The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities

Author(s): Stuart Hall

Source: October, Vol. 53, The Humanities as Social Technology (Summer, 1990), pp. 11-23
Published by: The MIT Press
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 The Emergence
of CulturalStudies
and the Crisisof the Humanities

STUART HALL

If I address the crisisof the humanitiesin the face of the problem of social
technology,I want to do so firstof all from the point of view of the United
Kingdom, and more particularlyfromthe perspectiveof the growthand devel-
opmentof culturalstudiessuch as it is in Britain.Specifically,thiswillbe frommy
own experience at the Centre for Cultural Studies, where, if one believes in
origins,the term culturalstudiesfirstappeared in its modern manifestation.
But this is neithera search for originsnor a suggestionthat Birmingham
was the only way to do culturalstudies. Cultural studieswas then,and has been
ever since,an adaptation to its terrain;it has been a conjuncturalpractice.It has
always developed froma differentmatrixof interdisciplinary studies and disci-
plines. Even in Britain,the three or four places bold enough to say they are
offeringcourses in culturalstudies have differentdisciplinaryroots,both in the
humanitiesand the social sciences.There should be no implicationin myremarks
thatBirminghamdid it the rightwayor even thattherewas any one Birmingham
position;indeed, thereis no such thingas the BirminghamSchool. (To hear "the
BirminghamSchool" evoked is, for me, to confronta model of alienation in
whichsomethingone took part in producingreturnsto greet one as thing,in all
its inevitablefacticity.)
My own memoriesof Birminghamare mainlyof rows,debates, arguments,
of people walkingout of rooms. It was always in a criticalrelation to the very
theoretical paradigms out of which it grew and to the concrete studies and
practicesit was attemptingto transform.So, in thatsense, culturalstudiesis not
one thing;it has never been one thing.
In tryingto sightthe problemof the humanitiesand social technologyfrom
the standpointof culturalstudiesa particularsense of ironytakes over insofaras
cultural studies in Britain emerged preciselyfrom a crisis in the humanities.
Many of us were formed in the humanities;my own degrees are in literature
ratherthan in sociology. When I was offereda chair in sociology,I said, "Now
that sociology does not exist as a discipline,I am happy to professit." But the
truthis thatmostof us had to leave the humanitiesin order to do seriousworkin

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12 OCTOBER

it. For, at the birthof culturalstudies,the humanitieswere relentlesslyhostileto

its appearance, deeply suspicious of it, and anxious to strangle,as it were, the
cuckoo that had appeared in its nest. So I want to begin by sayingsomething
about the project of culturalstudiesin the face of that hostility,to speculate on
where I thinkthat hostilitycame from,why I thinkit was present,and why I
thinkit continues to make itselffelt. In so doing, I want to question the self-
presentationof the humanitiesas an ongoing, integral,integratedexercise. For
those of us in culturalstudies,the humanitieshave never been or can no longer
be thatintegralformation.It is forthisreason thatin Britainculturalstudieswas
not conceptualized as an academic disciplineat all.
For me, culturalstudies reallybegins withthe debate about the nature of
social and culturalchange in postwarBritain.An attemptto address the manifest
break-upof traditionalculture,especiallytraditionalclass cultures,it set about
registeringthe impactof the new formsof affluenceand consumersocietyon the
veryhierarchicaland pyramidalstructureof Britishsociety.Trying to come to
termswiththe fluidityand the underminingimpactof the mass media and of an
emergingmass societyon this old European class society,it registeredthe cul-
tural impact of the long-delayedentryof the United Kingdom into the modern
world.
The attemptto describe and understandhow Britishsocietywas changing
was at the centerof the politicaldebate in the 1950s, and culturalstudieswas at
thistime identifiedwiththe firstNew Left. The firstNew Left,dated not 1968
but 1956, was founded around such books as The Uses of Literacyby Richard
Hoggart (himselfnot a universityprofessorof English at all, but a teacher of
adult working-class studentsin whatwas called the extramuraldepartmentof the
university); Culture and Societyby Raymond Williams (who was teaching as an
extramuraltutorin the south of England); and TheMakingoftheEnglishWorking
Class by Edward P. Thompson (who was an extramural teacher in Leeds). I
myselfwas working as an extramural teacher, once I left the Universityof
Oxford,in and around London. We thuscame froma traditionentirelymarginal
to the centersof Englishacademic life,and our engagementin the questionsof
culturalchange- how to understandthem,how to describe them,and how to
theorize them,what theirimpactand consequences were to be, socially- were
firstreckoned withinthe dirtyoutside world. The Center for Cultural Studies
was the locus to which we retreatedwhen that conversationin the open world
could no longer be continued: it was politicsby other means. Some of us-me,
especially- had alwaysplanned never to returnto the university, indeed, never
to darken its doors again. But, then, one always has to make pragmaticadjust-
mentsto where real work, importantwork,can be done.
The attempt to found the Center for Cultural Studies was originally
Richard Hoggart's project. Once he was named a professorof English and
broughtinside the Universityat Birmingham,whathe said, in effect,was thathe
would like to continuethe workhe was doing in The UsesofLiteracy, in whichhe

