Gramsci and Cultural Studies in the Dual Economy of the United States a Preliminary Sketch1 Di Renate Holub*

Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States A preliminary sketch1 di Renate Holub* ABSTRACT In this article, I have tried to submit patterns in US academic cultural studies and Gramsci scholarship to a brief comparative analysis against the background of the generic amalgamations of three national formations by the 1980’s: reproduction and maintenance of a consumerist “common sense” through credit card debts, accelerations in economic under-developments in a dual-economy, and the cultural reproduction of a collective psychic anchorage in self-perceptions of exceptionality and moral superiority in relation to racialized “others” in domestic and international spheres. My analysis distinguished patterns in academic cultural studies from those in Gramsci scholarship in that the former predominantly focused on aspects of discriminatory representations in the cultural practices of the “national” spheres whereas the latter tended to orient itself on “international” analyses in human geography, environmental studies, climate change, development theory, global social moments, global conservatisms, and so on. I concluded that in light of the important role which the Gramsci’s legacy had assumed in the UK Birmingham School, the moment is opportune and necessary for Gramsci scholars in the US, as elsewhere, to make use of the most important Gramsci-inspired diagnostic instruments in the development of comprehensive research projects on the neo-liberal manipulations of the material and emotional institutions of diverse populations amidst a dual economy defined post-democratic age. he academic rise of cultural nipulating public consciousness and con- studies by the 1980’s coin- duct2. As global capitalisms underwent T cided with the crystalliza- successive crises, and purchasing power tion of three major interconnected nation- diminutions limited further expansion of al formations in the United States. First, middle class strata, the population con- the multi-media public relations regime sented to predatory impositions of credit which had been set up since the end of card debts for the continuous satisfaction World War I to “manufacture consent” of under-scrutinized excessive consump- to patterns of material consumption had tion habits3. Second, the engineering of reached unprecedented levels of informa- consent to credit debt coincided with a tion-technological sophistication in ma- major shift in the U.S economy and so- * University of California, Berkeley. 149 150 _ Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States ciety which has now resulted in what has shifts of the 1980’s and the unprecedented been defined as a “dual economy”4. The manufacturing of consent to unrelenting public relations regimes have ideological- ideologies of materialist consumerisms ly framed and articulated “the new com- pertains to an elite driven organization mon sense” of this shift. It is rooted in a of mass conformity and political acquies- neoliberal political response to the global cence to mass psychological dispositions transformations in capitalism and it now to moral superiority in the domestic and resulted in an economy in which 80% of geopolitical arenas. This organization also the population work in low-wage sectors. dates back to the end of the World War The majority is white. The remaining 20% I era and is reflected in an under-scruti- of the population work in the information nized or unconscious consent to the values technology sectors which are comprised, of “American exceptionalism” in a global according to Peter Temin, of Finance, framework. In the domestic framework, Technology, and Electronics (FTE)5. In it is reflected by both increasing and de- the FTE sector, workers arrive with high creasing historical moments of both active levels of networked social capital and and passive consent to systematic repro- “human capital”, as they are university ductions of racist and misogynistic prac- educated technologists, engineers, and fi- tices7. Against the background of these nancial analysts. The 1% or the oligarchy generic integrations of three national of the population at large have promoted formations by the 1980’s – consumption the values of low taxes and limited federal maintenance through credit card debts, government, while 1% of the 1% of the accelerations in economic under-develop- 1% purchase presidential and congressio- ment in a dual economy, and the organiza- nal elections6. The elites of the FTE sec- tion of a psychic anchorage in perceptions tors have highly influenced “the new com- of exceptionality or moral superiority as mon sense” embedded in new public pol- against domestic and non-domestic “oth- icies, which resulted in a dual education ers” – that I have tried to submit patterns system and in high incarceration levels of in Gramsci scholarship and US academ- the African American population since ic cultural studies to a brief comparative the 1980’s. Consequently, social mobility analysis. With this preliminary sketch, I from low-wage sector to the FTE sector – would like to raise the question as to what which requires high levels of education or critical Gramsci scholarship in the U.S. “human capital” as well as high levels of may have to contribute to a diagnostic of financial assets – has become increasing- the “new common sense” as we appear to ly difficult or has highly indebted young move towards a post-democratic society. generations. The third national forma- It is useful to distinguish between tion which intersected with the economic general developmental patterns in the Renate Holub _ 151 humanities discipline of Cultural Studies television, film, literature, art9. In this in the US academy since the 1980’s, on they also reflected their affinities with one hand, and between much broader the multicultural rights environments evolutions in the immense research fields which in turn had been nurtured to a of information, communication, and me- large extent by the values of the civil dia technologies, on the other hand. The rights movements, women’s movements, latter, which is often referred to in short- anti-Vietnam movements and the stu- hand as “cultural studies”, have now dent movement of the 1960’s10. Among reached such enormous expansions as these values were resistance to elite or- they focus on questions pertaining to the ganized social control through by way production, application, and use of new of cultural instruments. As a result, the technologies in the area of video games, study of visual, symbolic, and semantic digital media, reality TV, journalism, representations of minorities and wom- world media, and so on8. Here I would en in the advertisement industry, in the like to limit myself to the humanities dis- Hollywood cinema, as well as in print cipline of Cultural Studies which histor- journals, magazines, and in popular mu- ically had academic affiliations with me- sic produced an enormously large body dia, communication, and film studies. As of literature. Furthermore, Cultural such it initially focused on the history of Studies critically examined elements of the advertisement industry, on the histo- consumer culture in general, including ry of broadcasting and television, and on fashion, celebrity culture, beauty con- the history of the cinema, as well as on tests, sports cultures. In this they had the more technical relations between im- critically focused on aspects of the cul- age, sound, and word in the production ture industry, understood as practices of of messages. However, against the back- a cultural hegemony on the part of elite ground of a heightened consciousness of strata. With the exception of African the extensive history of the centrality of American contributions to these types of the multi-media information-technolog- cultural analyses, however, the predom- ical “manufacture of consent” appara- inant conceptions of cultural hegemony tuses in the structures of every-day life and culture industry remained separat- it should come as no surprise that the ed from an economic nucleus. Working specific discipline ofCultural Studies in from the premise that the practices of the US academy in the 1980’s had been Cultural Studies constituted a form of re- increasingly committed to sustained sistance to cultural hegemony, there was analysis and critique of the discriminato- also a tendency to seek expressions of re- ry representations of women and ethnic sistance performativities to mainstream minorities in visual media, print media, cultures of consumption and represen- 152 _ Gramsci and cultural studies in the dual economy of the United States tation through analyses of popular cul- and Cultural Aftereffects”, “Historical ture, youth cultures, rap music, graffiti Secularisms”, “Voyeurisms”, “Perform- cultures, and cartoon cultures. With the ing Cultural Politics”, “Bio-pedagogies”, advent of the internet, life on the screen, and “Post-Racial and Post-Racist Strat- cyberspace, virtuality, and social media, egies”. While the journal series reacted in the contexts of which questions of the to specific political events – Presidential limits to democratic participation have Election, Presidential Impeachment – reasserted themselves as against techno- in the new millennium a new sensibility logical coercions and dominations in the embraced critical questions pertaining to practices of every-day life, Cultural Stud- surveillance, biometrics, failure of intel- ies discourse has as of late shifted some- lectual leadership after nine/eleven,

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