What Is Cultural History?

Author(s): Geoffrey Eley

Source: New German Critique, No. 65, Cultural History/Cultural Studies (Spring - Summer,
1995), pp. 19-36
Published by: New German Critique
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488530
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Whatis CulturalHistory?

GeoffreyEley

First, some quotations:

Cultureis ordinary:this is the firstfact.Everyhumansocietyhas its own

shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society
expressesthese,in institutions,andin artsandlearning.The makingof a
societyis the findingof commonmeaningsanddirections,andits growth
is an active debateand amendmentunderthe pressuresof experience,
contact,and discovery,writingthemselvesinto the land. The growing
societyis there,yet it is also madeandremadein everyindividualmind.
The makingof a mindis, first,the slow learningof shapes,purposes,and
meanings,so thatwork,observations,and communicationare possible.
Then,second,but equalin importance,is the testingof these in experi-
ence,themakingof new observations, andmeanings.A cul-
comparisons,
ture has two aspects:the known meaningsand directions,which its
membersare trainedto; the new observationsand meanings,which are
offeredand tested.These are the ordinaryprocessesof humansocieties
andhumanminds,andwe see throughthemthenatureof a culture:thatit
is alwaysboth traditionaland creative;thatit is both the most ordinary
commonmeaningsandthe finestindividualmeanings.We use the word
culturein these two senses:to meana whole way of life - the common
meanings;to meanthe artsandlearning- the specialprocessesof dis-
coveryandcreativeeffort.Somewritersreservethe wordfor one or other
of these senses;I insiston both,andon the significanceof theirconjunc-
tion.ThequestionsI askaboutourculturearequestionsaboutourgeneral
andcommonpurposes,yet also questionsaboutdeeppersonalmeanings.
Cultureis ordinary,in everysocietyandin everymind.
-Raymond Williamsl

1. Resourcesof Hope. Culture,Democ-

RaymondWilliams,"Cultureis Ordinary,"
Verso,1989)4.
racy,Socialism(London:
19
20 What is Cultural History

After all most of the work I was doing was in an area which people
called "culture,"even in the narrowersense, so thatthe termhad a cer-
tain obviousness.But you knowthe numberof times I've wished thatI
had never heardof the damnedword.I have becomemore awareof its
difficulties,not less, as I have gone on.
- RaymondWilliams2

The institutionallyor informally organized social production and

reproductionof sense, meaning,andconsciousness.
- Tim O'Sullivanet al.3

["Popularculture"]may suggest, in one anthropologicalinflexion

which has been influentialwith social historians,an over-consensual
view of this cultureas "a system of sharedmeanings, attitudesand
values, andthe symbolicforms(performances,artifacts)in which they
are embodied."But a cultureis also a pool of diverse resources, in
which traffic passes between the literateand the oral, the superordi-
nate and the subordinate,the village andthe metropolis;it is an arena
of conflictualelements,which requiressome compellingpressure
as, for example,nationalismor prevalentreligiousorthodoxyor class
consciousness- to take formas "system."And, indeed,the very term
"culture,"with its cozy invocationof consensus,may serve to distract
attentionfrom social and culturalcontradictions,from the fractures
and oppositionswithinthe whole.
- EdwardP. Thompson4

We arethinkingof the extraordinary symboliccreativityof the multitude

of ways in whichyoungpeopleuse, humanize,decorateandinvestwith
meaningstheircommonand immediatelife spacesand social practices
- personalstyles and choices of clothes;selective and active use of
music, TV, magazines;decorationof bedrooms;the ritualsof romance
and subculturalstyles;the style,banteranddramaof friendshipgroups;
music-makingand dance.Nor arethese pursuitsandactivitiestrivialor
inconsequential.In conditionsof latemodernizationandthe widespread
crisisof culturalvaluestheycanbe crucialto creationandsustenanceof
individualandgroupidentities,evento culturalsurvivalof identityitself.
Thereis work,even desperatework,in theirplay.
-Paul Willis5
2. Williams,Politics and Letters.InterviewswithNew Left Review (London:New
Left,1979)154.
3. TimO'Sullivan,JohnHartley, andJohnFiske,KeyConcepts
DannySaunders,
in Communication(London:Routledge,1983) 57.
4. EdwardP. Thompson,Customsin Common.Studiesin TraditionalPopular Cul-
ture(NewYork:NewP, 1993)6.
5. Paul Willis, CommonCulture.SymbolicWorkat Play in the EverydayCultures
of the Young(Boulder:OpenUP, 1990) 2.
 Geoffrey Eley 21

I don't treatthese culturalrepresentationsas the forcibleimpositionof

false and limitingstereotypes.InsteadI explorethe desirepresumedby
theserepresentations,thedesirewhichtouchesfeministandnon-feminist
women alike. But nor do I treatfemale desireas somethinguniversal,
unchangeable,arisingfrom the female condition.I see the representa-
tions of femalepleasureanddesireasproducingandsustainingfeminine
positions.These positionsare neitherdistantroles imposedon us from
outside which it would be easy to kick off, nor are they the essential
attributesof femininity.Femininepositionsareproducedas responsesto
the pleasuresofferedto us; oursubjectivityandidentityareformedin the
definitionsof desirewhichencircleus. These arethe experienceswhich
makechangesucha difficultanddauntingtask,for femaledesireis con-
stantlyluredby discourseswhichsustainmaleprivilege.
- RosalindCoward6

