“Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart: Summary and Critique

“Critical Discourse Analysis and Metaphor: Toward a Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart first appeared in Critical Discourse Studies in May 2008 (Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 91–106), published by Routledge.

"Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework" by Christopher Hart: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart

“Critical Discourse Analysis and Metaphor: Toward a Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart first appeared in Critical Discourse Studies in May 2008 (Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 91–106), published by Routledge. This landmark article offers a critical intervention in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) by addressing a long-neglected aspect—metaphor. Hart proposes a shift from the widely used Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to the more dynamically responsive Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), arguing that CBT is more compatible with the sociocognitive approach of CDA. The article outlines the limitations of CMT when applied to political discourse, particularly its neglect of speaker intention and its deterministic grounding in embodied experience. Instead, CBT allows for metaphors to be treated as strategic, ideologically charged tools in discourse construction. By examining metaphors in the British National Party’s 2005 manifesto—like the migration-as-flood metaphor—Hart demonstrates how blending metaphors not only reflect but shape public cognition, social structure, and policy justification. This has significant implications for literary theory, especially when applied to poetic texts where metaphor is not merely decorative but politically consequential. For example, in metaphor-rich poetry addressing themes of migration, identity, or nationhood, Hart’s framework enables readers to dissect how conceptual blending reinforces dominant narratives or resists them. Thus, the article contributes a powerful analytical tool for scholars in both discourse studies and literary criticism.

Summary of “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart

1. CDA’s Neglect of Metaphor

  • While CDA has focused on structures like passivization and nominalisation, metaphor has been underexplored.

“Metaphor, on the other hand, has been largely neglected in mainstream CDA” (Hart, 2008, p. 91).

  • Yet metaphor is central to how ideology and social reality are constructed.

“Metaphor is ‘central to critical discourse analysis since it is concerned with forming a coherent view of reality'” (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 28, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).


🔹 2. Metaphors as Ideological Tools

  • Metaphors shape our understanding and privilege certain perspectives.

“Metaphors are ideological… in so far as they ‘define in significant part what one takes as reality'” (Chilton & Lakoff, 1995, p. 56, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).

  • They serve both the interpersonal and ideational functions of language.

“Metaphors also play an important role with regard to both the interpersonal and the ideational function of language” (Hart, 2008, p. 91).


🔹 3. Call for Cognitive Approaches in CDA

  • CDA needs a cognitive dimension to explain how discourse produces social knowledge.

“Discourse is produced and interpreted by human individuals interacting with one another” (Chilton, 2005a, p. 23, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).

  • Cognitive linguistics and CDA both deal with language, cognition, and culture, making the former suitable for metaphor analysis in CDA.

🔹 4. Critique of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)

Hart identifies three major incompatibilities between CMT and CDA:

a) Problem of Focus

  • CMT is too abstract and introspective, relying on imagined examples.

“The data CMT presents… are often not attested but rather appeal to native speaker intuition” (Hart, 2008, p. 92).

b) Problem of Motivation

  • CMT sees metaphor as an unconscious product of embodiment, ignoring speaker intention.

“Metaphors are ‘chosen by speakers to achieve particular communication goals'” (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 247, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 93).

c) Problem of Relation

  • CMT posits that linguistic expressions merely reflect internal thought structures, while CDA sees discourse as constructing thought.

“In CDA… linguistic representation in discourse can determine, to some extent, conceptual representation” (Hart, 2008, p. 94).


🔹 5. Introduction of Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT)

  • CBT focuses on online meaning construction through multiple input spaces.

“Blending can ‘compose elements from the input spaces to provide relations that do not exist in the separate inputs'” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, p. 48, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 96).

  • The blend is not just a reflection but a site of cognitive activity, where meaning, reasoning, and emotion coalesce.

“Blended spaces are ‘sites for central cognitive work: reasoning… drawing inferences… and developing emotions'” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 115, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 97).


🔹 6. Selective Projection and Ideological Framing

  • Not all knowledge is projected into the blend—what’s left out is often ideologically significant.

“Speakers may choose to recruit particular structure in order to promote a certain perceived reality” (Hart, 2008, p. 96).


🔹 7. Entrenchment and Social Cognition

  • Frequent metaphorical blends become entrenched and shared socially, reinforcing dominant ideologies.

“Integration networks built up dynamically can become entrenched and available to be activated all at once” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, p. 103, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 97).

  • Such entrenched blends function as social cognitions in Van Dijk’s model.

“Entrenched conceptual blending networks are precisely the mental representations and processes of group members” (Hart, 2008, p. 97).


🔹 8. Three Types of ‘Discourse’ and Metaphor’s Place

  • Drawing from Foucault and Fairclough, Hart distinguishes:
    • Discourse (concrete): actual talk/text
    • Discourse (collective): sets of related statements
    • Discourse (abstract): systems of knowledge/practice
  • Metaphors travel across all three:

“Synchronically, current conventional uses of metaphor reflect entrenched conceptual blending patterns…. Diachronically… they give rise to entrenched conceptual blending patterns” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).


🔹 9. Case Study: BNP Immigration Metaphors

  • Hart analyses metaphors in the British National Party 2005 manifesto to show how metaphor supports racist and exclusionary discourse.

a) Immigration as Water

  • ‘Flood of asylum seekers’ uses the topoi of number and danger, making immigrants seem overwhelming and threatening.

“The conceptualisation of an ongoing ‘flood of asylum seekers’ immediately warrants… restrictive immigration policy” (Hart, 2008, p. 100).

b) Nation as Container

  • Britain is conceptualised as a full container, suggesting that no more immigration can be ‘absorbed’.

“Britain is full up…” (BNP quote, cited in Hart, 2008, p. 101).

c) Nation as House

  • ‘Shut the door’ metaphor frames the nation as private property, evoking ownership and the right to exclude.

“Entry into which only takes place with the permission of the resident” (Hart, 2008, p. 101).

  • These metaphors employ a referential strategy (us vs. them) and an evaluative strategy (threat, invasion, dilution).

🔹 10. Conclusion: Toward a Full Framework

  • Hart’s approach, using CBT within sociocognitive CDA, enables the microlevel analysis of metaphors with ideological consequences.
  • However, he acknowledges the need for quantitative analysis to identify widespread metaphorical patterns.

“A complete and lucid framework requires quantitative analysis across different discourse genres” (Hart, 2008, p. 102).


Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart
🧠 Theoretical Term📘 Explanation📌 Reference / Quotation
🧱 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)Examines how discourse structures perpetuate social inequality, often through ideologically embedded language.“Critical discourse analysis (CDA) explores the role of discourse structures in constituting social inequality” (Hart, 2008, p. 91).
🔄 Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)Views metaphor as cross-domain mapping based on bodily experiences; often criticized for ignoring discourse context and speaker intention.“CMT posits relationships between pairs of mental representations” (Hart, 2008, p. 92).
🌐 Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT)A dynamic model of meaning construction where mental spaces blend to form emergent conceptual structures. Favored over CMT for CDA.“Blending can ‘compose elements from the input spaces to provide relations that do not exist in the separate inputs'” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, p. 48, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 96).
🧠 Social CognitionShared mental representations within a group that link discourse and social structure. Central to sociocognitive CDA.“Social cognitions… are shared and presupposed by group members” (van Dijk, 1993, p. 257, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 97).
📦 Mental SpacesTemporary conceptual packets activated during discourse; serve as inputs for blending processes.“Mental spaces are small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 113, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 95).
⚗️ Emergent StructureNew conceptual elements created through blending that do not exist in the original input spaces.“The blend inherits partial structure… and has emergent structure of its own” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 113, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 96).
🔎 Selective ProjectionThe strategic selection of elements from mental spaces into the blend, shaped by communicative or ideological intent.“Speakers may choose to recruit particular structure in order to promote a certain perceived reality” (Hart, 2008, p. 96).
🧬 EntrenchmentThe process through which repeated blending patterns become cognitively fixed and socially shared.“Integration networks… can become entrenched and available to be activated all at once” (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, p. 103, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 97).
🏛️ Discourse (Concrete, Collective, Abstract)Hart distinguishes: (1) discourse as situated talk/text, (2) discourse as recurring patterns, and (3) discourse as systems of knowledge.“Discourse (abstract) dictates the nature of discourse (concrete)… and vice versa” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).
🌊 Topoi (Danger, Number, Displacement)Common argumentative schemes in discourse that justify ideological positions, especially in right-wing and racist rhetoric.“An argumentation schema like this one is defined as topos of number” (Wodak & Sedlak, 2000, p. 233, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 100).
🪟 Container SchemaA conceptual structure with interior, exterior, and boundary used metaphorically to frame nations and inclusion/exclusion.“A container schema has an inherent ‘logic’… interior and exterior defined by a boundary” (Hart, 2008, p. 102).
🎭 Referential & Evaluative StrategiesReferential strategies define in-groups/out-groups; evaluative strategies judge them positively or negatively. Both are used in racist discourse.“Referential strategies are used… evaluative strategy is manifested in negative representation of the out-group” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).
Contribution of “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart to Literary Theory/Theories

🔍 🧩 Bridging Linguistics and Literary Criticism

  • Hart integrates cognitive linguistics with critical discourse analysis, offering literary theorists tools to unpack how metaphor constructs ideology in poetic and narrative texts.

“Metaphors are ideological… in so far as they ‘define in significant part what one takes as reality'” (Chilton & Lakoff, 1995, p. 56, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).


🧠 🌀 Expanding the Interpretive Scope of Metaphor

  • Unlike classical metaphor theories focused on rhetorical ornamentation, Hart’s framework treats metaphor as a cognitive and discursive act—deepening literary analysis beyond figurative style.

“Metaphor is ‘central to critical discourse analysis since it is concerned with forming a coherent view of reality'” (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 28, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).


📦 🧠 Applying Mental Space Theory to Literature

  • Hart’s use of Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) allows readers to visualize meaning construction in narrative or poetic metaphor, emphasizing how emergent structure reshapes understanding.

“The blend inherits partial structure… and has emergent structure of its own” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 113, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 96).


🎭 🎯 Reframing Characterization and Plot in Ideological Terms

  • His focus on metaphor as a referential and evaluative strategy can be extended to literature to analyze how characters, spaces, or actions are ideologically positioned.

“Referential strategies are used in discourse to represent… social actors… evaluative strategy is manifested in negative representation” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).


🏠 🌍 Nation and Identity Metaphors in Literary Texts

  • Literary metaphors that depict the nation as a house, container, or bordered space can be critically re-examined using Hart’s framework for entrenched blending and emotional resonance.

“The nation is conceptualised as a private property… where policymakers have the right to refuse entry” (Hart, 2008, p. 101).


📚 📖 Contributes to Discourse Theory in Literature

  • Hart’s distinction among discourse (concrete, collective, abstract) offers literary theorists a way to trace how texts interact with discursive formations, genres, and ideologies.

“Discourse (abstract) dictates the nature of discourse (concrete)… and vice versa” (Hart, 2008, p. 99).


💬 🧭 Enabling Socio-Political Literary Critique

  • His model equips scholars to explore how metaphors shape political worldviews in literary texts, especially in postcolonial, migration, and nationalist narratives.

“Metaphors… contribute to a situation where they privilege one understanding of reality over others” (Chilton, 1996, p. 74, as cited in Hart, 2008, p. 91).


🧬 🎓 Grounding Literary Ideology in Cognitive Theory

  • Hart shows how literary metaphors become socially entrenched and cognitively shared, which aligns with cultural memory studies and the role of entrenchment in interpretive communities.

“Entrenched conceptual blending networks are… the mental representations and processes of group members” (Hart, 2008, p. 97).


📈 📊 Toward Quantitative Literary Metaphor Studies

  • Hart calls for blending qualitative and quantitative analysis of metaphor, paving the way for corpus-based literary criticism.

“A complete and lucid framework requires quantitative analysis… to determine which metaphors are used conventionally” (Hart, 2008, p. 102).

Examples of Critiques Through “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart

🎨 Literary Work🧠 Critical Discourse Insight via CDA/CBT (Hart)🔍 Key Metaphors / Discursive Strategies
🌊 Chinua Achebe – Things Fall ApartColonial discourse frames African tradition as irrational, chaotic, and destined to “fall apart.” Hart’s framework shows how metaphors of disorder justify colonial control.“Igbo culture” as chaos vs. “colonialism” as order → metaphor of containment, civilisation as light vs. darkness (referential & evaluative strategy)
🧱 Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s TaleMetaphors of fertility, control, and enclosure (e.g., the female body as a container) align with Hart’s container schema and selective projection, reinforcing gender-based power.Wombs as political territory; doors, walls, and eyes evoke container schema and the “nation as house” metaphor (topos of danger + preservation)
🔥 William Blake – LondonBlake critiques state ideology through metaphors of imprisonment and infection. Hart’s concept of entrenched blending reveals how discourse sustains suffering.“Mind-forged manacles” → metaphor for ideological control; plague, cry, and curse reflect evaluative strategies against hegemonic discourse
🐍 Seamus Heaney – PunishmentThe speaker uses metaphors of burial and silence to show complicity in violence. Hart’s idea of metaphor as ideology helps unpack how guilt and justice are shaped by discourse.Bog woman as sacrifice → metaphor of containment and purification; selective projection hides shared societal blame (referential strategy: us vs. victim)

✳️ Key Concepts from Hart Used Across These Critiques
  • 🧠 Conceptual Blending: How mental spaces combine to produce emergent meanings in literary metaphor.
  • 🔎 Selective Projection: What elements are foregrounded or excluded in metaphors to support ideology.
  • 🎭 Referential/Evaluative Strategies: How language positions characters or themes as good/bad, in-group/out-group.
  • 🧬 Entrenchment: How recurring metaphors become ideologically normalized in literary discourse.
  • 📦 Container Schema: Used to explore imagery of boundaries, restriction, purity, and belonging.
Criticism Against “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart

⚖️ Over-reliance on Cognitive Models

  • While Hart successfully integrates Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) with CDA, critics may argue that it over-intellectualizes discourse by framing metaphor primarily as a cognitive phenomenon, potentially neglecting material conditions and historical contexts.

🔬 Limited Empirical Validation

  • Hart advocates for the cognitive entrenchment of metaphor through discourse, but offers limited empirical data to substantiate how often specific blends occur across genres or populations.

