplanand KristinRoss suggest) is how Lefebvre's work helps us find "the
Political, like the purloinedletter... hiddenin the everyday"[3]. Yet Lefebvre's work
is not free of the attemptto resolve such contradictionsinto coherence. The need for
totality asserts itself strikingly in places where a different politics, or a politics of
difference,makesLefebvrerecodifyandstabilizethe politicaland theoreticalmodel that
his gestures to the everydayalso open up.
The differenceof genderin particularseems to threatensuch stability. Considering
the everyday,Lefebvreargues,allows himto focus on thecollective subject-no less than
all of mankind: "Homo sapiens, homo faber and homo ludens end up as homo
quotidianus"[Everyday193]. Despite the contradictionsimpliedby the decenteringof
the subject,such a collective subjectremainsforLefebvrean entitynonetheless: "A class
cannotbe consideredas a philosophical 'subject' any more thancan a society; but they
possess unity, wholeness, totality,in a word 'system"' [Everyday41-42]. Yet a curious
division goes on within this supposedly unified collective: mankind, perhaps not
surprisingly,comes to meanmanin particular.Lefebvreadmitsthateverydaylife actually
"weighs heaviest on women.... They are the subjectsof everydaylife and its victims or
objectsandsubstitutes"[Everyday73]. Butin a move long familiarto feminists,Lefebvre
also argues that "because of their ambiguous position in everyday life . . . they are

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incapable of understandingit" [73]. According to the old logic that women cannot
understandsomethingbecausethey embodyit, the contradictionsof the everyday,which
make it opaque to everyone, make it particularlyso to women. Women become
responsiblefor a constraintthatafflicts some people more thanothers,a "they"placed in
oppositionto some implied "we." Lefebvrefurthersuggests thatmankind's"condition-
ing, seeping throughthe channels of a highly organizedeveryday life, succeeds mainly
on the level of woman or 'femininity.' Yet femininityalso suggests feminism, rebellion
and assertiveness" [67]. For Lefebvre, the feminine indoctrinatesmankind into a
dominantculturewhose termsof everydaynessit also teachesthese subjectsnotto contest,
even though"femininity"is itself an ambiguoustermthatcarrieswith it an oppositional
force-"feminism"-that might be put to better use. The implication is that because
women cannotunderstand3uchiambiguityor recognizetheircontradictoryposition, they
squanderthatfeminism-it turnsinto mere"assertiveness";Lefebvrewritesof women's
attempts"to escape by the roundaboutmethod of eluding the responsibilities of con-
sciousness, whence their incessant protests and clumsily formulated, directionless
claims" [92]. In refutingthis (failed) feminism,Lefebvrereassertsnotions of teleology
with a vengeance;yet the roundaboutanddirectionlessprotestsof women he condemns,
rather than eluding responsibility, may be precisely the place to locate feminism's
politics. Partof those politics involves directlyasking in what ways politics are tied to
the idea of having a directionand the drive to an end-what end? whose utopia?whose
politics?
In blamingwomen forpeople's unconsciousrelationto the everyday,Lefebvrecasts
women in anothertoo-familiarrole: both women and the everydaycome to standfor an
overwhelmingtotality. Eachcomes to representthe very forces thatcreatesubjects,both
in literallyproducingthemand thennormalizingthem into culture. This meaningof the
everydayhelps to explain its collapse with culture("Culturecan no longerbe conceived
outside the everyday"). Women and the everydayin this sense representthatdefinition
of cultureas a mediumembracingits subjects,one sustainingand shapingthem (people
cannotconceive outside it). In this chain of synonyms, the everyday, synonymous with
culture,also becomes synonymouswithideology: "Ideologiesaremadeof understanding
and interpretation... of the world and knowledge plus a certainamountof illusion, and
mightbearthe nameof 'culture"'[Everyday31], or,"ideologies,institutions,in one word
culture"[198]. Such ideology is not false consciousnessbut whatcreatesanddetermines
consciousness itself. The everyday becomes the term for the embracingtotality that
politics needs to seize andchange,the termfor theforces thattendpeople, mold them,and
make them into subjects.
Lefebvrehimself seems to tryto elude sucha determiningforce in a roundaboutway
when he barswomenfromeffective agencyandcriticalconsciousness. Inmakingthe lack
of critical consciousness and agency an issue of gender (of essential, biological lack),
Lefebvrerepeatsthe old adage thatassertsthatman, somehow naturallymorecomplete,
might have morepower and mightmoreeasily escape constraint.But this all-embracing
totalityis one the everydayalso complicates,if not resists. Ratherthanposing a dilemma
one might settle, an either/orin which some subjectsareconstrainedwhile othersescape
(that scapegoats some into constraintin order to provide the illusion of freedom for
others),the contradictionsof everydayin Lefebvre's accountmake it standinsteadfor a
more complexpolitical relationof the subjectto cultureand ideology. It marksthe site
not only wherepeople aredeterminedin ways they cannotsee, butwherethey projectand
imagine utopically how to thinkoutside and elude what determinesthoughtand imagi-
nation. Consideredin this light, the difficulty of defining the everyday comes to reflect
the very impossibility of thinkingoutside the structuresof our thought.
This unravelingof Lefebvre's discussion suggests thatthe everydayculturalstudies
builds upon doesn't provide a stable ground. It's not simply thatits meaning and value

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change depending on the needs of the system that invokes it, but that the shifts and
contradictionsin its meaningdemonstratethecomplicationsof fixing one simpleor stable
relationshipbetween cultureor ideology and the subjectsthey create, of encompassing
cultureand ideology within a single field called politics, theory,or culturalstudies. For
Lefebvre, the everyday enforces a constrainingpolitics when it keeps people from
recognizing it as political. Yet Lefebvre only dances aroundthe understandingthat to
bringthingsto consciousness-to put theminto a system-does not, however,dispel the
political unconscious. Part of the complexity of the everyday is that it represents
conflicting registers and assumptionsat one and the same time; it charts a fault-line
betweenthe conscious andunconscious,betweendeterminingpowerspeople can see and
those they cannot,betweentheoriesthatseek changeandthose thatenmesh theirsubjects
in determinism. It marksa site of conflict that makes consensus-about "our"shared
sense of lived experienceas well as ideas aboutsuch everydayexperience's transforma-
tive potential in culture-difficult if not impossible. The everyday becomes a crucial
category because its consolidationsand deconstructionstouch directly on the subject's
relationto ideology and culture.

