“In much recent theory the problem of representation is deemed to be central, yet rarely is it put in its full political context, a context that is primarily imperial. Instead we have on one hand an isolated cultural sphere, believed to be freely and unconditionally available to weightless theoretical speculation and investigation, and on the other, a debased political sphere, where the real struggle between interests is supposed to occur.”

“The irony, of course, is that many (though by no means all) of the left-wing postmodernists in their cultural studies redoubts have reinscribed in their texts the disdain for getting down and dirty with politics and material as opposed to symbolic struggles which such movements developed to contest. Left culturalism needs to get real.”

I find accounts of culture rather silly if they do not signal at least an awareness of the material conditions through which various cultural formations, sites and histories emerge. I say ’signal’ because sometimes people work or publish according to very wide arcs which may not always appear as if they are writing from a critical position.

Said does not use the word ’symbolic’ in the above and I certainly do not even mention the concept in what I have written of my thesis. He focuses on representation and is quite rightly critical of an exchangist view of language and images (ie representation). Is something like the concept of the ’spectacle’ (image-commodity) apolitical?

It is equally silly to separate the material/politcal and the cultural/symbolic — as you attempt to do above — if the political is to always going to be thought of as necessarily associated with the ‘material’. Speaking truth to power requires an understanding of the relations of power operating within particular cultural formations, sites, and histories. It seems as if you are saying cultural studies (or ‘postmodernism’ as the code word for ‘bad’ cultural studies) is ok when it supposedly rediscovers the ‘cultural’ within the ‘material’ because that is where you understand the ‘political’ to reside.

I agree with Said if he is arguing that there is no cultural sphere separate from the political, but not if you insert the caveat that this means the cultural is collapsed in the ‘material’ as if this is where assume to find what is ‘really’ political and where ‘real’ politics occurs.

Tariq Ali - I think you linked to this earlier - made the point well - history has returned with a vengeance post s11 and politics has returned with the Bushies’ neo-conservative dreams and practices of empire - and if self-identified lefties don’t take note, well that’s really quite sad in my book.