ABSTRACT
If we ask what the word ‘culture’ means we are inevitably able to think of a diversity of possible answers, often depending upon the ways in which we pose such a question. Cultural theory takes as its domain of enquiry the study of all aspects of culture (if not in fact, then at least in principle). To this extent, this domain is delineated at once in the clearest and vaguest of ways. For ‘culture’ is immanent to human experience, yet this very immanence makes the term difficult to define in a univocal sense. Cultural theorists have, in turn, generally held the word ‘culture’ to have a polyvocal sense, i.e. a plurality of meanings (a view which has, in recent years, frequently taken its point of departure from some of the central tenets associated with postmodernism). This plurality has, in turn, often been cited as the distinctive feature of cultural theory. Doubtless, the assertion of pluralism with regard to the meaning of the word ‘culture’ has a genealogy which may be traced back to the immediate post-war period: to the demise of European imperialism, the rise of multiculturalism, increased geographical and social mobility and the diversification of social roles in modern western societies. Equally, work in cultural studies (associated with the writings of such figures as Stuart Hall) has sought to draw attention to issues of race, class and gender in the cultural domain. In doing so, it has exerted an important influence upon the form and content of debates within cultural theory as well as in other disciplines. Such developments have brought with them, amongst other things, the perceived need to re-examine what have traditionally been regarded as normative or naturalised realms, such as those issues of human identity which fall under the rubrics of ‘race’ and ‘gender’. In place of attitudes that hold these to be a matter of mere fact, cultural theorists generally argue for the view that these are constructed. They argue, in short, that naturalised concepts are in fact social constructions which can be questioned in the wake of a burgeoning knowledge of the pluralism of social forms. ‘Culture’, in this context, becomes both a space and object of debate about questions which centre not only on issues concerning the constitution of subjectivity but on such matters as those of power, representation and discourse, rather than signifying a pre-determined subject-matter with a pre-established and naturalised sense.