“A complete and lucid framework requires quantitative analysis…” (Hart, 2008, p. 102).


🚫 Dismissal of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)

  • Some may view Hart’s critique of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) as overly rigid. While he treats CBT and CMT as “competing,” many linguists (e.g., Grady et al.) argue for their complementarity, not conflict.

📉 Reduction of Metaphor to Ideological Function

  • Hart often ties metaphor directly to ideology and strategy (e.g., immigration discourse), which may risk simplifying metaphor’s poetic, emotional, or ambiguous functions, especially in literature or art.

🌍 Limited Cultural Flexibility

  • The blending framework as presented is based mostly on Western political discourse (e.g., the British National Party). It may not be as adaptable across non-Western rhetorical traditions without significant modification.

🗺️ Under-theorization of Power Structures

  • Although Hart discusses social cognition and inequality, his model doesn’t fully address macro-level power systems (e.g., capitalism, patriarchy) in the way traditional CDA (e.g., Fairclough, Wodak) does.

🧱 Highly Technical Jargon

  • The heavy use of cognitive linguistics terminology (e.g., “mental space integration,” “vital relations,” “entrenchment”) may limit accessibility for scholars outside the field or from humanities/literary backgrounds.

📚 Singular Case Study Focus

  • The BNP manifesto is the sole example in the paper’s application section, raising questions about generalizability. Critics might ask: Can this framework apply equally well to literature, film, or visual art?
Representative Quotations from “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart with Explanation
🎯 Quotation📘 Explanation
🧱 “Critical discourse analysis (CDA) explores the role of discourse structures in constituting social inequality.” (p. 91)This foundational quote defines CDA’s purpose: to reveal how language contributes to power relations and oppression.
🌊 “Metaphors are ideological… in so far as they ‘define in significant part what one takes as reality.'” (Chilton & Lakoff, 1995, p. 56, cited on p. 91)Hart emphasizes that metaphors aren’t neutral—they actively shape perception and ideology, which is central to his analysis.
🧠 “Discourse is produced and interpreted by human individuals interacting with one another.” (Chilton, 2005a, p. 23, cited on p. 91)Highlights the cognitive foundation of discourse interpretation, justifying the use of cognitive linguistics within CDA.
🔄 “CMT posits relationships between pairs of mental representations… [while] BT allows for more than two.” (p. 92)Contrasts Conceptual Metaphor Theory with Blending Theory, showing why Hart favors CBT for richer metaphor analysis.
🔍 “Speakers may choose to recruit particular structure in order to promote a certain perceived reality.” (p. 96)This statement introduces selective projection, a key mechanism by which metaphors support ideological positioning.
⚗️ “The blend inherits partial structure from the input spaces, and has emergent structure of its own.” (Fauconnier & Turner, 1996, p. 113, cited on p. 96)Describes how new, ideologically loaded meanings are constructed during discourse through conceptual blending.
🧬 “Entrenched conceptual blending networks are… the mental representations and processes of group members.” (p. 97)Shows how metaphors become socially shared and naturalized, forming part of collective cognition and discourse.
🧱 “Referential strategies are used… to represent social actors… evaluative strategy is manifested in negative representation.” (p. 99)Demonstrates how metaphor is used to construct identities and values in political and ideological discourse.
🏠 “The nation is conceptualised as a private property… where policymakers have the right to refuse entry.” (p. 101)Analyses metaphors in immigration discourse, using the house/container schema to expose nationalist ideology.
📊 “A complete and lucid framework requires quantitative analysis… to determine which metaphors are used conventionally.” (p. 102)Acknowledges the need for empirical breadth, calling for more data-driven studies to strengthen metaphor analysis in CDA.

Suggested Readings: “Critical Discourse Analysis And Metaphor: Toward A Theoretical Framework” by Christopher Hart
  1. Hart, Christopher. “Critical discourse analysis and metaphor: Toward a theoretical framework.” Critical discourse studies 5.2 (2008): 91-106.
  2. Blommaert, Jan, and Chris Bulcaen. “Critical Discourse Analysis.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 29, 2000, pp. 447–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/223428. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.
  3. Davidson, Donald. “What Metaphors Mean.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 5, no. 1, 1978, pp. 31–47. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1342976. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.
  4. Chilton, Paul, and Mikhail Ilyin. “Metaphor in Political Discourse: The Case of the ‘Common European House.'” Discourse & Society, vol. 4, no. 1, 1993, pp. 7–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42887835. Accessed 13 Apr. 2025.

“Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy: Summary and Critique

“Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke and John M. Kennedy, first published in Metaphor and Symbol in 2004 (Vol. 19, Issue 3, pp. 213–231), offers a rigorous critique of the dominant theory of conceptual metaphor as advanced by Lakoff and Johnson.

"Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought" by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy

“Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke and John M. Kennedy, first published in Metaphor and Symbol in 2004 (Vol. 19, Issue 3, pp. 213–231), offers a rigorous critique of the dominant theory of conceptual metaphor as advanced by Lakoff and Johnson. While Lakoff and Johnson argue that much of abstract thought is rooted in metaphorical projections from embodied experience, Vervaeke and Kennedy contend that such a position risks cognitive reductionism by oversimplifying the richness of abstract cognition. They argue that abstract concepts, such as “argument” or “understanding,” are not conceptual blank slates shaped entirely by metaphor, but possess premetaphoric structure that guides and constrains metaphorical interpretation. Their analysis demonstrates that many metaphors rely not simply on physical experience but on procedural knowledge—a form of cognition grounded in mental operations rather than sensory experience. Moreover, they highlight how spatial mappings (e.g., “understanding is seeing”) are not solely grounded in embodiment but function to reformat abstract information for cognitive processing, enabling structural alignment and salience modulation. In rejecting both strong reductionism and the explanatory insufficiency of conceptual blending theory, they argue for a more nuanced account of metaphor that recognizes the interaction between declarative and procedural knowledge in metaphor comprehension. This has important implications for literary theory, where metaphor is central not just to stylistic ornamentation but to conceptual innovation and interpretation. Ultimately, Vervaeke and Kennedy’s work expands the theoretical landscape of metaphor by asserting that abstract thought is not governed, but informed by metaphor, thereby preserving the autonomy and complexity of abstract reasoning.

Summary of “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy

🔍 1. Critique of Reductionism in Conceptual Metaphor Theory

  • The authors argue that grounding all abstract thought in embodied metaphor leads to reductionism:

“The abstract matter… is being reduced to a more primitive material” (p. 215).

  • They challenge the idea that metaphors fully govern abstract thought, stating:

“The target domain must have considerable premetaphoric structure to constrain the metaphoric selection of features” (p. 217).


🧠 2. Premetaphoric Structure of Abstract Concepts

  • Abstract domains are not blank slates; they influence how metaphors are applied:

“If the target domain were a conceptual blank slate… it is unclear why we would adopt or offer one metaphor over any other” (p. 217).

  • The authors emphasize that metaphoric mapping is guided by prior conceptual understanding.

🔄 3. Limits of Metaphor as Cognitive Explanation

  • Metaphors do not constitute understanding; they enhance or highlight certain aspects:

“The example can be written… as a literal class inclusion statement” (p. 218).
“Our sense… constrains which source domain is chosen for a metaphor” (p. 219).


