ABSTRACT
The history of cultural studies is marked by continual shifts of method. This is a normal and healthy part of any developing field of enquiry, particularly one which has exploded geographically and institutionally in the way that cultural studies has in the last few years. This paper is concerned to trace two such shifts: the move towards marxism and the move away from marxism. There need be no apology for selecting the relation between marxism and cultural studies for special attention: for many years it was generally believed that marxism and cultural studies were, if not identical, at least locked into an extremely close relationship. When, for example, Lawrence Grossberg wrote an influential essay defining the intellectual framework of British cultural studies for its new US audience, he claimed straightforwardly that he was discussing: ‘British marxist cultural studies, in the works of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ (Grossberg, 1986:61). Stuart Hall himself had, in his outline history of the Birmingham Centre, stressed the pivotal importance of ‘the break into a complex marxism’ as the second of the decisive breaks which defined cultural studies in Britain (Hall, 1980a:25).