. . . [T]here are agreed limits to what is and is not acceptable,and

although these are constantlyshifting, they must always be seen as
fixed, since they form the ground-planof social stability.The shapes
of an era are more easily foundin its fashions,its furniture,its build-
ings - whose lines do seem to tracethe 'moods' of social change-
than in the equally significantoutlines of its thoughtsand habits, its
conceptualcategories,which are harderto see because they are pre-
cisely what we take for granted.How then can we "see"them?If it is
in shapes and forms thatpassions live - as lightninglives in a con-
ductor- it is likely to be in images - in films, photographs,televi-
sion - that such conduitsare most clearlyvisible. Our emotions are
wound into these forms,only to springback at us with an apparentlife
of their own. Movies seem to containfeelings, two-dimensionalpho-
tographs seem to contain truths.The world itself seems filled with
obviousness, full of natural meanings which these media merely
reflect.But we invest the worldwith its significance.It doesn'thave to
be the way it is, or to meanwhatit does.
-Judith Williamson7

The conscious, chosen meaningin most people's lives comes much

more fromwhat they consumethanwhatthey produce.
-JudithWilliamson8

[This position] . . . sees popularculture as a site of struggle, but,

while accepting the power of the forces of dominance, it focuses

6. Rosalind Coward,Female Desires. How TheyAre Sought, Bought and Pack-

1985)16.
aged(NewYork:GroveWeidenfeld,
7. Judith Williamson, ConsumingPassions: The Dynamics of Popular Culture
(London:M.Boyars,1986)15.
8. Williamson 230.
22 What is Cultural History

ratherupon the populartactics by which these forces are coped with,

are evaded or are resisted. Instead of tracing exclusively the pro-
cesses of incorporation,it investigatesratherthatpopularvitality and
creativitythatmakes incorporationsuch a constantnecessity. Instead
of concentratingon the omnipotent,insidious practicesof the domi-
nant ideology, it attemptsto understandthe everydayresistancesand
evasions that make that ideology work so hard and insistently to
maintainitself and its values. This approachsees popularcultureas
potentially,and often actually,progressive(thoughnot radical), and
it is essentially optimistic, for it finds in the vigor and vitality of the
people evidence both of the possibility of social change and of the
motivationto drive it.
- John Fiske9

That ordinarypeople use the symbolic resources available to them

underpresentconditionsfor meaningfulactivity is both manifest and
endlessly elaboratedupon by new revisionism. Thus emancipatory
projects to liberate people from their alleged entrapment,whether
they know they are entrappedor not, are called into questionby this
fundamental insight. Economic exploitations, racism, gender and
sexual oppression, to name but a few, exist, but the exploited,
estranged and oppressedcope, and, furthermore,if such writers as
John Fiske and Paul Willis are to be believed, they cope very well
indeed, making valid sense of the world and obtaininggratefulplea-
sure from what they receive. Apparently,there is so much action in
the micro-politicsof everydaylife thatthe Utopianpromisesof a bet-
ter future,which were once so enticing for critics of popularculture,
have lost all credibility.
-Jim McGuigan10

By cultureis understoodthe commonsense or way of life of a particu-

lar class, group,or social category,the complex of ideologies that are
actuallyadoptedas moralpreferencesor principlesof life. To insist on
this usage is to insist on the complex recreationof ideological effects
as a momentof the analysisof consciousness.The effects of a particu-
lar ideologicalwork or aspectof hegemonycan only be understoodin
relationto attitudesandbeliefs thatarealreadylived. Ideologies never
address("interpellate") a "naked"subject.Concretesocial individuals
are always alreadyconstructedas culturallyclassed and sexed agents,
alreadyhave a complexly formedsubjectivity.Outsidesome structur-
alist texts, the "lonely hour"of the unitary,primary,primordialand
cultureless interpellation"never comes." Ideologies always work

9. JohnFiske, Understanding
PopularCulture(Boston:UnwinHyman,1989)2
10. JimMcGuigan,
Cultural
Populism andNewYork:Routledge,
(London 1992)
 Geoffiey Eley 23

upon a ground:thatgroundis culture.To insist on this is also to insist

on "history"...
RichardJohnsonl1

Here ... is the outline of one significantline of thinkingin Cultural

Studies .... It stands opposed to the residualand merely reflective
role assigned to "thecultural."In its differentways, it conceptualizes
cultureas interwovenwith all social practices;and those practices,in
turn, as a common form of humanactivity:sensuous human praxis,
the activity through which men and women make history. It is
opposedto the base-superstructure way of formulatingthe relationship
between ideal and material forces, especially where the "base" is
definedas the determinationby "theeconomic"in any simple sense. It
defines "culture"as both the meanings and values which arise
amongstdistinctivegroupsand classes, on the basis of theirgiven his-
torical conditionsand relationships,throughwhich they "handle"and
respondto the conditionsof existence;and as the lived traditionsand
practicesthroughwhich these "understandings" are expressedand in
which they are embodied.
-Stuart Hall12

In culturalstudiestraditions,then,cultureis understoodboth as a way

of life - encompassingideas, attitudes,languages,practices,institu-
tions, and structuresof power - and a whole rangeof culturalprac-
tices: artistic forms, texts, canons, architecture, mass-produced
commodities,and so on.
- CaryNelson et al.13