🔍 4. Metaphor as Reformatting, Not Origin

  • Instead of generating new concepts, metaphors reorganize or reframe existing ideas:

“A metaphor helps to structure pertinent properties in the desired order of salience” (p. 225).
“This structure helps to translate… into a more declarative format” (p. 225).


🌐 5. Role of Spatial Mapping Beyond Embodiment

  • Spatial metaphors are not solely derived from sensorimotor experience; they function as cognitive tools:

“Spatial relations are multimodal and therefore allow for the integration of information” (p. 223).
“Spatial relations… foster the noticing of higher-order invariants and patterns” (p. 223).


🧰 6. Procedural Knowledge as a Basis for Metaphor

  • Understanding abstract domains often relies on procedural, not declarative, knowledge:

“Procedural knowledge… plays a key role” (p. 224).
“Much of this information is encoded procedurally” (p. 225).


🌀 7. Problems with Conceptual Blending Theory

  • The authors reject blending theory as theoretically vague and unfalsifiable:

“Mental space theory can explain everything and thereby really explain nothing” (p. 228).
“Nothing could falsify it” (p. 228, citing Gibbs, 2001).


🎭 8. Metaphor Evokes Experience, Not Literal Meaning

  • Metaphors trigger cognitive responses rather than merely mapping literal features:

“What the metaphor ‘brings to the fore is the kind of emotions, comparisons, and expectations'” (p. 141, quoting Ritchie).
“The metaphor makes its target more vivid… not by content but by experience” (p. 225).


9. Metaphor Supports but Does Not Define Abstract Thinking

  • Metaphors are powerful cognitive aids, but abstract thought precedes and constrains them:

“Conceptual metaphor does not actually seem to be doing most of the important work in conceptual innovation” (p. 220).
“Metaphor… does not constitute the basis for understanding argument” (p. 219).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy
🧠 Term📖 Definition / Explanation📚 Reference
🔗 Conceptual MetaphorA mechanism where abstract thought is structured through metaphorical projection from embodied experience.p. 213; p. 132–133; Lakoff & Johnson (1980, 1999)
⚖️ ReductionismThe problematic idea that abstract reasoning is wholly reducible to bodily experience, which may oversimplify complex cognition.p. 214–215; p. 217
🧩 Premetaphoric StructureThe claim that abstract domains already contain internal structure that constrains metaphorical projection.p. 217–218; p. 221
🌀 Conceptual Blending TheoryA model proposing that meanings arise from blending conceptual elements of different domains into a new mental “space” — critiqued for being too vague.p. 227–228; Fauconnier & Turner (2002)
🧭 Procedural KnowledgeKnow-how or procedural patterns used in metaphor comprehension, often implicit and hard to verbalize.p. 224; p. 226; footnote 1
🧱 Declarative KnowledgeExplicit factual knowledge that interacts with but is not reducible to metaphorical interpretation.p. 226; Chiappe & Kennedy (2001)
🧠 Cognitive ResponseThe emotional or psychological state evoked by a metaphor, such as a sense of confinement or elevation.p. 139–142
🗺️ Spatial MappingThe widespread metaphorical projection of spatial structures onto abstract domains such as time, causality, and understanding.p. 223–224
🛠️ Structural MetaphorMetaphors that organize entire abstract domains by systematic entailments from source domains (e.g., “ARGUMENT IS WAR”).p. 139–140; Lakoff & Johnson (1980)
🎯 Metaphoric SalienceThe metaphor’s ability to foreground or highlight specific features of a concept, making them more cognitively accessible.p. 225; Giora (2003)
❌ Circularity ProblemThe challenge that metaphor theories may become unfalsifiable if metaphorical explanations recursively justify themselves.p. 216; p. 226; Ritchie (2003a)
🧠💬 Metaphoric ExperienceThe idea that metaphors change our experiential understanding of a concept, affecting how it is felt or processed.p. 141; Ritchie (2003b)
🌉 Procedural SimilarityTransfer of cognitive procedures (rather than just content) from one domain to another, which aids in metaphor comprehension and problem-solving.p. 224; Gick & McGarry (1992); Adams et al. (1988)
Contribution of “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy to Literary Theory/Theories

Cognitive Literary Theory

  • 🧭 Challenges to Embodiment-Centric Readings: The article critiques Lakoff & Johnson’s claim that abstract thought is almost entirely derived from embodied metaphor, arguing instead for premetaphoric and cognitive structures that resist full reduction (p. 213–215, 217).
  • 🧠 Highlights the Role of Procedural Knowledge: It introduces the importance of procedural cognition—nonverbal, ineffable know-how—in metaphor comprehension, providing a broader base for understanding narrative and poetic metaphor (p. 224–226).
  • 📊 Supports Spatial-Cognitive Processing in Texts: By demonstrating how spatial mappings facilitate meaning, the article aligns with how readers interpret spatial-temporal relations in literary texts (p. 223–224).

🔍 Metaphor Theory (within Literary Studies)

  • 💥 Critique of Conceptual Metaphor Theory’s Circularity: The article warns that metaphor theories relying only on recurring metaphor families risk becoming unfalsifiable, weakening literary-critical claims (p. 216–217).
  • 🪞 Reasserts the Agency of Target Domains: It emphasizes that target concepts (e.g., “argument,” “love”) are not passive recipients of metaphorical structure—they constrain and reshape metaphors themselves (p. 217–218).
  • 🌱 Introduces Transmetaphoric Innovation: The authors explore how novel metaphors emerge from dissatisfaction with existing ones, which is essential for understanding literary creativity and metaphorical innovation in poetry and fiction (p. 219–221).

⚖️ Post-Structuralism / Deconstruction

  • Unsettles Binary Oppositions in Metaphor Source–Target Relations: The article resists the strict hierarchy between source (embodied) and target (abstract), opening space for a non-linear, recursive interplay between domains (p. 220–222).
  • 📉 Disrupts Foundations of “Literal vs. Metaphorical”: The critique of direct/indirect knowledge distinctions challenges assumptions about literalism—a key target in deconstructionist critiques (p. 221–222).

🧬 Narratology & Semiotics

  • 🧩 Promotes Multimodal Understanding: Drawing on spatial and procedural mappings, the article connects with narrative structures and how they encode abstract concepts like agency, causality, and time (p. 223–224).
  • 🎭 Acknowledges Salient Performative Impact of Metaphors: The discussion of metaphor “experience” (Ritchie’s term) is akin to reader-response theories that emphasize metaphor’s affective engagement (p. 141–142).

🧠 Philosophy of Language & Hermeneutics

  • 🧱 Emphasizes Preconceptual Constraints in Meaning: Meaning is not only projected from metaphors but also arises from prior, often procedural, structures in thought, echoing hermeneutic emphasis on the “already-understood” (p. 217; p. 220).
  • 🔄 Reframes Understanding as a Bidirectional Process: Rather than a unidirectional flow from metaphor to meaning, the article posits a dynamic interaction—deeply resonant with Gadamerian hermeneutics (p. 220–223).