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The Emergenceof Cultural Studiesand theCrisisof theHumanities 13

had writtenabout his own working-classbackground and the way in which

working-classculturewas being transformedby the new forcesof mass culture.
The departmentresponded withdisbeliefand dismay. Having appointed him,
theycouldn't say he couldn't do it; but theycertainlydid say theyweren'tgoing
to give him any moneywithwhichto do it. For thathe would have to go outside
the university.Having raised a verysmall amount of money,he was able to hire
me as a Research Fellow to tend the culturalstudiespasture,as it were,whilethe
mainstreamworkof the departmentwenton. I had to pay mydues by doing my
lectures on HenryJames to undergraduates,lecturingon the American novel,
whichwas myown area of research,and runningthe gauntletof the University.
Now, withthe appearance of the Centre for Cultural Studies,thisgauntlet
was an enfiladefire fromboth sides. On the day of our opening, we received
lettersfrommembersof the Englishdepartmentsayingthattheycouldn't really
welcome us; theyknewwe were there,but theyhoped we'd keep out of theirway
while they got on with the work theyhad to do. We received another, rather
sharper letterfromthe sociologistssaying,in effect,"We have read The Usesof
Literacyand we hope you don't thinkyou're doing sociology,because that'snot
what you're doing at all."
Having entered thisverytinyspace we asked ourselvesquestionslike: What
shall we call ourselves?Shall it be an institute?
On looking around, we clearly
weren'tinstitutionalized in any way,so thatname wouldn'tdo. We thoughtwe'd
call ourselvesa centerbecause thatmightrallysome troopsand make us look a bit
more impressiveon the academic campus. But we were clearly far fromany
center. Throughout the 1960s, in fact, we were moved from one temporary
residence to another, in and out of a series of Quonset huts, provisionalstruc-
tures built during the war and intended to last about six months- until the
German bomberscame. But theynever hitthe Quonset hutson the Birmingham
campus,and we occupied themall in sequence. In case we had any doubts about
our marginalstatusin the field,thisphysicaldisplacementand the space in which
we operated symbolizedit for us daily.
To understand this dubious reception is to realize that in the English
context the humanities,insofar as they were ever illuminated by a general
statementabout program or intentions,were conducted in the light,or in the
wake, of the Arnoldian project. What theywere handlingin literarywork and
historywere the historiesand touchstonesof the nationalculture,transmittedto
a select number of people.
The archetypalfigurewho inheritedthatproject and who lived it forus in
my undergraduate years was, of course, F. R. Leavis. Leavis is ambiguously
placed in relationto thisprojectbecause the establishmentat Cambridgedid not
receive him to its bosom; he too lived a marginal kind of existence there.
Nevertheless,Leavis saw himselfcommittedto the project of tendingthe health
of the language and the nationalculture,of nurturingthe refinedsensibilitiesof
thatsmallcompanyof scholarswho alone could maintainthe vigorof cultureand

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14 OCTOBER

cultural life; it was in their keeping, the keeping of a particularliteraryelite.