CulturalStudies

The use of the everydayin Britishculturalstudiesreflectsits Marxistheritagedifferently

butmaintainsthis tensionbetweentotalityandconflict. Justwhose claim best reflectsthe
Marxisttotality and whose theory most coherentlydescribesculture's coherence is the
focus of this earlydebatebetweenRaymondWilliamsandE. P. Thompson(whom Stuart
Hall and RichardJohnsonidentify as theirprecursors). To read their work in this way
might itself seem to be a theoreticalcommonplace,a banality: it is accepted now, one
might argue,thatthe illusion of coherenceis a repressedpartof any theory,a productof
the desire to accountfor everything. The explicit claim for totalityand coherenceis just
an early, insufficiently theorized position of the new left, especially of those like
Thompsonwho wereparticularlyhostileto theory. Yet despitetheimplicitclaims of such
an argument,this earlyposition is still an enduringone. The claim to be able to account
foreverythingcontinuesto informaccountslike Hall's andJohnson's,which only gesture
to a poststructuralismthat foregoes totalism. The role of this claim in culturalstudies
deservesreexaminationnotmerelybecauseit repeatsexclusions (as any theorymust),but
because it repeatsthe very exclusion of marginalizedgroupsit claims to remedy.3Such
exclusionsresultfromanemphasison synthesis. Oneof thetexts mostfrequentlyinvoked

3. This is a problem especially recognized by StuartHall. In his latest history of cultural

studies and the BirminghamCentre, "CulturalStudies and its TheoreticalLegacies," even as he
arguesfor "an arbitraryclosure" [278], Hall also contendsthat his notion of cultural studies is
open-ended; he points to the argumentsand tension within the Centre, emphasizingthem as a
"politicsof contention,of continuousargument,of continuousdebate"[291]. (This essay appears
in the anthology CulturalStudies, a collection of essays from the 1990 University of Illinois
conference "CulturalStudiesNowandin the Future,"whichwaspublishedaftermyown essay was
in press, but which makes explicit some of the competinggoals and models of politics in cultural
studies that I chart here: as progress to a social collective "in the future," as open-ended
contestation.) He refers to the Centre's collections Women Take Issue [282] and The Empire
Strikes Back [283] as momentsin this ongoing quarrel. But, as AndrewRoss points out in the
discussion afterward(and Hall acknowledges),despite his disclaimers, Hall's vision of cultural
politics continuesto have a "sortof narrativeof progress smuggledinto it" [289] thatpoints to a
familiar vision of utopia. Interestingly,that discussion itself became a momentof contention,
interruptedby conferenceparticipantswhofelt marginalizedby the hierarchyand exclusion they
saw within the structuresof the conference.

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by this culturalstudies as it constructsits genealogy is an early essay of Williams's,
"CultureIs Ordinary,"which unites questions of culture and the everyday as lived
practicalexperience,and directsculturalstudiesprecisely to foregroundingand examin-
ing the everyday. WhereLefebvre's treatmentof the everydayemphasizesits fracturing
possibilities, Williams's focuses on the ordinaryfor its power to uniteand integrate. To
Williams, the everyday reveals that culture is not just Culture,is not just the special
provinceof theartsandlearning,but"awhole way of life" ["Ordinary" 4]. Like Lefebvre,
Williams suggests that the role of the critic is to bring recognition of the everyday to
criticalconsciousness,but this recognitionmeansa recognitionspecifically of synthesis:
people need to see thatcultureis ordinary"so thatthe whole actual life, that we cannot
know in advance, that we can only know in part even while it is being lived, may be
broughtto consciousness and meaning"["Ordinary"9].
But such totalityonce againprecludesdifference,especially thedifferenceof gender.
Although Williams acknowledgesthatthe understandingof the "whole actual life" can
only be partial, such failure to understandit does not devalue the whole itself; the
achievement of that total knowledge become a promise, a historicalprocess in which
individualsand society are always engaged. The influence of Marxon Williams here is
clear. The sense of "cultureas a process,"cultureas "thecultivationof something,"a kind
of "'long revolution'... [a] sense of a movementthrougha very long period"[Politics
154-55], which Williamslateremphasizesin his morecomplicateddefinitionof the term
in Keywords,is alreadyimplicit in this early essay. In "CultureIs Ordinary,"Williams
especially identifies the ongoing process of ordinaryculture with the very process of
genealogy itself: he locates culturein generationsof descent, with a specific patrilinear
inheritancethatmoves from his grandfatherto his fatherto himself:

Cultureis ordinary:that is where we muststart.... To grow up in [my]family

was to see the shaping of minds.... My grandfather,a big hard labourer,wept
while he spoke,finely and excitedly,at the parish meeting,of being turnedout
of his cottage. Myfather, not long before he died, spoke quietlyand happilyof
when he starteda trade-unionbranchand a LabourParty group in the village,
and, withoutbitterness,of the 'keptmen' of the newpolitics. I speak a different
idiom, but I thinkof these same things. ["Ordinary" 4]

AlthoughWilliams gesturesto a few women in this essay, they are denied this patternof
relationand connection. The inheritorsof the whole way of life, shapedby the everyday
but also shapingit, aremen. They forge its historyandbringit to criticalconsciousness.4
Yet Williams's oedipal narrativeactually puts into question his idea of ordinary
cultureas a whole way of life. Williams's most famouscritic,E. P. Thompson,questions

4. This view of culture as an active process played out by men is actually very similar to
Lefebvre's;Lefebvrealso constructscultureas a process, a narrativein whichmenare heroes. To
him, it evokes an image

of SleepingBeauty.Shedoesnotdozeon flowersandon fragrant grassbuton a thick

mattressof texts, quotations,musicalscores-and undera vast canopyof books,
sociological,semiological, andphilosophical
historical, theses.ThenonedaythePrince
comes;he awakensherandeverythingaroundtheforestcomesto life alongwithher-
poetspoetizing,musiciansmusicking,cooks cooking,loversloving,andso on...
cultureis notmerelya staticpalimpsestof texts;itis lived,active,whichis whatthefable
of thewakenedprincesssuggeststo me. ["Leftist"81-82]

Like Williams,Lefebvrehere gives culturea tradition("the vast canopy of books"), and suggests
how that tradition,throughthe interventionof the culturalcritic (who else is theprince?), comes
alive, is seen to be lived, active, everyday.