Examples of Critiques Through “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy
📖 Literary Work 🧠 Conceptual Metaphor Critiqued🔍 Insight from Vervaeke & Kennedy (2004)📚 Critique Application
🕊️ “Ode to a Nightingale” – John Keats“ESCAPE IS ASCENT” or “DEATH IS SLEEP”Procedural knowledge and metaphoric salience structure the experience of the poem beyond embodied mappings (p. 224–225)The speaker’s ascent “on the viewless wings of Poesy” resists full reduction to sensorimotor experience—showing instead how conceptual innovation invites aesthetic wonder and transmetaphoric insight.
🧙 “The Tempest” – William Shakespeare“KNOWLEDGE IS POWER,” “MAGIC IS KNOWLEDGE”Cognitive metaphors are constrained by prior knowledge of social hierarchies and ethics (p. 217–218)Prospero’s use of magic is best understood not only through embodied metaphors, but via the premetaphoric structures of knowledge, control, and colonialism, undermining a purely embodied account.
💔 “Wuthering Heights” – Emily Brontë“LOVE IS VIOLENT WEATHER” or “LOVE IS MADNESS”The authors critique blending theory and favor procedural salience in metaphoric comprehension (p. 224–226)Heathcliff and Catherine’s turbulent love illustrates how affective metaphors, such as storms, activate ineffable emotional knowledge, which drives thematic intensity without needing full metaphorical mapping.
🌌 “The Waste Land” – T.S. Eliot“LIFE IS A WASTELAND,” “TIME IS BROKEN SPACE”Procedural similarity and spatial mapping reformat abstract experiences (p. 223–224)The poem’s fragmented structure and metaphors of ruin are not merely products of bodily experience, but cognitive structures representing postwar disillusionment, decoded via procedural mental models rather than strict metaphoric projection.
Criticism Against “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy
  • ⚖️ Overemphasis on Reductionism Claim
    While Vervaeke & Kennedy argue conceptual metaphor theory is overly reductionist, they may oversimplify the nuanced positions of Lakoff & Johnson, especially by focusing on extreme interpretations and downplaying the flexibility built into the theory.

“We argue that in fact [Ritchie] did not escape the problem” (p. 215)

  • 🔁 Neglect of Embodiment’s Empirical Base
    The authors criticize the embodiment hypothesis as insufficient, yet they do not engage deeply with empirical evidence from neuroscience and psycholinguistics that supports embodied cognition (e.g., Gibbs, 2003).

Their challenge to embodiment relies more on logical critique than empirical falsification.

  • 🔍 Ambiguity in Defining Procedural Knowledge
    The concept of procedural knowledge is central to their alternative, yet they do not offer a clear operational definition or method for measuring it in metaphor comprehension. This makes their theory difficult to test or apply consistently.

“Procedural similarity probably plays a significant role…” (p. 225)

  • 🌀 Dismissal of Conceptual Blending Is Incomplete
    Their critique of conceptual blending theory is valid in parts (e.g., lack of falsifiability), but they overlook blending theory’s success in modeling novel metaphors and creative linguistic constructions, especially in poetry and narrative.

“Conceptual blending theory… fails as a theoretical framework” (p. 227)

  • 🔄 Possible Circularity in Pre-Metaphoric Structure Argument
    Their claim that metaphor relies on pre-existing cognitive structures risks its own circularity: how are these premetaphoric understandings formed if not through metaphorical language itself, especially in early cognition?

“Initial independence sets up the opportunity for metaphor” (p. 220)

  • 🧩 Philosophical Tension in ‘Literal vs Metaphoric’ Distinction
    They rely on the literal/metaphoric divide to argue against metaphor theory but this dichotomy has been widely challenged as unstable in both literary theory and cognitive science (e.g., Davidson, 1978; Black, 1979).

“Literal aspects… have played a significant role…” (p. 218)

  • ⚙️ Limited Scope of Application
    While their model works well in certain scientific or analytic contexts, it may struggle to explain the cultural, affective, and poetic depth of metaphor in literature and myth, where embodied metaphor often flourishes.
  • Dismisses Metaphor’s Generative Role Too Quickly
    By positioning metaphors as interpretive rather than generative, they underplay how metaphors can create new understanding, not just shape or reflect existing structures.

“The metaphor… does not constitute the basis for understanding argument.” (p. 219)

Representative Quotations from “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy with Explanation

🔖 Quotation 📝 Explanation📄 Page Reference
🧠 “Metaphors do not come singly, like hermits. They live in groups.”Emphasizes that metaphors form conceptual systems, not isolated figures—they cluster to shape networks of meaning.p. 215
⚖️ “Metaphors influence the bulk of our thought… They are usually implied rather than directly spoken.”Shows how deeply metaphors are embedded in cognition, often subtly shaping abstract reasoning.p. 215
🛡️ “ARGUMENT IS WAR… we say things such as ‘he attacked my argument’…”Reflects how everyday language frames argumentation metaphorically as combat, a core critique target of the authors.p. 216
🔄 “Any two things are infinitely similar… selection of domains is a very significant problem.”Warns against indiscriminate metaphor selection, insisting that metaphor must be structured by cognitive constraints.p. 217
🚫 “The claim about ‘ARGUMENT’ and personal antagonisms… does not address the central properties…”Points out that the war metaphor misrepresents formal argument by ignoring its logical and procedural rules.p. 219
📉 “Metaphor is not a simple case of categorization or comparison.”Highlights the uniqueness of metaphor—unlike basic comparison, it transfers only certain features, not all.p. 219
🌌 “Metaphors trigger guiding conceptual operations we use in reality-monitoring.”Suggests metaphors prime cognitive functions like attention, relevance filtering, and memory integration.p. 223
🎭 “A metaphor makes its target more vivid… helps to translate procedural into declarative.”Shows how metaphor enhances understanding by making implicit experiences more communicable and vivid.p. 225
🧲 “Metaphor is just one possible source of ideas—it cannot evaluate itself.”Argues metaphors require independent cognitive structures to evaluate their usefulness or truth.p. 227
🧪 “We argue that procedural similarity plays a significant role in metaphor comprehension.”Suggests metaphor works best when cognitive processes (not just properties) align between domains—e.g., how we interact with and navigate conceptual space.p. 228

Suggested Readings: “Conceptual Metaphor and Abstract Thought” by John Vervaeke & John M. Kennedy
  1. Vervaeke, John, and John M. Kennedy. “Conceptual metaphor and abstract thought.” Metaphor and symbol 19.3 (2004): 213-231.
  2. Flanik, William. “‘Bringing FPA Back Home:’ Cognition, Constructivism, and Conceptual Metaphor.” Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 7, no. 4, 2011, pp. 423–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24909837. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  3. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77, no. 8, 1980, pp. 453–86. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2025464. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  4. Eubanks, Philip. “The Story of Conceptual Metaphor: What Motivates Metaphoric Mappings?” Poetics Today, vol. 20, no. 3, 1999, pp. 419–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773273. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

“Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson: Summary and Critique

“Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson first appeared in The Journal of Philosophy in August 1980 (Vol. 77, No. 8, pp. 453–486), published by the Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

"Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson first appeared in The Journal of Philosophy in August 1980 (Vol. 77, No. 8, pp. 453–486), published by the Journal of Philosophy, Inc. This foundational paper challenged traditional views in philosophy and linguistics by arguing that metaphor is not merely a rhetorical or poetic device but a fundamental mechanism shaping human thought, language, and action. Lakoff and Johnson introduced the notion of conceptual metaphor, wherein we understand abstract concepts through more concrete, physical experiences—such as “ARGUMENT IS WAR” or “TIME IS MONEY.” Through extensive linguistic evidence, they demonstrated that our ordinary conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature, thus reshaping discussions in semantics, cognitive science, and literary theory. Their experientialist perspective further suggested that metaphor structures our perceptions of reality, influencing everything from reasoning to emotional experience. The paper’s influence extends across disciplines, positioning metaphor not as decorative language but as a core constituent of human cognition and cultural understanding.