This collage of quotations is meant to hold a place for the extended

definitional reflection a short paper of this kind can't hope to perform;
given the notorious difficulty of organizing the disorderly profusion of
intradisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and varying national-intellectual
meanings and understandings of the "culture concept" into anything
resembling consensual form, it may be that this approach would in any
case be the most sensible. As Thompson says, "'culture' is a clumpish

11. RichardJohnson,"ThreeProblematics:
Elementsof a Theoryof Working-Class
Culture,"Working-ClassCulture:Studiesin Historyand Theory,eds. John Clarke,Chas
andRichard
Critcher, Johnson(London: 1979)234.
St.Martin's,
12. Stuart Hall, "CulturalStudies: Two Paradigms,"Culture/Power/History.A
Reader in ContemporarySocial Theory,eds. NicholasB. Dirks,Geoff Eley, and SherryB.
Ortner(Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1993) 527.
13. Cary Nelson, Paula A. Treichler,and LarryGrossberg,"CulturalStudies: An
Introduction,"CulturalStudies,eds. Grossberg,Nelson, and Treichler(New York:Rout-
legde, 1992) 5.
24 Whatis CulturalHistory

term, which by gatheringup so many activities and attributesinto one

common bundle may actually confuse or disguise discriminationsthat
shouldbe made betweenthem."14Its usage can extendfrom the arts,let-
ters, and aesthetics,throughsome more generalizednotion of the life of
the mind, to a more institutionalperspectiveon such themesvia the pub-
lic sphere of artistic and intellectualactivity, the educationalsystem,
other institutionsof higher learning,and so on (broadly speaking the
"high-cultural" traditionof scholarship);to the realmof symbolicand rit-
ual meaning in a society's forms of cohesion and overall ethos (the
anthropologicalfield of approaches);and what Eagleton calls "the
whole complex of signifyingpracticesand symbolic processes in apar-
ticular society,"which has become the domainof culturalstudies.l Of
course, even this gross clumpingof approachesis insufficient,and a full
survey of currentwork would have to includecurrentsocial science the-
ories of action as well, eitherbecause they bracketquestionsof culture
altogether(rationalchoice models),or becausethey territorializeits rele-
vance into a separabledomainof study (as in forms of systems theory,
including recent Habermasianconceptionsof the lifeworld).One recent
symposium on Culture in History, for instance, defines its subject
almost entirely via a combinationof neo-institutionalapproaches,ratio-
nal actor models, and ideas of consumerpreference.Here "culture"is
acknowledged as "a fundamentalpart of the distributionof resources
and the relationsof power in a society,"but disappearsfor the bulk of
the volume from the forefrontof the analysis, except as the "values"
which "informthe strategiccalculationswhich people make about their
interests"andwhich supportor inhibitparticularpathsof development.16
The bank of quotationsheading this essay is thus an incitement to
thought.It doesn't pretendcompleteness,but marksout a space of defi-
nition that can be filled, extended,or added to, as we choose. For the
purpose of my own contributionto our discussion, I'm going to
explore the usefulness of culturalstudies - again, not as some suffi-
cient or ready-madesolution, or as an approachthat can work all by
itself, but as a set of proposalswith whichto think.
A still-emergentcross-disciplinary formation,culturalstudiescomprises
14. Thompson13.
15. Eagleton,Ideology:An Introduction(London:Verso,1991) 28.
16. Joseph Melling and JonathanBarry,Culturein History:Production,Consump-
tion and Valuesin HistoricalPerspective,eds. Melling andBarry(Exeter:U of ExeterP,
1992) 18f.
 GeoffJeyEley 25

a varying miscellany of influences - sociologists, literary scholars,

and social historiansin Britain(but interestinglyratherfew anthropolo-
gists); mass communications,film studies, literarytheory,and reflexive
anthropology in the United States, with institutional supports in
Women's Studies and AmericanCulture,to offer only a couple exam-
ples. So far the main U. S. initiativeshave come from the humanities,
whereas the proliferatinginterdisciplinaryprograms and institutes in
the social sciences have shown much less interest.In Britain the logic
has tended perhaps in the other direction, althoughthe greaterpreva-
lence of qualitative sociologies on that side of the Atlantic has also
blurred the sharpnessof the humanities/socialscience divide. On the
other hand, feminist theory has had a big impact in both Britain and
the United States, as has the post-Saidiancritiqueof colonial and racist
forms of thought in the western cultural tradition.Again, individual
influences vary (for instance, Gramsci and psychoanalyticapproaches
in Britain, or Geertz and subsequent anthropologies in the United
States), but the so-called linguistic turn and the fascinationwith post-
modernism have increasinglyallowed the two national discussions to
converge. Moreover, although most of the concrete research has
focused on the "long present"of culturalstudies since 1945, this is in
itself also a period badly in need of historian'sattention,and transfer-
ence of the interests involved to earlier times is already under way.
Simply enumerating some main areas of current activity should be
enough to make the point: the growth of serious work on the visual
technologies of film, photography,television, and video; on commer-
cial media like advertising,comic books, and magazines; and on the
relationship of women in particular to popular reading genres
(romances, gothic novels, and family sagas), television (soap operas,
detective stories, and situation comedies), and film (film noir, horror,
science fiction, and melodrama).One can see also the growth of new
consumer economies, especially in the mass entertainmentindustries,
but also affecting food, fashion and dress, domestic labor in house-
holds, leisure and play, and all mannerof lifestyle concerns;of the use
of autobiographyand the personalvoice; and, lastly, of postcolonialcul-
turalcritiqueand the analysisof"race,"to offer only a few examples.
An importantaspectof this culturalstudieswave has been the reopening
of old debatesaroundthe oppositionof "high"and "low"culture,with a
notable commitmentto engagingpopularculturein non-dismissiveand
non-patronizing ways. Takingpopularcultureseriously,as manifestingreal
26 Whatis CulturalHistory

