Abstract

This study does not attempt to unify the various theories in cultural studies. Instead it proposes pointers or directions to further transformations of cultural studies. This study identifies and analyzes three theorists, who have been largely ignored in cultural studies, to suggest a resolution of the theoretical conflicts surrounding cultural studies by tracing inner connections: political economy for production-based study, structuralism and postmodernism for textual and audience analysis. For the weakest aspect of cultural studies, the political economic aspect, the study suggests Bourdieu's sociology of culture to bridge the gap between cultural studies and political economy. For Bourdieu, the social patterning of taste and the distribution of cultural capital is intimately related to the reproduction of social power. ;As a substitution for structuralism, the study suggests the work of German philosopher Habermas, who has been virtually dismissed by both British and American cultural studies. His theory of communication is valuable to cultural studies because it emphasizes social conditions affecting the legitimacy of various cultural forms. Habermas's perspective on the relations between culture and social structure is a reformulation of the Marxist theory of historical materialism, but with greater emphasis on communication and culture. ;Bakhtin favors a more open, reciprocal, decentered negotiation of specificity and difference. His concept of dialogism and of language oppose the individualist assumptions and romantic interpretations of cultural forms, providing us rather with specific ways in which those producers orchestrate diverse social voices. His emphasis on the situated utterance and the interpersonal generation of meaning avoids the static ahistoricism of an apolitical value-free postmodernism. Bakhtin's notion of carnival also helps to maintain a balance between the importance of the counter-hegemonic subversion of established power and the obvious fact of pleasure, desire, and ambiguity. Thus, Bakhtin's theory would restore the notion of collective pleasure to its rightful place within cultural studies. Finally, based on this description, critique, and new possible interconnections with the broader discourse of those three writers, this study points to the development of an alternative direction for its primary problematic