[ICTs-and-Society] What is Critical Media and Communcation Studies Today?

[Christian Fuchs]

Dear colleagues,

Thanks a lot for the discussion contributions thus far. My own 
experience is that the more intense and controversial and constructive 
the pre-conference discussion is, the better the conference will be. And 
what we really want to have is some good intellectual debates in 
Uppsala, not one of the usual conferences, where you go, shake your head 
about the stupidity of 90% of what you hear and go home again. So all of 
you on this list are very much welcome to engage in the discussion, to 
contradict what others are saying, to express your views, etc. What we 
want to foster with this list and the conference is a deep critical 
intellectual discussion.

I think the issues brought up thus far require us to consider the 
relation between:
a) Critical Political Economy of Communication
b) Cultural Studies
c) Frankfurt School Critical Theory
d) Alternative Media Studies

I have myself argued that we need a synthesis/integration of these 
approaches, but I want to be more specific because I do not think that 
we need any kind of synthesis, but a specific dialectical unity in 
diversity of specific expressions of these four contributions. So what I 
want to argue is that all four of these approaches have been (to a more 
or less extant) both much wrong and right.

a) Critical Political Economy of Communciation

Dallas Smythe's and Nicholas Garnham's approaches have been strongly 
focused on aspects of capital accumulation and commodification, often 
downplaying the importance of ideology in capitalism, although Marx's 
Capital, Vol 1, focused on both a) commodification and b) ideology 
critique (the commodity fethishism chapter). I adivce to re-read Graham 
(Murdock's) answer to Dallas Smythe in the Blindspot Debate because he 
very much pointed out the importance of ideology, which builds bridges 
of Critical Political Economy towards both Critical Cultural Studies 
(Williams, Thompson, Hall, etc) and Frankfurt School that are both much 
interested in ideology.

My own criticism of the approach of "Political Economy of 
Media/Communication" is that actually there are many forms of political 
economy (neoliberal, Keynesian, Schumpeterian, institutional, Marxist, 
etc) and that the use of the term "Political Economy of 
Media/Communication/Culture/Information" (as in book titles, recent 
handbooks, etc) has obscured the term "Marxist/Critical" as prefix, 
although the specific thinkers have had much Marxist and critical 
intentions. I think the grounding in Marx, which means the groundning in 
class analysis and the critique of capitalism, should be visible in 
naming the approach, which it is not if we just speak of "Political 
Economy of X" and not "Marxist Political Economy of X"...

b) Cultural Studies

The works of Williams, Thompson, (partly) Hall etc were much grounded in 
the works of Marx and were a specific critical analysis of ideology in 
capitalism. Critical classical cultural studies shared with Frankfurt 
School the interest in the critque of ideology. I think what happened in 
much of recent Cultural Studies is that a) the category of class was 
dropped, which implied a reformist cultural poltics that no longer 
wanted to abolish capitalism and substituted class analysis by identity 
politics instead of complementing the two and that b) there was a 
theoretical simplification. Take a look at an arbitrary work by Fiske, 
Jenkins et al: They do not cite Marx or Gramsci etc, they only cite what 
Hall et al say that Gramsci said (and they anyway never cite Marx or 
Hegel because they have not read these works, which actually is my 
largest criticism of these thinkers - they are anti-critical theory). I 
doubt that they have ever read Marx or Gramsci or even Hegel. The 
Marxist roots of Cultural Studies have been destroyed, and this has 
resulted in a reformist agenda that no longer questions capitalism. In 
my own Uppsala conference talk, one part will be a radical critique of 
Henry Jenkins (and Manuel Castells, who is not Cultural Studies, but 
something that is also not very critical).

