ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the radicalism of cultural activity against efforts to subsume the question of culture within other, seemingly more radical activities upon which individuals attempting to change the world have increasingly focused their attention. In a world where economic necessity and political crisis confront us daily, this argument may seem superfluous or even self-indulgent. To argue the radicalness of the question of culture is not to propound culturalism, that ideology which not only reduces everything to questions of culture, but has a reductionist conception of the latter as well. The liberating conclusions of Marxist culturalism as represented in the works of Thompson and Genovese rest in going beyond expressions of sympathy for the working classes in order to counter their distancing in hegemonic culturalism. Culturalism as hegemonic ideology mystifies the hegemonic role that culture plays in relationships between and within Third World societies.
