Cultural Studies: A Whistle-Stop Survey

Grace Moore

Chris Barker. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000. 448 pages. $83.00 (cloth); $31.00 (paper).

Like its subject matter, Chris Barker’s Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice is broad in scope, presenting the reader with a taster of diverse aspects of an ever-expanding category. From chapters on poststructuralism and postmodernism, to issues of subjectivity and a brief section on Madonna’s performance, Barker’s work aims to cover all—or as many as possible—aspects of the discipline. His work is well informed and wide-ranging, although some of his individual examples, such as the individual paragraphs on race in televisual texts like Eastenders and I’ll Fly Away are somewhat superficial. Indeed, rather than treating each soap opera in isolation and briefly identifying key “themes,” Barker could have constructed a broader discussion, drawing comparisons between these television shows.

By its very nature Cultural Studies offers a comprehensive whistle-stop survey rather than an in-depth study. The text is clearly intended as an introductory primer to introduce undergraduates to the field. The sheer breadth of cultural studies means that Barker has had to be quite ruthless in determining what should be included and excluded. Whilst the summary approach is effective for most of the text, there are places where it breaks down and the reader is left feeling slightly dizzy as a result of occasional instances of weak transition between examples. Particularly frustrating was the very brief examination of Kathleen McLuskie’s feminist reading of The Taming of the Shrew (251-2) in which McCluskie’s comments on the commodification of women are briefly introduced. A quotation from act iii, scene ii of the play is then thrown in and abandoned; no attempt is made to analyse or contextualize the quote, which is instead followed by:

Further discussions of “high” culture include Berger’s (1972) discussion of Gainsborough’s painting Mr and Mrs Andrews, which, he argues, represents the latter as an aspect of Mr Andrew’s property, and Lovell’s (1978) analysis of the novels of Jane Austen, which, she suggests, encapsulate the inferior position of women in the context of gentry conservatism. (252)

Whilst all of Barker’s observations here are interesting and point to important debates on women and property, the pace is simply too fast, and the text degenerates into little more than a list. The movement from the Shakespeare quote to the above paragraph could have been brought about with greater elegance and more sensitivity to the connections between concepts. Indeed, the newcomer to cultural studies would be assisted in such instances by more sign-posting and development of ideas.

With his target audience of novices in view, it would also perhaps have been useful to include more contextual material within the body of the main text to give readers a firmer idea of how the debates under discussion connect. Particularly misleading is the parenthetical documentation, which to the untrained eye seems to be locating figures like Volosinov in the 1970s, when of course the date refers to the year in which the translation Barker is citing was published. I have no doubt that Cultural Studies will run into future editions. It is to be hoped, then, that when it is revised, greater sensitivity will be shown both to the chronology of the arguments being outlined and, more importantly, to the needs of readers who may be completely new to academic study and its conventions.

Notwithstanding this confusion, the text is, on the whole, interesting and varied, connecting a number of disparate arguments in a lively and informative manner. Each chapter ends with a summary of the section, which provides both a useful aide-mémoire and a succinct account of the key points to assist those who may feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the subject matter. A comprehensive glossary is also included, which with admirable self-awareness purports to offer “signposts to the common usage of key terms” (381), rather than rigid definitions of critical jargon. Equally helpful is the emboldening of important terms that may require explication; thus readers are unobtrusively directed to the summary, and the congestion of the main text with lengthy explanations is neatly avoided.

Whilst Barker’s reader offers a thorough overview of a number of important debates, his own voice and opinions are at times subordinated to the arguments with which he is grappling and his desire to remain as impartial a guide as possible. A prime example of the need for authorial intervention is in the extremely brief section entitled “Representing Persons with AIDS” in which Barker unquestioningly reproduces S. Benson’s comparison of the representation of AIDS sufferers with victims of breast cancer. Benson’s argument that people with AIDS (PWAs) have been demonized through the media’s construction of them as “victims, who are complicit in their own downfall” (254) is an important one. However, it fails to cut to the most significant factor underlying this process of media persecution, which is blurred by the breast cancer comparison. Much of the anxiety that surrounded the AIDS virus in the hysteria of the early 1980s (and which indeed still persists on a less public level today) stemmed from the virus’s invisibility and, more importantly for Benson’s purposes, its transmission. An equally devastating illness, breast cancer is a more individual experience and does not attract the same type of “media moral panic” because it cannot be passed from person to person. A comment by Barker to this effect would have been welcome at this point as a means of examining the shortfalls of Benson’s argument.

One of the most effective sections in this reader, notwithstanding its occasionally frustrating brevity, is section 7, “Ethnicity, Race and Nation,” where Barker presents a probing exploration of the issue of cultural identity. He skillfully separates out the questions of race and national identity, pointing to the constructed nature of the categories and interspersing his consideration of theory with well-chosen historical contextual material. What are at times the highly complex contributions of key academics like Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha to discussions on ethnicity and nationhood are introduced here in a highly accessible manner and their arguments are effectively unravelled and simplified. Barker’s identification and consideration of different forms of racism is also crucial in giving a broad overview to what is, for most participants, a highly personalized area of study.

Barker’s work is certainly the most all-embracing attempt to introduce the sheer range of debates that fall under the cultural studies umbrella. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice will certainly be a useful teaching tool if it is used as a way of easing the reader into other in-depth studies.

Grace Moore is lecturer in English at the University of Bristol.