Summary of “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

🔹 Core Argument: Metaphor is Fundamental to Thought and Language

  • Metaphor is not just poetic or rhetorical; it is central to everyday thinking and language.

“We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but in thought and action” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 454).

  • Our conceptual system is metaphorical, shaping perception, behavior, and reasoning.

“If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor” (p. 454).


🔹 Key Conceptual Metaphors

  • ARGUMENT IS WAR: We structure arguments as battles.

“He attacked every weak point in my argument… I demolished his argument” (p. 454–455).
“Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war” (p. 455).

  • TIME IS MONEY: Time is treated as a finite, valuable commodity.

“You’re wasting my time… That flat tire cost me an hour” (p. 456).
“Because of the way that the concept of work has developed… time is precisely quantified” (p. 456).

  • IDEAS ARE FOOD / THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS / LOVE IS A JOURNEY: Metaphors define abstract domains.

“Now there’s a theory you can really sink your teeth into” (p. 470).
“We need to construct a strong argument for that” (p. 470).
“Look how far we’ve come… Our marriage is on the rocks” (p. 470).


🔹 Systematicity of Metaphors

  • Metaphorical concepts form coherent systems, not isolated expressions.

“Metaphorical expressions in our language are tied to metaphorical concepts in a systematic way” (p. 456).

  • One metaphor (e.g., TIME IS MONEY) entails others (e.g., TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE) through entailment hierarchies.

“TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, which entails that TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY” (p. 457).


🔹 Highlighting vs. Hiding

  • Metaphors highlight certain aspects of a concept while hiding others.

“A metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the concept which are not coherent with that metaphor” (p. 458).

  • Example: ARGUMENT IS WAR hides cooperative aspects of argument.

“We lose sight of the more cooperative aspects involved in an argument” (p. 458).


🔹 Orientational and Ontological Metaphors

  • Orientational metaphors give concepts spatial direction:
    • HAPPY IS UP, SAD IS DOWN → “My spirits rose… I fell into a depression” (p. 462).
    • MORE IS UP, LESS IS DOWN → “My income rose last year” (p. 463).
  • Ontological metaphors allow us to view activities or emotions as entities or substances:

“The brutality of war dehumanizes us all… His theory has thousands of little rooms” (p. 461–472).


🔹 Cultural and Experiential Grounding

  • Metaphors reflect cultural values:

“The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts” (p. 465).

  • They are grounded in bodily experience (embodiment):

“Our constant physical activity… makes UP-DOWN orientation… centrally relevant” (p. 476).


🔹 Novel Metaphor and Meaning

  • Novel metaphors can create new ways of understanding and guide future actions.

“Metaphors have entailments through which they highlight and make coherent certain aspects of our experience” (p. 481).

  • Example: LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART

“LOVE IS WORK… LOVE REQUIRES COMPROMISE… LOVE IS CREATIVE” (p. 482).


🔹 Critique of Literalist Theories

  • The authors challenge traditional views that restrict metaphor to non-literal language.

“We have tried to show that most of our everyday, ordinary conceptual system… is metaphorically structured” (p. 485).

  • They propose an experientialist theory of meaning and truth, where truth is “dependent on understanding” and metaphor plays a central role.

“A sentence is true in a situation when our understanding of the sentence fits our understanding of the situation” (p. 486).


🔹 Philosophical Implications

  • Metaphor challenges objectivist theories of language and knowledge.
  • Understanding is embodied, metaphorical, and shaped by cultural coherence, not universal logic.
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