Leavis himselfgives an account of what the conversationof those attendingto
the cultural life of a nation is like in pedagogic terms: "It is an exchange of
conversationin which one speaker says to the other, 'This is so, it is not?'"
The question "This is so, is it not?" has to do withat whatexact page in The
Portraitofa Lady HenryJamesstopsbeing part of the great traditionand begins
to be part of somethingelse. That is what the question means. And such a
question appears to invitecommentas to whether,in fact,the contentionis so.
Yet, to picture Leavis asking thisquestion, imagine the archetypalLawrencian,
the nonconformist scholar,who, wheneverhe visitedOxford,alwaysunbuttoned
his shirt,baringhis chestas it were to the slingsand arrowsof outrageousfortune
fromthe Oxford establishment,and imagine Leavis turninghis beady, parrot-
like eyes on him and saying "This is so, is it not?" The idea of his having the
temerityto say "No, it's not," is unthinkable.It was a verycontrolledconversa-
tion among a very controlled number of people. Only five or ten people at
Downing College were admitted to the circle of those who were sufficiently
attentiveto what Leavis called "these words on the page; these words in this
order on the page," and had the sensibilityto care for and nurtureit.
This is a caricature,of course; yet it is also a paradox, because nearlyall of
us who enteredthe culturalstudiesproject were actuallyformedin the Leavisite
ethos. Raymond Williams,for instance,does a chapteron Leavis in Cultureand
Society.Or, Hoggart, in his Uses ofLiteracy,writesabout working-classcultureas
though he were reading a text in a Leavisite way. Having no other sociological
method,he uses thatof practicalcriticism,applied, as it were, to real life.What is
more, there was an educational project deeply lodged in the Leavis project
because Leavis and the Scrutiny group paid carefulattentionto winningover and
transforming Englishteachersin the schools. In fact,some of the finestwork of
the Scrutinygroup was accomplishedby mobilizingsecondaryschool teachersin
relation to English teaching.
Indeed, Leavis himself,though he had a highlyconservativedefinitionof
cultureand of the manifestdestinyof Englishstudiesin relationto the national
culture,was neverthelessdifferentfrommanyother scholarsin the humanities,
and this is why he was hated at Oxford: because he actually took questions of
cultureseriously.He thoughtit matteredwhathappened to the culture,whereas
they thoughtthe culture would take care of itself.So, in fact, our relation to
Leavis included admirationfor the seriousnesswith which he understood that
questions of culture and culturalchange lay at the very heart of social lifeand
could not be refused,thatthe issuesof language were centralto the understand-
ing of the national culture,and thatany serious scholar mustbe engaged in the
question of the nature of language and what it is saying.The fact that Leavis
adopted a conservativeposition on these questions and was driven to an elitist
educational program--in which only about five scholars in each generation
could reallyhave a vocation for this attentionto culture--was one side of the

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The Emergenceof Cultural Studiesand theCrisisoftheHumanities 15

