After the 1960s, social movements and human and civil rights arguments entered the public sphere—and from there began to permeate the academic world. As more and more academics began looking at issues of humans as part of organic or living cultures a paradigm shift began to dominate intercultural studies. This process started with a postmodern acknowledgement that individual identities are linked to multiple cultures—part of the fragmentation of individual identities. Scholars then began looking at how these multiple, fragmented identities were constructed and found that many people’s identities were tied to consumer products and consumer culture. For example, to be an active member of punk culture in the 1970’s, one purchased the right clothing, music, and hair color.
Thus, Cultural Studies evolved as an academic field with a focus on popular culture and consumerism. The label “Cultural Studies” was created by Richard Hoggart in 1964 (Gibson & Hartley, 1998). At this time Hoggart and colleagues created the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham, England. Their approach to studying culture was significantly different from the established disciplines of history and anthropology because the focus was on contemporary or modern cultures. Further, the studies at the Center focused on Western cultures, rather than the cultures of the “Other” or foreign cultures, as many earlier studies had done.
From the beginning, Cultural Studies took a critical turn and observed cultural artifacts and communication practices in relationship to power: which would eventually drive the shift to Critical Theory in Communication Studies. By the 1980s, drawing on Foucault’s (1969/1972) work on archaeology of knowledge and power, Cultural Studies had established itself as the cutting edge of contemporary cultural research. As these studies became more and more popular, Intercultural Communication scholars began turning to the models and theories of Cultural Studies to provide new ways of understanding cultural communication practices.
Stuart Hall’s (1973, 1974) reception theory with his focus on encoding and decoding was one of the central arguments that much of Critical Intercultural Studies focused on: laying a foundation for understanding that dominant messages are not necessarily read by all cultures from a dominant perspective. Adorno and Horkheimer's (1946) discussion of the “culture industry” or the economically driven mechanism for producing and transmitting cultural themes and messages also became a central concept in this approach to communication. Still others looked at how the products and symbols of non-dominant cultures were appropriated and mainstreamed by the culture industry itself.
As people began to analyze the economic and political overtones of dominant, Western cultural communication processes, this led to the incorporation of a specific body of Intercultural theory and method into Intercultural Communication practices: Post-colonial Theory and Criticism.
Post-colonial criticism draws from both cultural studies and Rhetorical criticism to look at and compare literature, communication, and political practice produced by colonial powers and the colonized. In particular, this approach looks at how the history of Western colonization and imperialism has impacted both those who were part of colonial cultures and those who were in colonized cultures. Post-colonial theory is critical of empires and the assumed global perspectives of those with international power. In Communication Studies, this discussion is organized around issues of voice and voicelessness.
A number of Post-colonial scholars focus on the discourses and arguments presented by dominant, colonizing voices and how those shaped the way that the colonized are discussed and treated in international communication and policy. For example, Post-colonial critic Edward Said (1978) argues that the traditions of Western imperialism, anthropology, and political organizing created a process he called Orientalism. Orientalism is, simply described, the process of Westerners looking at those from the East (the Middle East and East-Asia, in particular) and describing “Them.” It’s a process of “othering,” where people in power label, define, and explain other people from a dominant point of view. The label itself is a type of rhetorical construction that influences our perceptions and therefore our assumptions of the reality of the people being labeled. Said suggests that we lose a lot of truths and values about people when all the description and discourse about them is done from an outsider’s perspective.
Building on this concept, Gayatri Spivak (1988) argues that Westerners, those of us with dominant voices and perspectives, need to learn how to listen to the others. She asks us to consider, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak’s label “Subaltern” refers to those who are “beneath” or outside of normalizing systems of power. This goes further than a simple form of oppression—the Subaltern experience multiple forms of oppression all at once. Their voices are not heard in global discussions and arguments because they cannot break through all of the barriers of oppression and marginalization present, so their needs and concerns are ignored.
Spivak challenges us by saying the Subaltern can, in fact, speak. Those of us in the West need to learn how to listen. The Subaltern talk to each other all the time—they express their concerns and do understand the limitations inflicted upon them by social constructs. But, rather than listening to what they have to say, we tend to ask others to speak for them, to give them voices rather than letting them use their own voices. A Western-educated professor from India but living and teaching in the United States, Spivak was herself asked to speak for Indian women repeatedly and describe their wants and needs. Spivak explains that she is not capable of explaining “them” from their own perspective.
So we see how dominant discourses or discussions, drawn from standardized and recognized forms of power, overshadow the voices of the oppressed and can lead to a sense of voicelessness. Within Intercultural Communication studies, this concept has shifted much research toward finding ways to encourage minorities and the oppressed to speak and creating platforms for voices to be shared. Among the most prevalant is a body of work that merges critical theory, cultural studies, and Post-colonial criticism with issues of multiculturalism and local diversities: ethnic studies research.
Latina author Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) discusses what it means "to live in the borderlands." Anzaldúa and other multicultural and ethnic studies scholars take a look at the complicated discourses created by immigration, diasporas, mixed-race populations, and the growing diversity in the United States. Anzaldúa, often associated with Border Studies, describes the process of living in a borderland—living in-between White culture and the culture of Mexico. Like many Post-colonial scholars concerned with Orientalism, Anzaldúa questions the power and impact of labels on people whose identities fluctuate outside of standardized stereotypes and categories. Instead, in her arguments, those in the border defy labels and resist categorization.
In a sense, this makes the borders a liminal place, betwixt and between (Turner, 1969) standard forms of power and standard ways of being heard. As such, a borderland is a space where new creations and new forms of labeling and discourse can be designed. Anzaldúa suggests that those in the border take this to heart, and create new identities that do not have to be restricted to “not” White or “not” Mexican. She challenges us to find new labels and new descriptors.
As another means of resisting imperial and colonial discourses, many Border Cultures and Post-colonial scholars also take non-Western approaches to their style of criticism. Many of Anzaldúa’s critiques, for example, are written as poetry rather than the traditional academic essay. This process disrupts the normal form of discourse and Rhetoric associated with criticism, and ideally creates another space where new ideals and new forms of power can be created.
References
Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1946). The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception. In S. During, (Ed.). The cultural studies reader. New York: Routledge. Original work published 1944.
Anzaldúa, G. (1999). Borderlands: La frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
Conquergood, D. (1991). Rethinking ethnography: Towards a critical cultural politics. Communication Monographs, 58, 2, 179-194.
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. (A.M. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Pantheon. Original work published 1969 and 1971.
Gibson, M., & Hartley, J. (1998). Forty years of cultural studies: An interview with Richard Hoggart, October 1997. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 1(1), 11-23. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/136787799800100102
Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and decoding in the television discourse. Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.
Hall, S. (1974). The television discourse - encoding and decoding. Education and Culture, 25, 8-14.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Spivak, G.C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson, & L. Grossberg, (Eds.). Marxism and the interpretation of culture. London: Macmillan.
Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