c) Frankfurt School Critical Theory

Frankfurt School shares with Classical Critical Cultural Studies the 
interest in ideology. But the picture of Frankfurt School has both in 
"Political Economy of the Media" and Cultural Studies often been very 
simplified, ignoring its own complexities. Garnham and Smythe said that 
Frankfurt School ignored political economy, which is wrong, if you take 
a look at the presence of political economists like Friedrich Pollock 
and Henryk Grossman in Critical Theory. Frankfurt School understood 
itself always as interdisciplinary project involving various aspects of 
Marxist thinking. Some strands in Cultural Studies have argued that 
Frankfurt School has seen the audience as "culutral dupes". Frankfurt 
School is much more sophisticated, one can think about Adorno's analysis 
of re-education after Auschwitz, where the media and schools have a 
special role, Enzensberger's and Brecht's alternative media theory, and 
even Adorno's take on the need of an alternative TV. The problems of 
prejudiced Cultural Studies scholars is that they have never read or 
understood much of Frankfurt School, either because of language limits 
(not everything has been translated from German to English, so probably 
you have to be able to read German to fully grasp Critical Theory) or 
because of ignorance.

A second aspect is the Habermasian turn in Frankfurt School, I have 
myself been long critical of Habermas, but think that we should 
re-discover Habermas' Marxist and communist roots and his big connection 
to Adorno and Marcuse. But one thing remains: You can refer to Habermas 
without ever questioning capitalism, you can NEVER refer to Marcuse in a 
reformist and pro-captitalist way, you can be quite pro-capitalist in 
relation to Habermas' works (and that is why I think scholars today talk 
so much about Habermas and much less about Marcuse, which is a pity). So 
much in line with Andrew Feenberg's works, I think we have to 
re-discover the importance of Marcuse for Marxist Studies of Culture today.

d) Alternative Media Studies

I think the area of Alternative Media Studies is also crucial for 
transforming society and the media. Cultural Studie has too often 
focused on altenrative media usage and interpretation, but the question 
is, if we should not start with alternative practices of producing media 
(alternatives to Facebook, alternatives to Fox, alternatives to CNN, 
alternatives to everything). Alternative media have always been close to 
social struggles, they are social struggle and social movement media.

The problem that alternative media are facing is that a) if they cannot 
gain material and political influence (power, money) they are within 
capitalism based on precarious labour, voluntary self-exploitative 
labour, lack of resources etc, which enables a radical project, but 
results in a lack of mass availability, and that b) if they accept 
material support either by the state (state funding) or capital 
(advertising, marketization, etc), they may risk loosing their autonomy 
and criticality. Alternative media in capitalism are facing the 
antogonism between self-exploitation and autonomy. I think that in 
alternative media studies, these kind of media are too often idealised 
witout seeing the constraints. At the same time, it is important to see 
how actual struggles manage to make use of media for organizing 
themselves, but are actually facing limits at the same time (state 
surveillance of media use by revolutionaries, etc). Autonomist Marxist 
Theory stresses much the role of mediated class struggle today, although 
it tends to idealise knowledge labour and to ignore the constraints of 
ideolgoy, which we also have to take into account.

e) What way to go?

My proposition is is that all four approaches are failed, to different 
extent. And I think that the lack today is the focus on Marx. Marx had 
all of these elements - accumulation, consumption, ideology, struggles 
and alternatives. So my first and foremost proposition is that by 
re-orienting our analysis on Marx, and by reading Marx again together 
with students and young people and everyone, we can gain so tremendously 
much for establishing a truly Critical Media and Communication Studies 
that challenges the contemporary dominance of uncritical, instrumental, 
technological, neoliberal rationality. And this is not purely abstract, 
it relates to the ongoing and contemporary struggles that we have to 
fight now.

So some thoughts about our conference.

Good night and good luck, Christian



--
Prof. Christian Fuchs
Chair in Media and Communication Studies
Department of Informatics and Media
Uppsala University
Kyrkogårdsgatan 10
Box 513
751 20 Uppsala
Sweden
christian.fuchs at im.uu.se
Tel +46 (0) 18 471 1019
http://fuchs.uti.at
http://www.im.uu.se
NetPolitics Blog: http://fuchs.uti.at/blog
Editor of tripleC: http://www.triple-c.se
Chair of ESA RN18-Sociology of Communications and Media Research
ICTs and Society Network: http://www.icts-and-society.net