needs and aspirations,as somethingto be decoded imaginativelyin that

light, however banal and apparentlytrivial the contents, has become a
centraltenet of these discussions;and here feminist writing is showing
the way. Given the confrontational hostilityto popularculturein the hey-
day of the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 1960s and early
1970s, this is a noteworthy turn of affairs, for in that earliermoment the
power of conventional sex-gendersigns everythingfrom makeup to
in
romantic fiction was taken as evidence of backwardness,oppression,
and male exploitationin some transparentand self-evidently indictable
way. Against this early confrontationism,we've seen growing efforts to
get inside popularculturemore sympatheticallyto explore how cultural
productionworks on needs in appealingand contradictoryways, from
soap opera to MTV. The emergence of a discourse during the 1980s
around"pleasure"and "desire"as categoriesof political understanding,
beyond their immediateplace in the politics of sexuality in the stricter
sense, has been a major symptomof this move, and signifies a rethink-
ing of the "popular"in popularculturemuch largerthan the specifically
feminist discussion. It implies more positive engagementwith popular
culturethaneitherthe "massculture"or the "folk culture"orientedtradi-
tions of analysishave tendedto allow. It conjoinswith the post-Foucaul-
dian developmentsin the theory of power.And it requiresa major shift
in ourunderstandingof the sites at whichpoliticalactioncan begin.
In this sense, "culture"is defining a ground of politics beyond the
space conventionally recognized by most political traditions as the
appropriate context for policy-making in education and the arts.
Indeed, reachingback throughthe twentiethto the later nineteenthcen-
tury, it's hard to find a democraticpolitics (whether of the liberal or
socialist left or the conservative,as opposed to the fascist, right) that
deliberatelyand openly validatedpopularculture in its mass commer-
cialized forms. Historically, the very notion of "high culture" has
always been counterposedto somethingelse thatfsless valued, to cul-
ture that is "low."In the late nineteenthand twentiethcenturiesthe con-
struction of this cultural"other"has taken two main forms, and both
have been heavily overdeterminedby gendered assumptionsof value
and capacity. One is the colonialist representationof non-westernpeo-
ples, which externalizes the distinctionbetween high and low within
racialized frameworksof culturalsuperiority,even (or especially) when
the differences concernedhave become internalto the Westernsociety
via processes of migration.(Parenthetically,we might observe that it is
 GeoffreyEley 27

via analysis of this culturaland ideological field of relationshipsthat

the discussion of social imperialism,which ratherquickly became rei-
fied after Wehler'sproposalof the concept, might be usefully revived.)
But the second constructionof "otherness"has been produced inside
Westernculturesthemselves and has generallybeen identified with the
"mass," with an idea of popular culture in which "the popular"has
been dissociated from romantic notions of authenticityand the folk,
becoming reattachedto the commercializedculture of entertainment
and leisure in ways which imply corruptionrather than preservation,
artificialityas opposed to naturalness,vulgarityratherthan virtue. This
idea of mass culture has been furtherlinked to ideas of the city and a
distinctive twentieth-centurystructureof public communicationbased
on the cheap technologies of film, radio, gramophone,photography,
television, motorization,pulp fiction,mass advertising,and magazines.
It is worth remainingwith this set of associations.With the idea of
the mass has invariablycome a narrativeof decline, of corruption,and
moral danger - a negative imagery of "un-culture"and disorder,of
drunkenness,gambling,unregulatedsexuality,violence, criminality,and
unstable family life, organizedaroundsocial anxieties about youth in
explicitly gendered ways. The political valence of this thinking has
always been complex. The opposition of "high" and "low" is neither
right nor left in itself. Thus the socialist traditionhas drawn just as
sharp a line between, on the one hand, the ideal of an educative and
uplifting culture of the arts and enlightenment,and, on the other hand,
an actually existing popularcultureof base gratification,roughness,and
disorder,which (in the socialist mind) the commercializedapparatusof
mass provision has been only too glad to exploit. Socialist culturalpoli-
cies, no less than liberalones, for example,have always stressedthe vir-
tues of self-improvementand sobriety over the disorderlyrealities of
much working-classexistence. For socialists,places of commercialpop-
ular entertainment- music halls, circuses, fairs, all kinds of rough
sports in the later nineteenthcentury;followed by the dance hall and
the picturepalaces in the early twentiethcentury;and dance clubs, rock
concerts,juke boxes, bingo halls, and commercialtelevision since 1945
- have been a source of frivolity and backwardnessin working-class
culture. Against this machineryof escapist dissipation, they counter-
posed the argumentthat workingpeople should organizetheir own free
time collectively and in morallyupliftingways. More recently,with the
late twentieth-centurycrisis of the inner city, this opposition has been
28 Whatis CulturalHistory