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this allegory of the everyday. Thompsonis botheredparticularlyby Williams's sense of
a shared traditionbuilt on relation and commonalty. For way of "life" he wants to
substituteway of "conflict"or way of "struggle,"and by so doing, Thompsonargues,
focus on "activityand agency" ["Long"33] ratherthanon the impersonalcontinuityof
life implied by generationalprogression. Yet, in seeming to disagree with Williams,
Thompson winds up soundinga lot like him.
In using genderto clinch his own argument,Thompsonsimply continuesthe oedipal
progressionWilliams charts,restoringits repressedsubtext. In Thompson's recasting,
once again woman standsfor a cultureshe embodies but does not share,specifically the
male Traditionof (high) Culture itself (Burke, Carlyle, Mill, Arnold, and Eliot), the
reverencefor which Thompsonfeels occludes conflict in Williams's account. He writes:

At times, in Cultureand Society, Ifelt thatI was being offereda procession of

disembodiedvoices-Burke, Carlyle,Mill, Arnold-... the whole transmitted
througha disinterestedspiritualmedium. I sometimesimagine this medium..
. as an elderly gentlewomanand near relative of Mr. Eliot, so distinguishedas
to have become an institution: The Tradition. Thereshe sits, with that white
starchedaffair on her head, knittingdefinitionswithoutthoughtof recognition
or reward... and in herpresencehow one mustwatchone's LANGUAGE! The
first brash word, the least suspicionof laughterorpolemic in herpresence, and
The Traditionmightdropa stitch and have to startknittingall those definitions
over again. ["Long"24-25]

A derided traditionbecomes an elderly gentlewoman, whose near relation to Eliot

(anotherkept man?)points up his effeminacy-and, throughhim, the effeminacyand the
passivityof therestof thetradition.Theburlesqueof thispassagewreststhefateof history
out of the handsof this harmlessClotho (a monitoryfigure only to those still scaredby
women). A polemic so brashthatshe woulddropheryarncompletely,Thompsonimplies,
is the very antidoteto the outdatedand elitist malaise of history this figure represents.
And, throughher unattractiveness,Thompsonrids the oedipal line of historyof the need
for a (contested)womanaltogether.Williams's allegoryfor ordinaryculturestill implies
some woman(wife, mother)as a vehicle throughwhich the generationsof men mustpass.
By personifyinghigh cultureas a maidenlyold woman(by suggestingthatthe tradition's
writersare themselves somehow old-maidenly),in dispelling the need for high culture,
Thompson gets rid of the need for woman, too.
Woman is a scapegoat that allows Thompson to conjure and dispel Williams's
Leavisite reliance on the great traditionand to assert instead a culture that really is
ordinary.In attackingthe greattradition,he admonishesWilliamsfor the homogenizing
tendencyimpliedin it: "Hemustresist the temptationto takehis readersandhimself into
the collective 'we' of an establishedculture,even when he uses this device to challenge
assumptionswhich 'we' aresupposedto hold (andyet which have been underchallenge
from a minorityfor over 100 years)"["Long"26]. He assertsthat the pictureWilliams
gives of the 1840s is very differentfrom his own and thatthe principlesWilliams sees
ordering the social totality of the time are "an arbitraryselection" [28]. Yet such
ambiguitiesand uncertaintiesdo not, for Thompson,point to any underlyingproblemsin
the writing of history, especially in conceiving of it as a totality. On the contrary,if
Williams "hasnot yet succeededin developingan adequategeneral theoryof culture,"it
is simply because his understandingof it is not Thompson'sown-or, rather,not really
Marx's [28]. For Thompson, an adequatetraditiondoes exist, "notablythat tradition
which originatesin Marx"[30], especially in Thompson'sown kind of Marxisthistory.
Any other "synthesizingdiscipline will very soon make imperialistclaims.... Now if
Williams by 'the whole way of life' really means the whole way of life he is making a

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claim, not for culturalhistory, but for history"[31]. Such history somehow elides the
problems of imperialismimplicit in synthesis because it focuses on the ordinary,the
everyday:"the workingpeople's daily 'way of conflict"' ["Long-II" 38].
AlthoughThompsonpays lip service to such problemsof imperializing,he repeats
themanyway. He suggeststhat"unlesswe insistupontherole of minoritiesandof conflict
in theprocess of making[thewhole way of life] we might get an unpleasantlyconformist
answer"aboutwhatthatculturelooks like ["Long--II"36]. Yet therole of minoritiesand
conflict drops out of his own account as well. Criticizing a fragment of Williams's
language("asociety which hadchangedits economy, whichunderpressurewas changing
its institutions,but which, at the centres of power, was refusing to change its ways of
thinking"),he suggests that"certaindifficulties in Mr.Williams' style... arise from his
determinationto de-personalisesocial forces.... If Dame Society was changingall these
garments,who or whatbewhiskeredagent was standingoutside the boudoirand forcing
her to this exercise?" ["Long"26]. By genderingsociety as female, Thompsonplaces
himself outsideof it andbecomes the bewhiskeredagentof malepotency. For Thompson
too wants to effect some changes in society; the thrustof his argumentis thathis kind of
Marxistsynthesizingwill allow such agency, while Williams's will not. In Thompson's
version too, woman is excluded froma role in the makingof the whole way of life-she
just passively embodies it, and is acted upon. This is indeed unpleasant,but what of the
other"minorities"so excludedas noteven to figurein thisdrama?Canany synthesiskeep
frombeing imperialist?If the need to take"intoaccountthe cultureof Congo exploiters"
(which Thompsonsays Williamshas not done) to bringthingsinto a properlywhole view
"demand[s]the takingof sides," will the cultureof those exploited come to embody and
underwritesuch ordinarydramasof white male agency in the way thatwomandoes here?
["Addendum"70].
Williams himselfandhis inheritors,such as Hall andJohnson,can see these dangers.
Williams's laterworktakesThompson'scriticisminto account,especially in the attempt
to theorize the role of conflict and difference within a common culture:5

