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As a partial answer to these and other difficulties, Leitch eventually comes down against philosophy and in favor of cultural studies, since it “offers a life-enhancing balance to the rigidified and lopsided status quo operating in many places…It adds to the study of accredited aristocratic and middle-class ‘literatures’ discourses of other classes and groups, which tend to be either ignored or denigrated. In doing so, it usefully highlights the different values, interests, and self-representations characteristic of these contending texts.”10
It is easier, with Leitch’s imprimatur for cultural studies, to see why one would want, in the search for more balanced responses, to combine critical theory, which in Theodor Adorno’s hands offers a powerful theory of “high” art—with such a useful means of inquiry into popular or marginal cultural phenomena. Cultural studies can add significant, contradictory insights to those garnered by means of critical theory, since cultural studies’ own self-critique is tempered with postmodern (and post-postmodern) skepticism. These two perspectives, then, will be tendentiously at work throughout this book, for it is meaning we seek. Meaning is the thing; it can be found only in contradiction.11
What Counts?
Most people would agree that, if we do not as yet have the “final” conceptualization of the fundamental nature of the world or the universe, at least we are getting progressively closer to that goal. This progressive view reflects confidence that we are gradually achieving an objective grasp of the world and the phenomena in it. But implicit in this “progressive” view is the proposition that we are able to develop a reasonably objective assessment of our situation at any one time. If you, the reader, are one of those who possess the progressive view of history (a linear, progressive, convergence toward the “Truth with a capital T”), try the following simple exercise: count everything in the room you now occupy—everything.