transcribedinto the racially constructedimage of the immigranturban

poor, itself historicallyreminiscentof an earliersubset of the dominant
high/low binarism,namely, the xenophobicreactionagainst East Euro-
pean Jewish immigrantsin Britainand Germanybefore the First World
War.To this extent, socialists, liberals,and conservativeshave inhabited
a common discourse. The precise boundariesbetween the "high" and
the "low,"the "cultured"and the "not,"have varied- the power of the
distinctionper se has not.
However, if "official" politics failed to respond positively or cre-
atively to the mass culturephenomenonof the early twentiethcentury,
this doesn't mean that mass culturewasn't producingpowerful mean-
ings in eminentlypolitical ways. Indeed,the new apparatusof the "cul-
ture industry"(to use one of the familiarpejorativenames), from the
razzmatazzof the cinema and the dance hall to the rise of spectator
sports, the star system, and the machineriesof advertisingand fashion,
proved remarkablyeffective in servicing a private economy of desire,
beginning in the 1920s, and expandingits hold on the popularimagina-
tion ever since. This is where the recentvalidatingof popularculturein
cultural studies makes its point. For the emergingpopularculture can
no longerbe so easily dismissedas an empty and depoliticizedcommer-
cial corruptionof traditionalworking-classculture(the typical left cri-
tique), but on the contraryevinced democraticauthenticitiesof its own.
Some culturalpractitionersof the 1920s could see this. It was precisely
the new technologiesand media of communicationand their mass audi-
ences that excited the Germanleft-modernistslike Benjamin, Brecht,
Piscator, and Heartfield.No less than the Russian futurists and other
avant-gardein the aftermathof 1917, they used popularforms like cir-
cus, puppetry,and cabaret;worked throughnew technical media like
posters, photographs,and film; and celebratedthe mass reproducibility
of their work where more conventionalartistscontinuedto sanctify the
value and uniquenessof the individualcreation.Benjamin'snow-clas-
sic essay of 1936, "The Workof Art in the Age of MechanicalRepro-
duction,"is a brilliantmeditationon the actualityof popularculture in
this sense, while by the end of the 1920s the practiceof someone like
Brecht was suffused with similarrecognitions.While culturalconserva-
tives of all stripes(left as well as right)could only counterposethe vul-
garities of the cinema and other mass entertainmentsto the "true"
values of art, Brecht found them the source of an artisticbreakthrough.
The raucousness,cigar smoke, and plebeian tones of the boxing hall
 GeoffieyEley 29

were the epitome of all that the "bourgeois"theaterabhorred,and sport

became the model for how such public performancecould be reformed,
"with the stage as a brightlylit ring devoid of all mystique, demanding
a critical,irreverentattitudeon the partof the audience."17
How could we respondto these discussionsas historians?Most obvi-
ously, the discourse of the "mass" (mass society, mass culture, mass
public, mass politics, and the rise of the masses) can be historicized
confidently within the later nineteenthcentury,with a distinct set of
beginnings in the years between the 1880s and 1914. This discourse
not only articulatedanxieties about social boundariesand the pressure
of democracyon existing constitutionalarrangements,it was also orga-
nized by misogynist constructionsof the urbanmass public as danger-
ously feminine. Whereas "mass" had already acquired its positive
inflections in the usages of the left, with its connotationsof power in
numbers, solidarity, and popular democraticstrength, in the language
of democracy's critics it implied "lowness"and "vulgarity,"the threat
of the "rabble"and the "mob,"whose instincts were only "low, igno-
rant, unstable,"exposed to demagogues,hucksters,and profiteers, and
whose political preferenceswere "uninstructed,"ripe for manipulation
by the dominantinterestsand the defendersof the status quo.1 More-
over, such discomforts also permeatedthe sensibility of the left, with
its cultural languages of sobriety and uplift, reflecting essentially the
fear that left to itself the new mass public would be seduced by the
city's pleasures and excitements,prey to unscrupulousagitatorsof the
political right, no less than to the quacks and charlatansof a tawdry
commercialism.Finally,the transformationof the public sphere - that
reshapingof the political nation initiatedso powerfully by the popular
mobilizationsof the 1890s - is the structuralcontext of this new con-
tentiousness aroundthe appearanceand allegiances of the urban mass
public. Here the opportunitiesof culturalanalysis are adumbratedby a
set of social histories,which are themselves still imperfectlyresearched
and understood: the rise of a national reading public, the massive
expansion of the popular press, the establishmentof comprehensive
postal communicationsand the later introductionof the telephone, the
17. John Willett, The New Sobriety,1917-1933: Art and Politics in the Weimar
Period (London:ThamesandHudson,1976) 103.
18. Williams,Keywords:A Vocabularyof Cultureand Society (New York:Oxford
UP, 1983) 192-97.
30 Whatis CulturalHistory

building of railway branch-linesand minor roads, the spreadof librar-

ies, the burgeoning of voluntary association, and the unprecedented
availability of cheap reading-matter,soon to be extended by the new
technologiesof printing,radio,andfilm.
There are two furtherreflectionsI want to lay out on the subject of
the mass, each of which bring in one of cultural studies' principal
themes. The first concernsgender,and here I want to use a recent essay
by Eve Rosenhaftto make my point. Commentingon the existing state
of Germanhistoriography("It is still possible to write a general account
of Germanhistory that excludes women,"she regrets),she points to the
"impenetrablymasculine"characterof the history of politics or public
affairs in the Germanfield, which the two significantrecent gains in
connectingwomen'sactivityto the formalworld of politics ("the femini-
zation of the public sector in the growthof the welfare state,"and "the
Nazi co-optation of the idea of female Lebensraum")have barely
touched.As she says, in establishingthe politicalrelevanceof these sto-
ries ("in order to find women in politics"), historians have had to
expandthe definitionof whatpoliticsconventionallyincludes:
The tendencyof empiricalresearchup to now has been to establishthe
role of women in politics as a positivelychargedabsence;therewas a
women's politics, but it took place in spheresdistinctfromthe one in
which state power was directlyassignedand exercised- in occupa-
tional and confessionalorganizations,the women's sections of politi-
cal parties,the expandingfield of publicandprivatesocial work.19