🧠 Term / Symbol📘 Explanation📝 Reference Quote
🔄 Conceptual MetaphorUnderstanding one idea or conceptual domain in terms of another. These metaphors structure our thinking.“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (p. 455).
⚙️ Metaphorical StructuringThe way abstract concepts are systematically shaped by metaphor.“The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and consequently, the language is metaphorically structured” (p. 455).
🧱 Structural MetaphorOne concept is structured in terms of another (e.g., ARGUMENT IS WAR).“Let us start with the concept of an ARGUMENT, and the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR” (p. 454).
🧭 Orientational MetaphorOrganizes concepts spatially (e.g., UP-DOWN, IN-OUT) based on bodily experience.“We call them ‘orientational’ metaphors because most of them have to do with spatial orientation: UP-DOWN, IN-OUT…” (p. 461).
🧊 Ontological MetaphorTreats abstract experiences (like emotions or events) as objects, substances, or containers.“We understand events, activities, emotions, ideas… as entities or substances” (p. 461).
🌐 SystematicityThe coherence and structured relationships among metaphorical concepts.“Because the metaphorical concept is systematic, the language we use… is systematic” (p. 456).
🧩 Highlighting and HidingMetaphors emphasize some aspects of a concept while concealing others.“A metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects… which are not coherent with that metaphor” (p. 458).
🧰 Experientialist Theory of MeaningMeaning arises from embodied human experience, not abstract truth-conditions.“We are led to a theory of truth that is dependent on understanding” (p. 486).
🔁 Entailment StructureThe internal logic linking different metaphors, where one implies another.“TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, which entails that TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY” (p. 457).
🎨 Novel MetaphorNew metaphor not part of our conventional conceptual system, offering fresh perspectives.“LOVE IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART… highlights certain features while suppressing others” (p. 482).
🧠➡️💬 Concepts We Live ByMetaphors don’t just shape how we speak, but how we perceive, act, and live.“Our ordinary conceptual system… is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (p. 454).
🔍 Cultural CoherenceMetaphors align with culturally shared values and beliefs.“The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts” (p. 465).
Contribution of “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson to Literary Theory/Theories
🧠 Literary Theory💡 Contribution from Lakoff & Johnson📝 Reference from Article
1. Reader-Response Theory 👓Emphasizes the reader’s embodied experience and how understanding is shaped by conceptual metaphors rather than objective meaning. This aligns with the idea that readers construct meaning.“We define our reality in terms of metaphor, and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphor… We draw inferences, set goals…” (p. 484)
2. Deconstruction 🧩Challenges rigid binary oppositions (e.g., literal/figurative, object/subject) and shows how meaning is inherently metaphorical and unstable, resonating with Derridean critique of fixed meaning.“If we are right… the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor” (p. 454)
3. Structuralism 🧬Highlights systematic structures underlying language and thought via metaphors, akin to Saussure’s idea of sign systems and Lévi-Strauss’s binary structures.“Because the metaphorical concept is systematic, the language we use… is systematic” (p. 456)
4. Poststructuralism 🌀Offers a dynamic and unstable model of meaning, shaped by cultural metaphorical systems, aligning with the poststructuralist view that meaning is never fixed or singular.“There are cultures where time is none of these things… our values are not independent, but must form a coherent system with the metaphorical concepts we live by” (p. 466)
5. Phenomenology 🧍Rooted in embodied experience, showing how metaphors structure perception and interaction with the world—aligns with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on lived experience.“Our conceptual system… is fundamentally metaphorical in nature… concepts structure what we perceive” (p. 454)
6. Cognitive Poetics 🧠📖Directly foundational—this article originates the cognitive approach to metaphor and narrative understanding in literature. Explains how readers and authors use metaphors to make sense of abstract experiences.“Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but in thought and action” (p. 454)
7. Formalism 📐Challenges Formalist separation of form and content, by showing that metaphorical form itself carries conceptual meaning and can’t be isolated from thought.“The metaphor is not merely in the words we use—it is in our very concept” (p. 455)
8. Cultural Criticism / New Historicism 🌍Illuminates how cultural metaphors shape cognition, meaning that literary texts must be interpreted through the lens of their embedded metaphors and cultural coherence.“The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts” (p. 465)
9. Feminist Literary Theory 🚺📚Opens space for analyzing gendered metaphors in literature (e.g., rationality as UP, emotion as DOWN), aligning with critiques of patriarchal language.“RATIONAL IS UP; EMOTIONAL IS DOWN” (p. 463); “MAN IS UP… RATIONAL IS UP” (p. 464)
10. Rhetorical Theory 🗣️Shifts focus from stylistic ornament to cognitive and conceptual basis of rhetoric, redefining metaphor as essential to argumentation, persuasion, and structure.“Our conventional ways of talking about arguments presuppose a metaphor… ARGUMENT IS WAR” (p. 455)
Examples of Critiques Through “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
📖 Literary Work🔑 Key Conceptual Metaphors🧩 Critique via Lakoff & Johnson🔖 Article Reference
🌊 “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville– Life Is A Journey 🛶
– The Mind Is A Container 🧠📦
– The Sea Is Chaos 🌊⚠️
Captain Ahab’s obsession is framed through metaphors of spatial containment and existential journey. His quest is not linear but deeply metaphorical—Ahab “contains” his madness like a sealed vessel. The ocean as chaos resonates with metaphors of unstructured danger.“Ideas are objects… linguistic expressions are containers” (p. 459); “LOVE IS A JOURNEY” as metaphor model (p. 471)
🕯️ “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare– Ambition Is Up 📈
– Death Is Down ⚰️📉
– Life Is A Stage 🎭
Macbeth’s rise and fall embody orientational metaphors: he rises (“vaulting ambition”) and falls (“downward spiral”). The stage metaphor underscores his role-play and self-alienation. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness reflects SADNESS IS DOWN.“HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN” (p. 463); “LIFE IS A STAGE” as implied structural metaphor (p. 470)
🧠 “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf– Time Is A Moving Object 🕰️🚶‍♂️
– Self Is A Container 🪞📦
– Memory Is A Landscape 🧭🌿
Woolf uses fluid time metaphors—moments shift like objects in motion. Clarissa and Septimus both “hold” memories metaphorically, showing the MIND AS CONTAINER. The stream-of-consciousness becomes a metaphorical map of internal journeys.“TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT” (p. 468); “THE MIND IS A CONTAINER” (p. 459); “Experiential gestalts” (p. 476)
🌲 “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost– Life Is A Journey 🛤️
– Choice Is A Path 🚪🛣️
– Future Is Ahead 🔮➡️
The poem literalizes the JOURNEY metaphor to discuss decisions. The diverging roads represent conceptual choice-making paths. The speaker “looks down” the path—spatializes time and consequence as distance and depth.“LOVE IS A JOURNEY” (p. 471); “FUTURE EVENTS ARE UP (AND AHEAD)” (p. 462); “Spatial orientation… frames concepts” (p. 461)
Criticism Against “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

🔍 Partial Structuring Problem

🔸 “The metaphorical structuring of concepts is necessarily partial…” (p. 455)
🔹 Critique: Since metaphors highlight some aspects while hiding others, the theory may oversimplify or mislead if metaphorically “hidden” dimensions are ignored.


🧠 ⚠️ Dependence on Subjectivity

🔸 “Which values are given priority is partly a matter of the subculture you live in…” (p. 467)
🔹 Critique: The subjective, culturally biased nature of metaphor makes generalizing cognitive structures difficult across societies.


🔗 🔄 Overgeneralization of Metaphors

🔸 “Most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature.” (p. 454)
🔹 Critique: Critics argue this claim lacks empirical precision and tends to uncritically universalize metaphor as a dominant mode of cognition.


🧱 🏗️ Structural Rigidity in Metaphor Pairs

🔸 “We talk about attacking a position… defend our own.” (p. 455)
🔹 Critique: Binary metaphor mappings (e.g., ARGUMENT IS WAR) may impose an overly dualist and combative worldview, ignoring more fluid or cooperative interpretations.


📚 🧪 Philosophical Incompatibility with Traditional Semantics

🔸 “No account of meaning and truth can pretend to be complete… if it cannot account for metaphor.” (p. 486)
🔹 Critique: This challenges established truth-conditional theories of meaning, but critics argue that metaphor lacks logical precision and may not suit formal semantics.


🔀 🌀 Vague Boundaries Between Literal & Metaphorical

🔸 “Literal expressions… and imaginative expressions… can be instances of the same general metaphor.” (p. 471)
🔹 Critique: The blurred line between literal and metaphorical language complicates linguistic clarity, making analysis messy or indeterminate.


🚧 ⚙️ Operational Issues in Application

🔸 “Our account… may seem similar to Goodman’s… but we are at odds with Goodman…” (p. 458)
🔹 Critique: The authors reject rival theories but don’t fully develop alternative frameworks or offer rigorous methodologies for identifying metaphors in practice.


🎭 🎨 Inadequate Treatment of Poetic or Creative Language

🔸 “Literal expressions… and imaginative expressions… can be instances of the same general metaphor.” (p. 472)
🔹 Critique: Literary scholars argue that the nuanced, polysemous nature of literary metaphor is not adequately addressed, being reduced to cognitive templates.


🧩 💬 Fragmentation in Understanding Emotion or Abstract Domains

🔸 “No sharply defined conceptual structure for the emotions emerges from emotional functioning alone…” (p. 476)
🔹 Critique: Emotional metaphors (e.g., “LOVE IS A JOURNEY”) are reductionist, potentially ignoring multi-layered emotional realities.