coin; the depth of his engagementwithculturalquestions was the other. As his

neophytes,albeit in a criticalsense, we took our distance fromhis educational
programand fromhis conservativeculturalvalues. But our respectforthe other
aspect of his projectcame fromthe factthatno otherplace could be foundwithin
the humanitiesthat took these questions seriously.
The Leavisiteinfluencecan be gauged by the factthatRaymondWilliams's
Cultureand Societyis reallya rereadingof the core "English Moralists"course at
Cambridge. Required for all literarystudents,thiscourse was the only point at
whichtheyengaged the broader culturaland philosophictraditionsout of which
works of literaturearose. Cultureand Societyis Williams'sattemptto read the
traditionof the Englishmoralists,includingthe moral element in Englishlitera-
ture, froma differentvantage: the vantage, as it were, of cultural studies. In
turn,that project made possible The Long Revolution,which humanitiesdepart-
mentsin England received withtotal incomprehension.They said he wrotewith
incredible difficulty about simple questions; that he appeared to be a kind of
Marxistbut he couldn't actuallyname a singleMarxistconcept; thathis workwas
writtenin code; thatit had its own profounddifficulties of comprehension;and,
above all, thatit seemed he thoughthe was theorizing.For a seriousprofessorof
English,who had paid his dues in the real worldteachingadult students,and who
had finallywon his chair at Cambridge,to produce a book withthe titleTheLong
Revolutionwas a scandal, one which Williams,in his very seriouslymoderated
way, never quite outlived.
When culturalstudies began its work in the 1960s and '70s, it had, there-
fore,to undertakethe task of unmaskingwhat it considered to be the unstated
presuppositionsof the humanisttraditionitself.It had to tryto bringto lightthe
ideological assumptionsunderpinningthe practice, to expose the educational
program (which was the unnamed part of its project), and to tryto conduct an
ideological critiqueof the way the humanitiesand the artspresentedthemselves
as parts of disinterestedknowledge. It had, that is, to undertake a work of
demystification to bringinto the open the regulativenatureand role the human-
ities were playingin relationto the national culture.From withinthe contextof
that project, it becomes clear whypeople wrote us rude letters.
That representsthe negativeside of how we had to distanceourselvesfrom
some of the ongoing traditionsin the humanities.The positivework one then
went on to do in the Center had still to be invented. No place existed at that
stage, whetherin the social sciences or in the humanities,where one could find
the concept of cultureseriouslytheorized.Contemporaryculturalformsdid not
constitutea serious object of contemplationin the academic world. And the
political questions,the relationships,complex as theyare, between culture and
politics,were not a matterconsidered proper for study,especiallyby graduate
students.The strategyof the Center for developing both practical work that
would enable researchto be done in the formationsof contemporarycultureand
the theoreticalmodels thatwould help to clarifywhatwas going on was designed

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 16 OCTOBER

as a series of raids on other disciplinaryterrains.Fending offwhat sociologists

regarded sociologyto be, we raided sociology.Fending offthe defendersof the
humanitiestradition,we raided the humanities.We appropriatedbitsof anthro-
pologywhileinsistingthatwe were not in the humanisticanthropologicalproject,
and so on. We did the rounds of the disciplines.
What we discoveredwas that serious interdisciplinary work does not mean
that one puts up the interdisciplinary flag and then has a kind of coalition of
colleagues from differentdepartments,each of whom brings his or her own
specializationto a kindof academic smorgasbordfromwhichstudentscan sample
each of these richesin turn. Serious interdisciplinary work involvesthe intellec-
tual riskof sayingto professionalsociologiststhatwhattheysaysociologyis,is not
what it is. We had to teach whatwe thoughta kindof sociologythatwould be of
service to people studyingculture would be, somethingwe could not get from
self-designatedsociologists.It was never a question of which disciplineswould
contributeto the developmentof this field,but of how one could decenter or
destabilizea seriesof interdisciplinary fields.We had to respectand engage with
the paradigmsand traditionsof knowledgeand of empiricaland concretework
in each of these disciplinaryareas in order to constructwhat we called cultural
studies or culturaltheory.
Not all the models and approaches we needed were to be found somewhere
in the disciplinarymix of a standard English university,so, in part, the curricu-
lum of culturalstudies,or its literature,had to be made up fromother sources.
Increasingly,the books people read in cultural studies were not only salvaged
fromotherpeople's bookshelves,but were takenfromtraditionsthathad had no
real presence in English intellectuallife. Cultural studies would not have oc-
curred,and certainlywould not have survivedthe 1970s, withoutthe enormous
programof translationof European workundertakenin the late '60s and '70s by
NewLeftReview.The projectof the second New Leftwas crucial,for,along witha
fewother publishersof that time,it translatedbooks not yetavailable to us. For
the firsttimeit broughtus, in English,the major worksof the FrankfurtSchool,
thenof Benjamin,and thenof Gramsci.Withoutthose "Ur-texts,"whichno one
was reading inside the academy, cultural studies could not have developed its
project: it could not have survived;it could not have become a fieldof workin its
own right.
At this particularperiod-and I'm talkingnow mainlyabout the 1970s,
which is my own time at the Center for Cultural Studies in Birmingham--the
development of cultural studies had two practical ramifications.First,a word
about pedagogic practice, about how the work was actually done. It was ob-
viouslyimpossibleforus to pretendthatwe representedanythinglikea discipline
since there were so few of us hired as teachersand lecturersin culturalstudies.
During my time at Birmingham,the total complementof teachers of cultural
studieswas three,along withone Research Fellow; all the other names thatare
now known as the leading lightsof culturalstudies were graduate students.In