Part of the difficulty, of course, is that contemporaryconsciousness

itself markedthese activities as different,as lying beyond the political
sphere in the "true"sense, and to get closer to the place of genderin the
political process we have to make an additionaltheoreticalmove, by
considering the relationshipto public life of the mutually constitutive
understandingsof femininityand masculinityoperativein any one time
and place. That is, we need to re-readthe familiarlanguagesof politics
in order to recognize women throughthe mechanismsand structuresof
their exclusion, whethersuch silencingswere the resultof directdiscrim-
inatoryor exclusionarypolicies or practice,or whetherthey eventuated

19. Eve Rosenhaft,"Women,Gender,andthe Limitsof PoliticalHistoryin the Age

of 'Mass' Politics,"Elections, Mass Politics, and Social Change in Modern Germany:
New Perspectives, eds. LarryE. Jones and JamesN. Retallack,(Cambridge:Cambridge
UP, 1992) 151, 149.
 GeoffreyEley 31

throughless consciously directedlogics of social relationsand cultural

behavior.Rosenhaftinvokes the work of DorindaOutramon the mean-
ings of the body in the French Revolution to suggest how "modem
ideas of the body politic and of the bourgeoisindividualas citizen came
to be realized in social practiceand internalizedas part of a civic iden-
tity that was defined as essentiallymasculine,"and argues that the pro-
cesses of continuousnegotiationthroughwhich this genderingof social
and political identity became articulatedwith relations of domination
and subordinationduring the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can
bring us closer to the circumstancesof women, as the group whose
access to public virtue and the formal attributesof citizenship was so
expressly held at bay.20Rosenhaftprovidesa numberof specific exam-
ples, including the need to rescrutinizethe terms of conservative and
acquiescentreligiositythroughwhich women'sactive involvementin the
organizedcultureof Catholicismis usually devaluedas "de-mobilizing"
or "de-politicizing,"rather than being seen as a distinctive form of
women's political engagement.As she says, this is a particularlystrong
instanceof "the 'private'politics that is not only implicit in the familiar
masculineformsof politicsbutconstitutesits premise."21
The most importantpoint she makes concerns the discourse of the
"mass"betweenthe 1880s and 1930s, in whichcertainfeminizedconstruc-
tions of the urbanmass public "coincided"historicallywith the pressure
of women for politicalrights,culminatingunderWeimarin both access to
the franchiseand large-scalerecruitment intothe new apparatusof the wel-
fare state. For Rosenhaft,"mass,"with its distinctivefeminine coding,
"appearsalmostas a deliberatecircumlocution" on the partof male 1920s
intellectualsfor "thissignificantfeminizationof the politicalorder."22The
new public arenaof commerciallyprovidedmass entertainment then pro-
vides a rich field of analysisfor a genderedreadingof politicaldiscourse.
But whereaswork in culturalstudies,focusingon genrecriticismand orig-
inatingprimarilyin literarytheory,has accumulateda largecorpusof rele-
vant work for such a project,particularlyon film, historianshave barely
scratchedthe surfaceof thesepossibilities.As Rosenhaftsays:

20. Rosenhaft 159; see also DorindaOutram,TheBody and the FrenchRevolution:

Sex, Class and Political Culture(New HavenandLondon:YaleUP, 1989); as well as Joan
B. Landes, Womenand thePublic Spherein theAge of the FrenchRevolution(Ithaca:Cor-
nell UP, 1988).
21. Rosenhaft158.
22. Rosenhaft162.
32 Whatis CulturalHistory

As a termthatsimultaneouslyinsistson the femininityof the new pub-

lic and obscuresthe presenceof women within it, 'the mass' has the
advantageof directingus to the operationof genderdiscoursesin the
definitionof politics (andthe politicalsubject)andto the issue of how
the developmentof new media of mass communicationaffects the
ways in which politicalopinionandparticipationare shaped.23
The final reflectionI have concernsFoucault.There is no space here
for an elaboratediscussion of Foucaulfs influence, but to explore the
challenge of culturalstudieswe do need to considerbriefly the potential
uses of a post-Foucauldianperspectiveon power. On the one hand, the
latterhas encouragedus to look for power and its operationsaway from
the conventionallyrecognizedsites of public political life, re-directing
attentionaway from institutionallycenteredconceptionsof government
and the state, and towardsa more dispersedand de-centerednotion of
power and its "microphysics." This approachtakes the analysisof power
away from the core institutionsof the state in the national-centralized
sense, and towardthe emergenceof new strategiesof governance,regula-
tion, and control, focused on both individualsand largersocial catego-
ries, whose operationrests as much on the very process of defining the
subjectpopulationsas it does on the more practicalmechanicsof coer-
cive or regulativecontrol.On the otherhand,Foucault'sideas have sensi-
tized us to the subtle and complex interrelationsbetween power and
knowledge, particularlyin the modalitiesof disciplinaryand administra-
tive organizationof knowledgein a society."Discourse"is a way of theo-
rizing the internalrules and regularitiesof particularfields of knowledge
in this sense (their"regimesof truth"),as well as the more generalstruc-
tures of ideas and assumptionsthat delimit what can and cannot be
thought and said in particularcontexts of place and time. Such an
approachhas challengedthe historian'susual assumptionsaboutindivid-
ual and collective agency and theirbases of interestand rationality,help-
ing us to see instead how subjectivitiesare constructedand produced
within and throughlanguagesof identificationthat lie beyond the voli-
tion andcontrolof individualsin the classicEnlightenmentsense.
In these two senses, Foucaultfinds power at work in the basic catego-
ries of moder social understanding- in the visions and imaginings