Theidea of a commoncultureis in no sense the idea of a simplyconsenting,and

certainly not of a merely conforming,society. One returns,once more, to the
original emphasisof a commondeterminationof meaningsby allpeople, acting
sometimes as individuals, sometimes as groups, in a process which has no
particular end, and which can never be supposed at any time to havefinally
realized itself, to have become complete. ["Idea"37]

Yet this idea of common cultureremainsa process thatis itself a kind of knitting up of
wholes, of "criticizingthatdividedandfragmentedculturewe actuallyhave"["Idea"35].
As StuartHall notes, ratherthanmodificationsandqualificationsin Williams's thought,
"one is struckby a markedline of continuitythroughthese seminal revisions" ["Two
Paradigms"60]. Discontinuities,fragmentation,contradiction,conflict: all just become
part of a larger-seminal-pattern. Hall writes that for Williams and Thompson,
"'culture' is those patternsof organization. . . which can be discovered as revealing
themselves-in 'unexpectedidentitiesandcorrespondences'as well as in 'discontinuities
of an unexpectedkind'-within or underlyingall social practices"["Two Paradigms"
60]. Discontinuitiesare importantbecause they point to the largerpattern. Throughout
his life, Hall argues,Williams continuedto stress "the interactivityof practicesand ...
the underlying totalities, and the homologies between them" ["Two Paradigms"61].
When Williams writes, then, that"cultureis ordinary:throughevery change let us hold

5. See his direct response to this critique in Politics andLetters,134-36.

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fast to that"["Ordinary" 6], he holds fast to an identificationof the everyday with some
ultimatetotality.
Althoughclearly outliningwhathe calls the "totalizingmovement"in Williams and
Thompson,Hall himself repeatsit in his own definitionof culturalstudies. In "Cultural
Studies: Two Paradigms,"an essay thatcites Williams's "CultureIs Ordinary"[59] and
is itself often cited by others in defining culturalstudies (see Johnsonand Brantlinger),
Hall's stated purpose is to find out "aroundwhat space [are culture's] concerns and
conceptsunified?"[59].6Inthisessay, he chartshow thedivergentstrandsof whathe calls
Williams's andThompson's"culturalism"anda "structuralism" he associateswith Levi-
Straussand Althusserare actually"integrated"into one another[59]. Hall is interested
in structuralism,which he associates elsewhere with the everyday;the early Barthesand
Levi-Straussare useful, he argues,because they bring"theterm 'culture'down from its
abstractheightsto the level of the 'anthropological,'theeveryday"["TheCentre"30]. He
is interestedin structuralismbecauseit "hasthe conceptualabilityto thinkof a unitywhich
is constructedthroughthe differencesbetween, ratherthanthe homology of, practices";
butwhen structuralismshadesover intopoststructuralismhe balks: "of course, the stress
on difference can-and has-led the structuralismsinto a fundamentalconceptual
heterogeneity,in which all sense of structureand totalityis lost" ["TwoParadigms"68].
Like Marx,he wishes instead"tothinkof the 'unity' of a social formationas constructed,
not out of identitybut out of difference"[68]. Crucialto Hall is retainingthe model of
unity,which he recastsas "unity-in-difference," "complexunity,"a way of incorporating
differences"withoutlosing ... gripon the ensemblewhich they constitute"[68-69]. He
refers elsewhere to "the contradictionsof everyday life" ["Media Studies" 121]-a
particularemphasisof feminism, he suggests. Althoughthey might seem to emphasize
differenceratherthancoherence,these contradictionsget resolvedagain at those abstract
heights in which culture is somehow made whole again, as it has been in the early
"culturalism"thatHall repeatsratherthanmodifies.
Hall's colleague RichardJohnson also attemptsto synthesize away the troubling
heterogeneityof differencewhile still payingit lip service. In his essay "WhatIs Cultural
StudiesAnyway?"Johnsonworksto give "anaccountof the whole" [73]. Attemptingto
preservethe idea of unity or coherence,he observes that"a lot hangs ... on the kind of
unityor coherencewe seek" [38] andarguesfora coherencethatwould somehow connect
yet preservefragmentation.He would do this, it seems, simply by a substitutionof terms:
"We need ways of viewing a vigorous but fragmentedfield of study, if not as a unity at
least as a whole" [41]. ForJohnson,culturalstudiesprovidesthis kind of wholeness: no
"one discipline or problematic[can] graspthe objectsof cultureas a whole," but cultural
studies, encompassing all disciplines, can [41]. Within cultural studies, conflicting
approachesand readings of culture harmonize-"all [become] true";"theoreticaland
disciplinaryfragmentations"join together[45-46] (in a diagramJohnsonmaps cultural
studiesas a connectingcircle). Like Thompson,who arguesthata focus on synthesiswill
allow "theNew Left... to gain in intellectualcoherence"["Long-II" 37], for Johnson
a theoreticalvalorizationof wholeness somehowupholdshis theory'sown completeness.
The challengeof integratingthe complexityof everydaylife into this circle provides
cultural studies with its focus. Johnson argues that cultural studies began when its
practitioners"tured [their] assessments from literatureto everyday life" [38]. It is
precisely because everydaylife seems so ambiguousthatit needs to be embracedwithin
culturalstudies: "Ineverydaylife, textualmaterialsare complex, multiple,overlapping,

6. Hall elsewhereidentifies"culture"and "totality";see his "CulturalStudiesand the

Centre,"in whichhe writes"PerryAndersonhas-in our view,correctly-arguedthatsucha
[Parsonian]sociologycouldproduceno conceptof 'totality'and,withoutthat,no conceptof
'culture'either"[21].