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The EmergenceofCultural Studiesand theCrisisoftheHumanities 17

thiscontext,it was impossibleforus to maintainforverylong the illusionthatwe

were teachingour graduate studentsfromsome establishedbody of knowledge,
since it was perfectlyclear to them thatwe were makingit up as we wentalong:
we were all in the game; we were apprenticesto culturalstudies tryingdesper-
atelyto keepjust one step ahead of them.And so the normalpedagogic relations
where the teacher is supposed as the keeper of wisdomand studentsrespond to
the question "This is so, is it not?" with that kind of compulsive drive that
requires them to say, "Of course, of course," was simplyimpossible.
Consequently,and fora seriesof additional reasons I won't go into,we did
not thinkthat what had to be done was clear-cutfromthe firstday we opened.
Graduallyit emerged thatwe had to have workingseminarsin whichthe theory
itselfwas actuallydeveloped. We could not do graduate workas I thinkit is done
both in England and the United States,where the firstchapterof a dissertationis
a review of the existingliteraturewhich implies that the candidate knows the
books, has a complete bibliography,everyitem of whichhe or she has read, etc.
What was the bibliographyof a cultural studies thesis?Nobody knew.
Secondly, it was not possible to presentthe work of culturalstudiesas if it
had no politicalconsequences and no formof politicalengagement,because what
we were invitingstudentsto do was to do whatwe ourselveshad done: to engage
withsome real problem out there in the dirtyworld, and to use the enormous
advantage givento a tinyhandfulof us in the Britisheducational systemwho had
the opportunityto go into universitiesand reflecton those problems,to spend
that time usefullyto tryto understand how the world worked. Therefore, if
someone came to me asking me to suggestan interestingproject that could be
done in culturalstudies,thatperson would not be a good candidate forus at the
Center, because it was not someone who had already engaged withand become
committedto a fieldof inquirywhichseemed, to thatperson,to matter.(I myself
stilldon't understandhow people drive themselvesthroughto the ends of their
Ph.D.s on problemstheydon't thinkmatter.I know how theystart,because the
lure of a proper career and ajob at the end willalwaysmotivateone to begin,but
how one manages to finishit threeor fouryearslater,I do not comprehend.)So,
fromthe startwe said: What are you interestedin? What reallybugs you about
questionsof cultureand societynow? What do you reallythinkis a problem you
don't understandout there in the terribleinterconnectionbetween cultureand
politics?What is itabout the wayin whichBritishcultureis now livingthroughits
kind of postcolonial,posthegemoniccrisisthatreallybitesinto your experience?
And then we will finda way of studyingthat seriously.
The question of studyingseriouslyis importantbecause, rightlyor wrongly,
the Center did not say: "All you have to do is to be a good activistand we will
give you a degree for it." Rightlyor wrongly,and especiallyin the 1970s, the
Center developed, or tried to develop, what I would call a Gramscian project.
That is to say,our intentionwas to address the problemsof what Gramscicalled
"the national popular": how it was constituted;how it was being transformed;