23. Rosenhaft 163f. See also PatricePetro,Joyless Streets: Womenand Melodra-

matic Representationin WeimarGermany(Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1989); and Linda
Mizejewski, Divine Decadence: Fascism, Female Spectacle, and the Makings of Sally
Bowles (Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1992).
 GeoffreyEley 33

that project the coherenceand transparencyof society, in the program-

matic descriptionsand re-descriptionsof its desirableforms of organiza-
tion, in the theories (both practicaland esoteric) that seek to order and
alter its workings, and in the policies and practicesthat act on its actu-
ally existing forms. Now, we don't have to commit ourselves to the
entire Foucauldianpackage, so to speak, in orderto see the usefulness
of these perspectives,and I want to considerbriefly some of the impli-
cations for work in the Germanfield.
At one level, for instance,this discursivemove - the refocusing of
attentionon the historiesthroughwhich dominantand familiarforms of
understanding(such as categories,assumptions,perspectives,but also poli-
cies and practices,as well as theories,programs,and philosophies)have
been shaped- involves a turningback to questionsof ideology, and to
understandwhy such a Foucauldianapproachcan be attractive,some
reflectionon treatmentsof ideology in Germanhistoricaldiscussionwill
help. Basically,the termsand tone of such discussionwere set for many
years by works such as those of Fritz Stem and George Mosse.24Here
"ideology"was approachedas a set of false and malevolentbeliefs, often
distortionsof older traditionsof thoughtproducedby pathologiesof Ger-
man historicalcontext(the Sonderweg!),but which could only take wide-
spread hold in conditions of extremity,crisis, and disorientation,and
which could be trackedvisibly and unambiguouslythroughpolicies, insti-
tutions, and decisions, assignedto individuals,and derived from precur-
sors. An entire genre of works exists on the "ideologicalorigins" of
Nazism in this sense. To a greatextent,the turningto social historyin the
1960s and 1970s was a consciousrejectionof this stress on "ideology,"
on the groundsthat the peculiardynamismof Nazism had an altogether
more complicatedrelationshipboth to its own internalstructuresand to
the largersocial contextthansuchan emphasishadallowed.
For a while this turn encourageda certainindifference,borderingon
outrighthostility,to ideological analysis as such, in a dichotomizedhis-
toriographicaloutlook privileging social history which in many ways
still defines the field. Yet given a differentconceptionof ideology, one
discursively founded and socially embedded,there is no reason for this
to be so. I'd arguethat the recent interestin the racialist,gendered,and
bio-medical dimensions of Nazi policies has providedideal ground for
24. FritzStem,ThePoliticsof CulturalDespair(Berkeley:U of CalifomiaP, 1961);and
GeorgeL. Mosse, TheCrisisof GermanIdeology(London:WeidenfeldandNicolson, 1966).
34 Whatis CulturalHistory

such a differentlyconceptualizeddiscussion of ideology to begin, even

if in most particularworks this is happeningso far in a mostly practical
(as opposed to consciously theorized)way. The largerdomain of "bio-
logical politics" as a unifying principle of Nazi practice, linking anti-
Semitism and the racialistoffensive of the war years to a complex of
policies before 1939, is the key: populationplanning, public health,
welfare policies directedat women, family policy, euthanasia,steriliza-
tion, and eugenics. The best work on the ThirdReich has also stressed
the origins of this racializedsocial-policycomplex in ideas and innova-
tions going back to the WeimarRepublic and beyond. Withoutdimin-
ishing the centralityof the Nazis' anti-Jewishgenocidal commitments,
this has increasinglyshifted attentionto the largerracialistambitionsin
which the Final Solution's logic was inscribed. Moreover, the latter
could only become feasible with the prior diffusion of eugenicist and
relatedideologies of social engineering,which to a greatextent had per-
meated the thinking of social-policy and health-careprofessionals long
before the Nazis themselveshad arrived.It was in this deeper historical
sense thatthe groundfor the Final Solutionwas being discursivelylaid.
If we take this argumentaboutthe Judeocide'sconditionsof possibil-
ity seriously - the preconceptionsand embeddedsocial practices the
Nazi political project requiredto work, and the laying of the ground
before 1933 - then the importanceof ideological analysis surely
becomes clear not as a returnto the exegetical focus on Hitler's and
other Nazi leaders' immediate ideas and their etymology, but as an
expandedculturalanalysis of the productionof meaningsand values in
pre-Nazi (and non-Nazi) society. In the immediate area of biological
politics and racial hygiene, for instance,there is now a generalrecogni-
tion of this need: Nazi excesses only became possible throughthe "nor-
mal" achievementsof respectablescience, so that the Nazis' appalling
schemes become less an eruptionof "un-science"and the irrationalthan
the advent of technocraticreasonand the ethical unboundednessof sci-
ence, continuouswith the logics of earlierambitions.This amountsto a
decisive shift of perspective,away from Nazism's hard-corecadres to
the broader,deeper-lying,and less visible ideological consensus they
were able to use - to "the genesis of the 'Final Solution' from the
spirit of science," in the words of Detlev Peukert'simportantessay.25
25. Detlev Peukert,"TheGenesisof the 'FinalSolution'fromthe Spiritof Science,"
Reevaluatingthe ThirdReich, eds. ThomasChildersandJaneCaplan(New York:Holmes
and Meier, 1993) 234-52.
 GeoffreyEley 35

