A big book for the masses

The 1990s are turning out to be a funny old decade in Britain. Just at the moment when so-called ethnic and racial minorities are increasingly threatened by harassment and acts of violence (or worse) and when the perception of cultural differences seems to be turning into a lived belief in fast-frozen boundaries between increasingly hostile social groupings, the British media would seem to be interested more in the welfare of calves and foxes than in that of people. Given our present, edgy, cultural climate, a book like this one, consisting of a series of case studies in the cultural politics of class, gender and race and constituting a massive contribution towards the formulation of an emancipatory "Cultural Politics for Today'', is surely welcome. As I read it, I ached to applaud the enterprise at every moment. And applaud I did when the authors concluded by rejecting the socially insouciant theoretical high jinks of some versions of academic post-modernism and produced a sensitive analysis of the advantages, dangers and contradictions inherent in a politics of strategic essentialism and cultural nationalism. (But I was unable to applaud from beginning to end.)

One point (by no means a negative one) needs to be made clear at the outset: this is not and does not pretend to be an Academick Booke in the traditional sense. It is, rather, a sort of compendium of materials, written in various forms and styles and using a variety of voices. There are bits which read rather like collections of materials for a series of undergraduate lectures; other bits could just as well have appeared as articles in appropriate journals; still others, in the form of invented dialogues or group discussions, sound for all the world like echoes from Pilgrim's Progress. It is clear that the authors have the laudable aim of making their current labours and projects available to a wider audience and do not wish to submit to the conventions of traditional academic publications. The reader must not expect to be dazzled by flights of theory or impressed by any elaborate apparatus of scholarly footnotes.

But all of this raises the knotty problem of potential audiences - an issue the authors themselves address repeatedly. To take an example almost at random: chapter ten, "Primitives, Politics and the Avant-garde: Modern Art and its Others", takes the reader through a considerable collection of quotations from artists and art historians, exhibition catalogues and relevant journals (especially Third Text), and invites us to analyse visual and written artefacts within the context of a broader discussion of "The Cultural Politics of Race''. One can almost hear the clicks of the slide carousel, the shuffling of student handouts and the voice of the sternly didactic teacher-facilitator. But wouldn't we teachers be better served by a workbook-like sheaf of removable (and photocopiable) sheets? As things stand, the casual reader is asked to make do with, among others things, tiny, smudgy, grey-on-grey reproductions of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Wilfredo Lam's The Jungle. Another example: chapter five, "Whose History is it? Class, Cultural Democracy and Constructions of the Past", contains, among other things, an elaborate discussion of the Butetown History and Arts Project (in Cardiff), this time using a format which purports to be a taped interview but simultaneously contrives to include tables of facts and figures and extracts from relevant publications. I can well imagine that all of this recorded information and experience could be immensely useful to people wishing to embark on similar projects. But why not put it all into the form of an easily obtainable brochure? And why the unnecessarily prolix form of a Pilgrim's Progress conversation with all the audience?

Another serious problem of form (or perhaps only a quirk of my antediluvian tastes) is raised by the authors' use of the modern wonders of desktop publishing styles. Presumably in an effort to construct reader-friendly textual strategies, the authors have chosen frequently to employ a variety of typefaces. In much (but not all) of the book, what they deem to be the MOST IMPORTANT words in a sentence are printed relentlessly in block capitals. After a few dozen pages, this reader had the feeling of having been bludgeoned by very stern preceptors intent on maintaining control over THEIR meanings. In their determination not to let conventional academic prose cover acres of text, the authors also frequently interpolate agitprop-like VOICES (for example, A VOICE, AN-OTHER, TRUTH) which comment upon and interrogate the surrounding text. I suppose this strategy does occasionally wake up us lazy readers, but the effect over dozens of pages is dire.

In the case of a book which represents, in the authors' own words, a serious "political and theoretical intervention in the broad field of cultural studies'' and challenges "those so eager to espouse a post-modern rhetoric of difference without due attention to power'', it is perhaps curmudgeonly to dwell on problems of form. But the authors' concern with audiences and the use of "multiple voices'' surely demands a response of this kind. Despite everything, however, there are doubtless many readers who will find the book informative, useful, and even inspiring.

A final note: The authors have not been consistently well served by their proof-readers and editors. There are too many irksome typos, too many verbs not agreeing with subjects, and too many annoying solecisms. I know these blemishes are not earth-shakingly important, but they do nobody any good, and they let down the side.

Robert Chase is principal lecturer in cultural studies, University of East London.