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co-existent,juxta-posed,in a word, inter-textual"[67]. He writes, "culturalstudies is a
heightened,differentiatedformof everydayactivitiesand living. Collective activities of
thiskind,attemptingto understandnotjust 'common'experiencesbutrealdiversitiesand
antagonisms,are especially important,if they can be managed,and subjectto the caveats
thatfollow" [79n51]. Johnson'scaveats,however,managethe threatof antagonismright
back into commonalty. Johnson admits that attempts by ethnographersto map the
intertextualityof everyday life into a coherentpatternhas seemed to annul differences
within the everyday;such ethnographiesfit "theOther"into theirown patterns,thereby
"pathologisingsubordinatedcultures"[70]. But Johnsonargues thatsuch problemsare
simply temporary:in their understandableenthusiasm for the social totality, such
ethnographieshave forgotten that "fundamentalsocial relations have not [yet] been
transformed"[70]. And Johnsonhimself synthesizes the differencesof various critical
othersinto his own approach,downplayingthe way feminismandcritiquesof racismhave
directly criticized the ethnographicmode, for which he becomes an apologist, and
recasting feminism as a handmaidento cultural studies: "Feminism has influenced
everyday ways of workingand broughta greaterrecognitionof the way thatproductive
resultsdependon supportiverelationships"[40]. ForJohnson,feminismand critiquesof
race become supportive(not at odds with him, or within themselves), and what they
especially support is the idea of synthesis that they supposedly act out in everyday
practice.In thisway, "feminismandanti-racism"areimportantnotso muchin themselves
but because they "have kept the new left new" [40]. Any differences from Johnson's
position are simply incorporatedwithin it.
Itis preciselythisprocessof unificationthroughincorporationthatPatrickBrantlinger
highlightsin his summaryof the workof the BirminghamCentre:"Oneof the disabling
aspects of academic work culturalstudies aimed to overcome was the alienationof the
disciplinesfromeach other:knowledgeshouldbe madewhole again"[62]. Like Hall and
Johnson,Brantlingerknows enoughaboutthecritiqueof transcendentunityto qualifyhis
insistence on synthesis (he writes thatculturalstudies is "a coalescing movement,a sort
of magnet gatheringthe various theories that now go under the label 'theory' into a
problematicand perhapsimpossible synthesis" [10]), but he takes that synthesis as his
goal nonetheless,and it is not long before he acts as thoughhe has achieved it. In fact,
the subtext of his book is to defend the version of culturalstudies that comes from the
BirminghamCentreagainstthefragmentinginfluenceofpoststructuralism.7 To Brantlinger,
despitepoststructural attackson "the (supposedly) failed Enlightenmentproject,""some
version of historyand of the social totalityis necessaryfor thereto be any formof social
criticism";it is in Marxismthatone can find an "effective concept of social totalitythat
would unify the cognitive field in a rigorousmanner"[72].

7. YetBrantlingeris worriedthat even StuartHall hasfallen prey to this influence;he writes

of one essay in which "Hallhimselfoffers a historyof British culturalstudies as a sort of French
dependency. This is undoubtedlythe weakestversionof the story" [63]. Just what is wrongwith
poststructuralismis actuallyquiteshiftingand contradictoryin Brantlinger'saccount. On the one
hand,even thoughhe is infavor of his own versionoftotalism,he criticizesdeconstructionforbeing
too totalistic;ofDerrida's accounthe writes, "thereis 'nothingoutsidethetext' or beyondourfield
of representation.As with totalistic versionsof ideology, representationconceived as conscious-
ness as such makescritiquedifficultor impossible: startingfrom Derrida's position, there seems
to be no way to distinguishmore or less accurate representationsfrom misrepresentations,truth
from falsehood, reality from fiction" [104]. On the other hand, what is dangerous about
deconstructionis that it is fragmenting;he writes elsewhere of "thedeconstructionist'abyss' of
completelyindeterminate'difference"'[116]. Althoughdeconstructionitselfmightbe able to play
effectivelywith such contradictoryand opposed drifts within it, given Brantlinger's (supposed)
emphasis on logic, closure, and unity, such contradictoryassertions become problems in his
argumentand unsettlehis claims.

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 Justwhathappenswhenyou worktoward"someversionof... unification" [73]is
perhaps clearestin his own treatment of those groups considered other,exactlythose
groupshe feels culturalstudiescanempower.Despitehis ownclearrecognitionof the
problemsof the assimilationmodel underlyingthe early constructionof American
studies,therouteBrantlinger suggeststo empowerthoseothersactuallyworksthrough
theirassimilationinto the dominantculture.8Brantlinger's readingof marginalized
groups concludes that not only arethe"Crusoes... ourselves;so aretheFridays"[11].
Implicitlyopeningup Marx's readingof Robinson Crusoe to includeFriday,Brantlinger
is ina sensetooinclusive:Fridaybecomessimplyanotherprojection andpartof dominant
culture.ThestatementthatFridayis "ourselves" (who is this"we"?)seemspreciselythe
appropriation of other races and cultures thatprograms as African-American
such and
women'sstudieshaveworkedtoovercome-by uncovering howtheother(blackpeople
or women)mighthaveits ownmanyvoices,in sharpdiscordwithdominantculture.
Itis explicitlyas thesiteon whichto incorporate suchotherapproaches intocultural
studies'own unifyingdiscoursethatBrantlinger valuestheeveryday:

Class, gender, and race are central topics for cultural studies.... These
categories signify the majorforms of division and difference between people.
Understandingtheir historical,social construction,theircomplexinterconnec-
tions, and their effects on 'everydaylife' .. . is the chief aim of oppositional
criticism. Therole of culturalstudies... maybeprecisely toprod the traditional
disciplines into recognizing ... that theirsubject-matteris or ought to be what
divides and unifies us as humanbeings, in the larger workingsof society and
culture,but also in 'thepractice of everydaylife.' [147-48]

