ABSTRACT
The encounter between British cultural studies and Marxism has first to be understood as the engagement with a problem – not a theory, not even a problematic. A classical Marxist approach to popular culture is to understand and explain a text or practice it must always be situated in its historical moment of production, analysed in terms of the historical conditions that produced it. This chapter discusses only one aspect, William Morris’s critique of capitalist society in terms of art and alienation and how this provides an implicit commentary on what is popular culture. It examines a specific example of the Frankfurt School’s approach to popular culture – Theodor Adorno’s essay, ‘On popular music’. The analysis offered by the majority of the Frankfurt School works with a series of binary oppositions held in place by the supposed fundamental difference between culture and mass culture. Central to the cultural studies appropriation of Gramsci is the concept of hegemony.