While Foucaultis seldom referredto in these discussions,he could eas-

ily be the patronsaint of this new direction,given the salience of argu-
ments aboutdiscipline,knowledge,science, anddomination.
There are two key aspects to this reinstatementof the importanceof
ideology, in the extended understandingof ideology qua discourse rve
briefly indicated above. One concerns the nature and effectiveness of
the Nazis' popular appeal. In keeping with the shift from ideological
analysis in the older sense, the tendency for many years was to down-
play the originality and power of the NSDAP's own ideological mes-
sage during the electoral rise of 1928-33, stressing instead the
chameleonnatureof Nazi propagandaand its ability to capitalize mani-
pulatively on the existing values of the middle classes (or the bourgeoi-
sie and petty bourgeoisie).This approachas such is consistent with the
post-Foucauldiannotation of ideology (as widely diffused meanings,
representations,orderingassumptions,and practices),althoughits main
practitionerstended to see themselvesas doing social history in contra-
distinction to studies of ideology. However, so far from revealing the
unimportanceof ideology to the Nazis' success or their characteras a
political formation,I would argue,both the history of the party's elec-
toral rise and the bases of the regime's stability show the crucial cen-
trality of ideological analysis. The NSDAP was a phenomenonwithout
precedentin the history of the right in Germanyin that it both discov-
ered the forms of unification among the hopelessly fracturedparties
and constituenciesof the right and simultaneouslygroundeditself in an
unusually broad base of popularsupportin sociological terms. And it
did so precisely by its ability to articulatetogether a diverse and hith-
erto contradictoryensemble of ideological appeals. As this was a con-
structive achievement of remarkablepower and baleful implications,
we need to work hardat understandinghow it came to occur. The ques-
tion is: What were the connotativeprinciples(the integrativeor unify-
ing bases, the principles of articulation)that allowed so many diverse
categories of people to recognize themselves in the Nazi celebrationof
the race/people,that allowed the Nazis to capturethe popularimagina-
tion so powerfullybefore and after 1933? And if we formulatethe ques-
tion like this, with its implied contrastwith the political fragmentation
of earlier right-wing formations, some evident tasks are posed for
research on the Wilhelminianand Weimarperiods that came before.
That is, how exactly were the politics of the right constitutedin this ear-
lier time, andwhatwere the conditionsof possibilityfor change?
36 Whatis CulturalHistory

Secondly, the argumentsabout the more broadly diffused context of

bio-medicaldiscoursein the 1930s need to be groundedin a densely tex-
turedhistory of such ideas in the earlierperiodafterthe turnof the cen-
tury. This will mean much fuller and more imaginativelyconstructed
investigationsof the social-policycontexts of the Kaiserreich,in which
the productionof new values, new mores,new social practices,and new
ideas about the good and efficient society - new "normativities" - as
well as their forms or projectedand achieved realizationoccupy pride
of place. It will mean paying carefulattentionto the genderedmeanings
of such histories,as well as to the power-producingeffects in Foucault's
"micro-physical"sense. Strategiesof social policing and constructions
of criminality,notions of the normaland the deviant,the productionand
regulationof sexuality,the definitionof intelligence,the understanding
of the socially valued individual,will all play a part in this analysis, as
will the coalescence of racializedthinkingaboutthe desirablecharacter
of the people-nationand its social and political arrangements,about the
characterof the body politic. Some forays have been made in these
directions,as in Paul Weindling'smajorsynthesison Health, Race and
GermanPolitics, which extends across the whole period from 1871 to
1945, or in Derek Linton'swork on the youth questionbefore 1914, and
Detlev Peukert'swork on the general issues affecting Sozialdisziplin-
ierung.26One implicationof such work is also to diminish the impor-
tance of the old chronologicalmarkersof Germanhistory from this
point of view (thatis, both 1914-18 and 1933), encouraginginsteada re-
periodizingof the late nineteenthand early twentiethcenturiesto stress
the coherence of the years between the 1890s and 1930s as a unitary
context, one where definite themes of national efficiency, social
hygiene, andracializednationalismcoalesced.

26. Paul Weindling,Health,Race and GermanPolitics betweenNational Unifica-

tion and Nazism 1870-1945 (Cambridge:CambridgeUP, 1989); Derek S. Linton, "Who
has the Youth,Has the Future,"The Campaignto Save YoungWorkersin ImperialGer-
many (Cambridge:CambridgeUP, 1991); and Detlev Peukert,Grenzender Sozialdiszi-
plinierung. Aufstieg und Krise der deutschenJugendfursorge1878 bis 1932 (Cologne:
Bund, 1986) and JugendZwischenKrieg undKrise.Lebensweltenvon Arbeiterjungenin
der WeimarerRepublik(Cologne:Bund, 1987).