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18 OCTOBER

why it matteredin the play and negotiationof hegemonic practices. And our
intentionwas alwaysto do thatin the mostseriouswaywe could. In thatsense we
remained what people sometimes called "beetle-browed Leavisites." It was a
seriousproject.We took to heartthe Gramscianinjunctionthatthe practiceof an
organic intellectualwould have to be to engage withthe philosophicalend of the
enterprise,with knowledge at its most testing.Because it mattered,we had to
know more than they knew about our subject at the same time as we took
responsibility fortranslatingthatknowledgeback intopractice- the latteroper-
ation was what Gramsci calls "common sense." Neither the one nor the other
alone would do. And thatis because we tried,in our extremelymarginalway up
there on the eighthfloorin the Arts FacultyBuilding,to thinkof ourselvesas a
tinypiece of a hegemonic struggle.Justone tinybit of it. We didn't have the
illusionwe were where the game reallywas. But we knew that the questionswe
were askingwere of centralrelevance to the questionsthroughwhichhegemony
is either establishedor contested.
I thereforethinkit is true to say of the Center's workthatit alwaysinsisted
that intellectualsthemselves take responsibilityfor how the knowledge they
produce is then transmittedto society;that theycan't wash their hands of the
game of translatingknowledge into the practice of culture. We never flattered
ourselvesthatbecause we were studyingpostwaryouthcultureswe were nothing
but streetboys. The remorselessmarchof the divisionof knowledgeand the gap
between theoryand practice is not to be overcome by wishingto do so or by
declaringthatit hasjust happened. The gap between theoryand practiceis only
overcome in developing a practice in its own right. It is a practice to bring
togethertheoryand practice.It had to be done. And the vocationof intellectuals
is not simplyto turnup at the rightdemonstrationsat the rightmoment,but also
to alienate that advantage which they have had out of the system,to take the
whole systemof knowledgeitselfand, in Benjamin's sense,attemptto put itat the
service of some other project. What the movementneeded fromus as part of
theirstrugglesof resistanceand of transformation, then,was whatwe had in our
heads. The Center's project was thusnever what I would call a populistintellec-
tual project. It neversuggestedit would be easy. It never implieditcould be done
withoutengaging withtheoreticalparadigms.
Of course, the foregoing is not the whole story of the Center's work;
nevertheless,I want to leave it at thatfornow in order to turnto the contempo-
rarycontext.We are, in Britain,currentlygoing throughour crisisof the system
of highereducation. In the particulararea of the humanitiesand social sciences,
and of education more generally,this crisisbegan with what is now known as
"the standards debate," in which two universityEnglish professors,Copt and
Dyson,broke the silence thathad been developingin the universitiesabout what
theycalled the highilliteracyout therein the world.The highilliteracyhad to do
withthe inabilityof the studentstheywere gettingto read and write;and it had
to do withthat typicalfigure,a stereotypeof the 1960s, called in England "the

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The Emergenceof CulturalStudiesand theCrisisof theHumanities 19

polytechniclecturer." These are people reared in the '60s who couldn't getjobs
in the universitiesat the decade's end but who, with the expansion of the
polytechnicsystem(the bottom end of our systemof higher education), were
thenrecruitedintopolytechnichumanitiesand social sciencesdepartments,to be
regarded by the arts and humanitiesestablishmentas not much more than '60s
barbarians.
The attackon highereducation is not restrictedto these limitedtargetsany
longer. Under Thatcherism,in the Baker Education Bill, there is a major and
frontalassault on the freepublic-educationsystemitself,on the schoolingsystem
as well as on that of higher education. We are in the throes of a debate as to
whether,forthe firsttime,the Englisheducational systemshould have a national
curriculum.On the one hand, thisquestion representsthe attemptto computer-
ize and business-managethe entireworld; but, on the other,it has as its central
focus the question of what is being taught in two areas: literatureand history.
Because, as I thinkMr. Baker says- havinghimselfproduced a book of national
Englishverse whichmightbe the primarytext of the national curriculumin the
English departmentitself--the attentionto literarylanguage and its impacton
the questionof who can or cannot speak Englisheffectively is a centralmatterfor
the futureand survival of the United Kingdom as a civilized society. As for
history,it was in one sense a matterof whyit is studentsdo not know whichking
followedwhichqueen and, in a verydifferent sense,whytheynow believe (under
the influenceof the '60s barbarians,of course) that it mightbe importantfor
English studentsof historyat the school, undergraduateor graduate level, to
know somethingabout the rest of the world, any part of the rest of the world.
Such a dreadful misunderstandingas this had to be dispelled; one had to be
returnedto the proper understandingof the national destinyas it is recorded,
embalmed, and enshrinedin English history.
This project has ambiguous and curious allies, like the Prince of Wales. He
is a very ambiguous figure; from day to day, in our attempt to develop a
conjunctureof politics,we don't know whetherwe should be for the prince or
against him. But when he says thingslike, "The people I meet these days can't
speak English properly;theycan't write English properly;theyhave no knowl-
edge of the essentialstructureof an ordinaryEnglishsentence," we musthave
some doubts. Now, from the ancient universities,the cry is going up that the
studentscan hardly be taught because, of course, the schools do not provide
them with basic skills. "In all of my time," said Professor Norman Stone, a
distinguishedprofessorof historyat the Universityof Oxford, "standards fell"
(though he doesn't indicate whetherhe had any responsibilityfor the decline).
ProfessorHugh Ropold, who is also one of our most eminentprofessors,offers
himselfas a kind of flyingdoctor,battlingsingle-handedlywithwhat he calls the
educational pandemic-an epidemic raised to universal proportions. Having
assured himselfof the truthof a colleague's diagnosisat Oxford of creeping,or
galloping, illiteracyamong universitystudents,he suggests two remedies. He