Class,gender,andraceshiftfrom"themajorformsof divisionanddifferencebetween
people"through"complexinterconnections" to "whatdividesandunitesus as human
beings,inthelargerworkingsof societyandculture"; oncegenderandracearejuxtaposed
withclassinthisaccount,theirdivisionsbegintoturnintoconnectionsandunitiesaswell
(perhapsbecauseBrantlinger feels theyareproperlycomprisedwithinsociety'slarger,
economicworkings).
Brantlingerusestheundefinedpracticeof theeverydayas a benchmark to evaluate
andrejectapproaches thatmightotherwisebedivisive,especiallyfeminism.Associating
theeverydaywithwomenandfeminism,he refersdirectlyto Lefebvre'sassociationof
womenandtheeveryday[138]andquotesMicheleBarrett'scontentionthat"feminism
haspoliticizedeverydaylife-culture in theanthropological senseof thelivedpractices
of a society"[136]. An identification of womenandtheeverydayas livedexperienceis
crucialbecause,whenfeminismstraysfromsuchexperience,it ceasesforBrantlinger, as
for Lefebvre,to functionas feminism.Onlyan attentionto the everyday,Brantlinger
argues,canrescuefeminismfrompoststructuralism: he quotesCatherineStimpsonto
blamethebreakdown of feministsolidarityondeconstruction'sfragmenting of "consen-
sus"[130].
ToBrantlinger, it is poststructuralism's
arroganceaboutmattersof theeverydaythat
makesit apolitical;hewritesthatDerridais actuallytrapped inthemetaphysics hewishes

8. Brantlingercriticizes"theAmericanrhetoricof unifyingthepluraland harmonizing

differences,"and the attemptbyAmericanstudiesto reconciledifferentdisciplinesandcreate
socialharmony[271;a "'balance'or a unitythatminimizesconflict"[28] is theliberalgoal of
Americanstudies,accordingto Brantlinger.He neverdifferentiates just how his ownform of
"oppositional" criticism[32] is different
from this model,especiallygiven its own continued
assumptionof social totality,which(magically)no longer appearsto annuldifference. Once again,
it seems simply a questionof whose version of the social totality shouldprevail.

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to deconstruct,"a metaphysicswhich (as Derridarecognizes)tries to look over the heads
of most people and to transcendeverydaylanguageuse, and thereforeoverlooksthe fact
that'cultureis ordinary"[41]. Poststructuralism increasesthe"distancebetweentheorist
and 'the masses'-real people, 'lived experience,' 'the practiceof everydaylife"' [170].
Not only does such supposedlyelitist theorizingweaken feminism's consensus, but it is
just such fragmentationthatmakesfeminismpoliticallyneutralenoughto succeed where
Marxismfails (for Brantlinger,a very back-handedcompliment). Accordingto him, the
very lack of unity withinfeminism,by bluntingits political effect, has been the means to
its acceptancewithinthe(conservative)academy[136-37]. What'sespecially interesting
about this claim is not whether it is wrong or how much it oversimplifies, but that
Brantlingermakes it in the midst of his own attemptto establishculturalstudies within
the academy too. He implicitlydiscreditsfeminism-because, he asserts,it has already
been successful-in the attemptto be successful himself. The everydayin this account,
ratherthanpreservingdifference,becomes the meansto annulothertheoriesof cultureor
to reconstructthem in Brantlinger'sown image. The heritageof Britishculturalstudies
becomes a kind of closed family circle, a patriarchalinheritance,invoked in the nameof
the everyday.

Feminism

It is precisely to open the hermeticand insularfield that has come to be called cultural
studies thatfeminists such as GayatriSpivakand MeaghanMorrisredefinethe category
of the everyday. In her feministcritique,GayatriSpivak,puttingAmericanborrowings
of British culturalstudies in their own culturalcontext, suggests that the particularly
Americandependenceon the ideaof a united"we"helps explaintherecentattractionhere
of thisversionof culturalstudies. In herreading,thisvalorizationof unitylinks American
culturalcritics with the very powers they oppose-as does their manipulationof the
categoryof theeveryday.Justas thosedominantpoliticallyoffertheillusionof something
called "We the People," promising throughthis consensus an agency supposedly not
availableto the electoratein theireverydaylives, culturalstudies itself is involved in the
productionof a managed and controlled category of the "we." (Spivak writes, "the
electoral mobilizationof We the People providesan alibi for crisis managementamong
the powers by allowing the party to claim 'A People's Mandate,' while the citizen's
political everydaylife operateswithoutthe necessity of her/hisparticipation"["Making"
782].)9 Partof "theacademic's [unexamined]social task"["Making"782], is the same
"productionof somethingcalled a 'People'" ["Constitutions"134] (a task thatbecomes

9. Such crises normalize the everyday and define it in the terms of those in power: "For
trouble-freenormalpolitics, there mustbe the gradualconstitution... normalization,regulariza-
tion of somethingcalled t/e People ... as a collective subject(We), called up in times of trouble,
in the interestof crisis-management"["Making"782]. That "normal"politics dependson such
"crisis management,"and vice versa, begins to breakdown the opposition betweenthe everyday
politics and exceptional ones. In making her argument, Spivak is working from Derrida's
deconstructionof "Wethe People" as the origin for a political state that is itself actually their
origin: Derridapoints out that 'thegood People of these Colonies' in whose name the represen-
tativessign theAmericanDeclarationofndependence do not, strictlyspeaking,exist. As such they
do not yet have the name and authoritybeforethe Declaration. At the same time,theyare required
toproducetheauthorityfora Declarationwhichgives thembeing["Constitutions"142]. Although
the tautologicaland unstableconstitutionof a collectiveentityis invokedas the exceptionalstrategy
ofcrisis-management (here, ofrevolution), at the same time, Derrida argues that "'this outrageous
thing[is] quotidian'"[ "Constitutions"142] and, as bothnormaland exceptional,begins to put its
own logic into question.