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Hans Haacke. Taking Stock (Unfinished).1983-84.

(Photo:Zindman/Fremont.)

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The EmergenceofCultural Studiesand theCrisisof theHumanities 21

himselfhas so farabjured the constructionof a listin the mannerof E. D. Hirsch,

but has offeredinstead the ten commandmentsfor graduate students.And for
undergraduateshe has one recommendation:a steadyand unswervingreadingof
Churchilland Orwell. Correctspelling,punctuation,and an elementarygrasp of
syntaxand sentencestructurenow seem to be luxuries,even among the so-called
educated classes, with a dismayingnumber of universitygraduates unable to
masterthese essentialsof a bygone age.
All thisis part of Thatcherism;it has to do witha profoundcrisisof national
identity,of the national culture;it's about the erosion and decline of the United
Kingdom as a nation-state,about the threatsBritainnow feelsitselffacing,first
of all fromits own regions, second of all fromEurope, thirdlyfromAmerica,
fourthlyfromJapan,and fifthly - and especially- fromitsown population. It is
under threatfromthe "others," and the "others" accumulate in the cities;they
accumulate around the margins;theyaccumulate in Wales and in Scotland; they
accumulate in the trade unions. It's the attemptof Thatcherismto discoverwho
can reallystillbe English;it's a tinyhandfulof almostthe same size as the number
of people who gatheredin Downing College under F. R. Leavis-and theymay
indeed be exactlythe same people. Because, as Thatcherismhas made the round
of Britishsociety,it has, one afteranother,excluded everybody.Thatcherismhas
a place forwomen,of course, iftheyrespectthe traditionalfamilyrole; otherwise
theydon't belong. And, throughthe exercise of thislogic, one afteranother,all
of us have been excluded frombelongingto the nationalcommunityat all. It has
to do with a sense of unease and uncertaintythat can only be shored up by a
national curriculum;withthe enormous displacementsof a deeply centeredand
hierarchicaltraditionalculturewhichhas been blown apart by world migration,
by fragmentation, by the rise of the margins,by the strugglesof the marginsto
come into representation,by the contestationof the marginsforculturalpower,
by the pluralizationof ethnicityitselfin English society.
Withinthe contextof these "threats,"what we are seeing is not the trium-
phant march of the human sciences and the glorious destiny of the liberal
humanities;rather,the humanitiesare invoked as the last bastion in a primarily
defensiveoperation. Thatcherism itselfis a defensiveoperation. It asks: Who
now can be English?What is it like to be English?Can one be Englishand Black?
English and Muslim? English and feminist?English and socialist?English and
Welsh? This is the degree to which Thatcherism sees itselfimprisonedin an
increasinglytightand tinyisland. This has nothingto do with the question of
whetherThatcheriteshold power; of course theydo. The notion that,because
theydon't reallyhave anywhereto stand,they'regoing to abdicate theirposition
at the centerof the cultureand tell the restof us to take over is a kindof illusion
thatintellectualssometimeshave. They aren't simplygoing to get out of it; they
are engaged, instead,in an enormousstruggleto definewhatBritaincan mean in
the twentiethcenturyifit is not to be the centerof a huge commercial,economic,
and imperialistempire. Where is there forthe Englishpeople to stand,and what

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22 OCTOBER

could be the identitiesthey could claim in the twenty-first centurythat might

enable them to have any kind of self-respect?In the search to findan answer to
that question, we have taken offto the South Seas to defend the Falklands; we
have to defend somethingin order to assure ourselves that this dark heroic
destinyis still a possible futurefor us. And these mightbe regarded as mere
fantasyexcursions-except, of course, that real people die at eitherend of the
process.
If culturalstudiescame into existencein order to understandculturaland
social change in Britishsocietysince the war, what I havejust been describingis
the current,contemporaryformin which that culturalcrisiscontinuesto work
itselfout in the United Kingdom. The vocation of cultural studies has been to
enable people to understandwhat is going on, and especiallyto provide waysof
thinking,strategiesforsurvival,and resourcesforresistanceto all those who are
now-in economic, political,and culturalterms- excluded fromanythingthat
could be called access to the national cultureof the national community:in this
sense, culturalstudiesstillhas as profounda historicalvocation as it ever had in
the 1960s and '70s. But on the other hand, in relationto the mass education of
students,both in higher education and elsewhere, cultural studies is, as an
institutionalform,very minor. But the humanitiesand the arts are not. And
indeed the contestationthatculturalstudieswas partlyresponsibleforputtingon
the agenda has been taken into the humanitiesthemselves.The notion thatthe
humanitiesdisciplinesare an integralfieldthathas the option to decide whether
or not to become social technologies is, in my view, hopelesslyutopian. The
culturalcrisisnow cuts into and throughthe humanitiesfrombeginningto end:
the social technologiesof the other side have already invaded the humanities,
summoningthemto the barricadesto defendan old project. And the humanities
have thusto decide on whichside of thisparticularformof culturalpoliticsthey
are going to engage in the future.
That crisis,it seems to me, runs throughmostarts and humanitiesdepart-
mentsin Britishuniversitiesand, lookingon froma distance,it is myobservation
thattheyrun throughculturalstudies,communicationsstudies,and the humani-
tiesin the United Statesas well. The people who understandwhatthe problemis
for the humanitiesare not to be numbered in termsof their institutions,their
programs,or what theirdepartmentscall themselves.In the United States, for
instance,"culturalstudies" has become an umbrellaforjust about anything,and
to ask whethersomeone is doing culturalstudiesor not is unlikelyto evoke the
answer you want. Similarly,those who are doing formaldeconstructionof the
most elegant, mannered kind are perfectlyin touch withthe advanced frontiers
of theoreticalwork,yettheircontributionto the resolutionof the culturalcrisisI
havejust named is nonexistent.The question is not whetherone is a deconstruc-
tionist,but whether these new theoretical techniques and the new positions
opened up by feminismand by Black struggles,as well as the new theoretical
positionsopened up by the postmodernistand the poststructuralist debates, can

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The EmergenceofCultural Studiesand theCrisisof theHumanities 23

be won over and drawn into an understandingof the larger historical/political

projectthatnow confrontsthe humanities.It is perfectlypossibleto writeelegant
treatiseson the "other" withoutever having encountered what "otherness" is
reallylike for some people actuallyto live. It is perfectlypossible to invoke the
postmodernistparadigm and not understand how easily postmodernismcan
become a kind of lamentforone's own departurefromthe centerof the world.
These crisescut throughexistingnew practices;theyintersectthe humani-
ties; they bisect cultural studies; they interruptpeople's careers; they destroy
people's reading lists; they cut through the canon; they fire cannons at one
another ratherthan establishingthem. They are a series of interruptionsin the
peaceful life of the humanities.There may be some idea that,now, late in the
day, the humanitiescould stillask questions like: Shall we respond vigorouslyto
the assault on our economic and fundingbase? Shall we ventureeven a toe into
these troublesomewaters?Shall we take thoughtforthe morrow?But the notion
that such questions are open for us to ask and that we have the time to reflect
extensivelyon a replyto them-that, it seems to me, is the last of the humanist
illusions.

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