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obvious, for example, in the culturalmanagementthat goes on in Hirsch's Cultural
Literacy). But, Spivakargues,in participatingin thisproduction,culturalstudiesmustask
questionsaboutits own "constitution"["Constitutions"144]. Criticsneed consciously to
recognize and intervene in their own productionof this illusion of consensus, and to
recognize especially just how cultural studies' own formation as a field depends on
dangerousassumptionsabout unity and consensus.
Such consensus needs especially to be called into question because the dominant
powersuse theconsensustheycreateas a way to define themselvesas coherentandunified
in the face of unsettlingdifference. For Spivak,however,the dynamicthatunsettlessuch
poweralreadylies "dormantanduncriticalin the everyday"["Making"782]; critics need
to bringsuch contradictionsinto consciousness,especially throughthe attemptexplicitly
to insertwomen orpeople of color into thereigningconsensus,therebyfracturingit. Such
termscannoteasily be introducedinto this equation: introducingwomen, who function
in cultureas pluralizedsubjects ["Constitutions"145] and introducingAfrican-Ameri-
cans, alreadyrepresentedwithin the Constitution'sdiscussion of representationnot as
complete but as fractional (as slaves, counted as "'three fifths of all other persons'"
["Constitutions"136]), bothputthe notionof completenessandcoherenceinto question.
One way to go beyond Spivak's plain-and perhapsoverly optimistic-deconstruction
here might be by recognizing that such corporate entities do constitute themselves
precisely by writing such fracturedsubjects into their very Constitutions. Is simply
pointing up such contradictionsenough? Might those contradictionshelp form, rather
than undermine,the constructionsthatwrite them in the first place?
Spivakarguesthatthe everydayas a categoryis especially useful when attendingto
the differencesexcludedfromstoriesof consensus;she in factredefinestheeveryday,not
as lived experience,or "real"underlyingconsensus,but as the ongoing deconstructionof
thatillusion of experience. Spivakarguesthatsuch an illusion is still necessaryto groups
like women or people of color in theirself-definitions: "Itcannotbe denied thatthe best
andtheworstin thehistoryof thefeministmovement... entailsthepresentationof woman
as unifiedrepresentativesubject"["Making"795]. Yet suchunificationmustbe endlessly
interrogated-and cannot help but be interrogatedby postcolonial subjects caught
between cultures-even as it is assumed: "Thisimpossible 'no' to a structure,which one
critiques, yet inhabits intimately,is the deconstructivephilosophical position, and the
everydayhere and now of 'postcoloniality'is a case of it" ["Making"794].10Feminists,
in deconstructingthe unity appealed to in culture and cultural studies as well as in
feminism,need to play uponthe tensionbetweenthe need for theirown consensusandthe
price paid for that (temporary)wresting into a collective. To construct entities like
culturalstudies and feminism, while useful and effective, "is thus not an unquestioned
teleological good but a negotiationwith enablingviolence" ["Constitutions"146].11
Spivakattemptsin this essay to workcarefullybetweendeconstructionandconstruc-
tion, to unsettle the foundationof dominantpowers while providing some ground for
political action (her politics, like BarbaraJohnson's, are characterizedby that very
unsettling).To recognize the illusionof consensusas an illusion (even while invoking it),

10. For thosefeminists not defined as third-worldor women of color, Spivakwrites, "U.S.
women... are in a uniqueandprivilegedposition to continuea persistentcritiqueof mereapologists
for their Constitution,even as they use its instrumentsto secure entry into its liberatingpurview.
Favoritesons anddaughterswho refuseto sanctifytheirfather'shousehavetheiruses. Persistently
to critique a structure that one cannot not (wish to) inhabit is the deconstructive stance"
["Constitutions"147].
11. The utopia inscribedhere withinculturalstudies becomes its recognitionof its interven-
tions as provisional, limited,and incomplete: "Indeed,the hoped-forfuture of everythingwritten
in the name of cultural studies today must, I think,be the classroom staged as intervention,too
painfully aware of its limits to dreamonly of integration"["Making" 796].

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so that the recognitionbecomes partof everydaylife, seems to be the majorstrategyof
these politics. Butjust what Spivak'senabling"everydayhereand now"is remainsto be
deconstructed;it is a categorySpivak herself cannothelp assuming-the very category
to which it remains impossible to say no. Though refusing a notion of harmonyand
coherence, Spivak's culturalstudies is similarto thatof the new left in thatthe everyday
remainsthe locus and groundingof her constructionof cultureand politics. Paradoxi-
cally, the source of deconstruction'svision of how things might be lies in things as they
alreadyare-the everydayas some dormantaporiaalreadyinvisibly doing the very work
we need yet to imagine.
For MeaghanMorris,what differentversions of culturalstudies share in using the
categoryof the everydayis a tendencyto attemptto discredittheiropponentswith it. In
"Banalityin CulturalStudies,"she argues that in this regardboth the Continentaland
British, poststructuraland humanist, practionersof supposedly progressive cultural
studiesbecome practicallyindistinguishable.12 "Itis remarkable,"Morriswrites,"given
the differencesbetween them ... thatneither... leaves muchplace for an unequivocally
pained,unambivalentlydiscontented,or aggressive theorizingsubject"[20], the kind of
subject Morrislocates in feminism or radicalleft politics: "Thereis an active process
going on in bothof discrediting-by directdismissal... or by covertinscriptionas Other
...-the voices of grumpyfeminists and crankyleftists" [20].13Culturalstudies works
these exclusions specifically in attemptingto define "anappropriatetheoreticalstyle for
analyzingeverydaylife" [6]; it begins "todefine andrestrictwhatit is possible to do and
say in its name"[4]. In critiquingculturalstudies' aim to take everydaybanalityas its
subject,to createthroughit a restrictivefield for itself, Morrisputs into questionthe idea
of any "aim"atall: "I'mnot surebanalitycan have a point,any morethanculturalstudies
can properly constitute its theoretical object" [3]. The aim to dismiss or inscribe
oppositionbecomes the attemptto extinguishpolitics.
Culturalstudies'attemptto create"acollective subject,'thepeople"' [ 17]recordsthe
price of this endeavorin its ethnographiesof theeveryday;becausetheethnographerfails
to take into account her or his own investmentin and productionof this collective, "the
people"actuallybecomes the ethnographer'smask, circularly"bothsource of authority
for a text and a figure of its own criticalactivity,"in parta figure for its own coherence
and completeness [ 17]. Morrisarguesthatif critics takeseriously the ways the everyday
"'canreorganizetheplace fromwhichdiscourseis produced'"(as de Certeauhas argued),

12. In writing about her "irritationabout two developmentsin recent cultural studies,"
Morris states that one of them is Continentaltheory,including "JeanBaudrillard'srevival of the
term 'banality'toframea theoryof media. It is an interestingtheorythatdeals inpart with the tele-
visualrelationshipbetweeneverydaylifeandcatastrophicevents. Yetwhyshouldsucha classically
dismissive term as 'banality'reappear,yet again, as a point of departurefor discussingpopular
culture?" [3]. The other is British cultural studies, "theprogram of the Birminghamschool in
England" [5], which she associates especially with the work of Ross Chambersand John Fiske:

The thesisof culturalstudiesasFiske andChamberspresentitrunsperilouslyclose to this

kind of formulation:people in modem mediatizedsocieties arecomplex andcontradic-
tory, mass culturaltexts are complex and contradictory,thereforepeople using them
producecomplex andcontradictoryculture. To addthatthis popularculturehas critical
and resistant elements is tautological-unless one . . . has a concept of culture so
rudimentarythatit excludes criticismof andresistancefromthe practiceof everydaylife.
[19]

Morris wishes to "framea comparison"[11] betweenthese two groups.

13. Morris suggests, as I have, that British cultural studies "most often proceeds from
admittingclass, racial, and sexual oppressionsto finding the inevitable saving grace" [20].

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that"meansbeing very carefulaboutourenunciativeand story-tellingstrategies-much
more carefulthanmuch culturalstudies (andfeminist writing)has been in its mimesis of
a popular-or 'feminine'-voice" [24]. Morris'sown "our"hereshows thatit is difficult
to be careful enough;it is perhapsimpossibleto keep fromcreatinga sense of collective
endeavorin the very act of critiquingthatmove.l4 But what's involved for herin making
the attempt is a revision of the everyday that "may also come aroundeventually in a
different,and as yet utopian,mode of enunciativepractice"[27].
Such an opening up of restrictiveconformity to something as yet unspecified is
encoded for her in the very historyof the word "banal":"'Banality'is one of a groupof
words-including 'trivial'and 'mundane'-whose modem historyinscribesthe disinte-
grationof old ideals aboutthe commonpeople, the commonplace, the common culture"
[26]. She emphasizes that,in medieval French,"banal"originally meant"communal,"
until that focus on things held in common began to deteriorateinto an understandingof
such things as unoriginaland trivial [26]. And for Morris,culturalstudies risks making
itself trivialunlessit complicatesits notionsof commonalty.Morrisdoesn'tdispensewith
this notionaltogether,buturgesculturalstudiesto go beyondconformityin its definitions
to ones that allow for antagonism, complexity, a "range of moods" [23]; otherwise,
cultural studies will be "extraordinarilydepleted" [26]. Part of Morris's sense of
community turninginto conformity comes from the other sense of "banality,"the old
English and Germanicbannan ("to summon,or to curse";"to proclaim underpenalty"
[27]), a restrictiveact of enunciativeforce (as in banishingor announcingbans). Morris
wishes cultural studies, in order to keep from becoming banal in its attention to the
everyday, to itself avoid such compulsory platitudinizing: "Minoritariantheorizing
subjectsin culturalstudies have to work quite hardnot to become subjectsof banalityin
thatold double sense: not to formulateedicts and proclamations,yet to keep theorizing
... to refuse to subside permanentlyeither into silence or into a posture of reified
difference. Through some such effort, pained and disgruntledsubjects, who are also
joyous and inventive practitioners,can articulateour critiqueof everydaylife" [27]. To
keep frombeing discreditedwithinculturalstudies,oppositional"minoritarian" critics-
pained and disgruntledfeminists, poststructuralleftists, people of color-need to resist
the easy and exhaustedcongruencesdrawnfor themwithinthe categoryof the everyday.
In part, Morris wishes culturalstudies to resist recycling the same old things (her
epigraph is "What goes around,comes around");she argues against the "routinized,
repetitive,banal"[8] ways of seeing thatreduce (popular)cultureonce again simply to
banality,andso implicitlydiscreditit. Andyet, becauseshe has learnedfromde Certeau's
work that "'People have to make do with what they have"' [24], she realizes that it is
precisely because such banalities"kee[p]on coming back aroundin our polemics" [26]
thatwe need to look at them, to "engag[e]with the[ir]contradictions"[27]. It is the way
"'everydaypractices... alternatelyexacerbateand disruptour logics"' [23] thatMorris
would like culturalstudiesto makeexplicit-to open itself up to politics which disruptit,
"'dilemmas, which... no moderncritical model can resolve"' [7]. The utopian mode
Morrisgesturesto works to keep open the dilemmaof the everyday.
The very difficulty of Spivak's and Morris's essays, the difficulties of teasing out
from them the implicationsof the everyday,reflects (as it does in Lefebvre's work) the
complications of keeping questions open, of eschewing resolution for an as-yet-unde-
fined alternative-one whose ambiguities seem to its critics a weakness ratherthan a
strength.The very open-endednessof theirworkseems to me, however,to be its promise.
The challengeof following throughon suchthinkinglies in doing so withoutconstructing
new destinations,new conclusions, new utopias.

14. Thatthis "our"leavessomepeopleoutispointedupbybellhooks'sexplicitcriticismof

Morrisasonepoststructuralfeminist
whodoesnotmentionwritingbywomenofcolor["Postmodern"
24].

diacritics / spring 1992 63

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 Although feminism is not the handmaidento cultural studies that some critics
imagine, cultural studies could do no better than to learn from and acknowledge the
lessons of feminism. As feminists now regroupduringa period of culturalpolitics that
Judith Butler tells us "some would call 'postfeminism"' [5], the struggle will be to
maintaindifferentfeminismsthatcan also be open-ended. In workingto keep a focus on
the oppressionof womanthatalso assertsthe differencesof women, such feminisms will
have a lot to teachculturalstudies. Perhapstheireverydaypolitics will be to questionthe
everyday in a way that allows the fields we now call feminism and culturalstudies to
continue to have politics.

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