Representative Quotations from “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson with Explanation
🔹QuotationExplanation
🔺“Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”This foundational claim asserts that metaphor isn’t decorative; it shapes everyday cognition and behavior.
🛡️“ARGUMENT IS WAR… We attack his positions and we defend our own.”This illustrates how conceptual metaphors (e.g., argument as war) structure our language and behavior.
“TIME IS MONEY… You’re wasting my time.”Demonstrates how we perceive time as a quantifiable commodity due to cultural and economic systems.
💬“Communication is viewed as sending ideas in containers through a conduit.”Refers to the “conduit metaphor” — a dominant but limiting way we conceptualize communication.
🎯“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”Core definition of conceptual metaphor: it’s about mapping knowledge from one domain to another.
🔍“Metaphorical concepts can keep us from focusing on other aspects… which are not coherent with that metaphor.”Metaphors highlight and hide — they frame perception while excluding other views.
🌡️“HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN.”This orientational metaphor is grounded in physical posture and shows how emotions are spatially conceptualized.
🧱“THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS… The argument collapsed.”Abstract ideas like theories are metaphorically structured as physical entities to make them graspable.
🧠“We claim that most of our normal conceptual system is metaphorically structured.”Reaffirms that metaphor is not exceptional but essential to how thought operates.
🧭“The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture.”Suggests that metaphorical systems align with and reinforce cultural values.
Suggested Readings: “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
  1. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. “Conceptual metaphor in everyday language.” Shaping entrepreneurship research. Routledge, 2020. 475-504.
  2. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77, no. 8, 1980, pp. 453–86. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2025464. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  3. Merten, Don, and Gary Schwartz. “Metaphor and Self: Symbolic Process in Everyday Life.” American Anthropologist, vol. 84, no. 4, 1982, pp. 796–810. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/676491. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  4. Diekema, Douglas S. “METAPHORS, MEDICINE, AND MORALS.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 72, no. 1, 1989, pp. 17–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41178462. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

“A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown: Summary and Critique

“A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown first appeared in Accounting Forum in 2018 and represents a distinctive interdisciplinary contribution to both literary analysis and accounting theory.

"A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot" by Alistair Brown: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown

“A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown first appeared in Accounting Forum in 2018 and represents a distinctive interdisciplinary contribution to both literary analysis and accounting theory. Drawing from the conceptual theory of metaphor, Brown applies a rigorous typology developed by Perrine (1971) to explore how Eliot’s poem constructs and conveys meaning through various metaphorical forms, particularly those related to accounting. The article argues that Prufrock is rich with accounting metaphors—ranging from explicit (Form 1) to implicit and abstract (Form 4)—that reflect deeper social, psychological, and epistemic dimensions of modern life. Brown suggests that the poem can be read as an intricate account of human experience through an accounting lens, mapping tangible assets, liabilities, and transformative evaluations of the self. This approach challenges traditional boundaries of literary and accounting scholarship, highlighting how metaphor serves as a powerful epistemological bridge between disciplines. By emphasizing metaphor’s role in shaping perception and interpretation, Brown’s study underscores the relevance of poetic texts in critical accounting discourse, affirming Eliot’s poem as both a cultural and metaphorical artefact with implications for understanding reporting, identity, and transformation in the context of modern organizational life.

Summary of “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
  • 🔹 Application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to Poetry
    • Brown uses the theory of metaphor as conceptual rather than linguistic, arguing that “metaphor is located in thought rather than in language” (Ritchie & Zhu, 2015, p. 119).
    • This approach positions metaphor as a means of “innovative perspectives and new knowledge of phenomena” (Moerman & van der Laan, 2011, p. 11).
  • 🔹 Accounting Metaphors in Eliot’s Poem
    • The study finds Prufrock “relies on accounting metaphors that use either unstated vehicle concepts, unstated tenor concepts or both to convey dense messages of accounting” (Brown, 2018, Abstract).
    • These metaphors span literal and figurative domains, such as in Form 1 metaphors like “accounting as a gramophone record” (Suarez, 2001).
  • 🔹 Use of Perrine’s Typology of Metaphor
    • Brown employs Perrine’s (1971) four-form metaphor typology—from explicit metaphors (Form 1) to implicit, abstract ones (Form 4)—to categorize metaphor use in the poem.
    • “Form 4 metaphors require the reader to exercise imagination… as the metaphors themselves… appear erratically structured or ambiguous” (Brown, 2018, p. 4).
  • 🔹 Fragments of Accounting Identity in the Poem
    • The poem’s references to tangible assets like “rooms,” “streets,” and “tables” are interpreted as “symbols of a city’s modernity” and “fragments of reporting identity” (Brown, 2018, p. 11).
    • “Oyster-shells” are interpreted as “an early form of account of the environment” (Brown, 2018, p. 6).
  • 🔹 Reporting Sublimity and Spiritual Dimensions
    • Brown highlights how the poem engages with “the selection, storage and presentation of accounting information” (p. 11).
    • The line “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” is described as “a spiritual emblem of accounting” (p. 11).
  • 🔹 Transformative and Aesthetic Accounting
    • The poem is said to “dare to pose and respond to far-reaching questions that might otherwise be side-stepped by time-honoured accounting texts” (p. 2).
    • Lines like “Do I dare disturb the universe?” are linked to the potential for accounting to “penetrate the ‘laws’ of the social universe” (Boland, 1989, p. 591).
  • 🔹 Accounting as a Poetic, Perceptual Act
    • Brown argues accounting metaphors in Prufrock “construct an opaque form of an inverted early nineteenth century Abstract of Liabilities and Assets” (p. 11).
    • This perspective treats poetry as “a form of accounting scholarship that offers fruitful paths for understanding accounting endeavour” (Gray, Guthrie, & Parker, 2002, p. 1).
  • 🔹 Implications for Literary and Accounting Discourses
    • Brown concludes that metaphor “encourages readers to seek innovative meanings of accounting” and helps in identifying “the limitations of measurement pursuits” (p. 11).
    • He calls for “a considerable epistemic shift from one domain to another to expose the hidden meanings of accounting” in literary texts (p. 12).
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
🌟 Theoretical Term/Concept📘 Explanation📝 Referenced Quotation from the Article
🔄 Conceptual Metaphor TheoryViews metaphor as a cognitive process where meaning is transferred from one conceptual domain (source) to another (target), rather than just being a linguistic flourish.“The conceptual theory of metaphor ‘holds that metaphor is located in thought rather than in language’” (Ritchie & Zhu, 2015, p. 119).
🧩 Tenor and VehicleComponents of a metaphor where the tenor is the subject (literal concept) and the vehicle is the figurative image used to describe it.“A metaphor comprises a ‘literal’ term (tenor) and ‘figurative’ term (vehicle)” (Brown, 2018, p. 3).
🧠 Epistemic TransferThe cognitive shift required to interpret metaphors, especially when source and target domains are abstract or unstated.“Considerable transfers of meaning from one epistemic element to another are needed to unlock Eliot’s accounting messages” (Brown, 2018, Abstract).
🌀 Form 4 MetaphorA highly implicit metaphor where neither the tenor nor vehicle is stated explicitly, demanding higher imaginative interpretation.“Form 4 metaphors… appear erratically structured or ambiguous” and require “higher order epistemic transfers” (Brown, 2018, p. 4; Walters, 2004, p. 160).
🏛️ Fragments of Accounting IdentityPartial representations of accounting practices and elements (e.g. balance sheets, timekeeping, assets) embedded within poetic or non-financial texts.“The poem’s references to tangible assets… are interpreted as ‘fragments of reporting identity’” (Brown, 2018, p. 11).
🌈 Aesthetic AccountingThe symbolic or sensuous representation of accounting concepts, emphasizing emotion, art, and subjectivity.“The aesthetic form of metaphor brings signification closer to emotive or sensual experience” (Walters-York, 1996, p. 54).
Transformative AccountingA concept of accounting that explores spiritual, ethical, or societal dimensions, often beyond technical or numerical scopes.“Transformative accounting also accounts for sins and the soul… accounting can be perceived as something sacred” (Brown, 2018, p. 4; Jacobs & Walker, 2004, p. 362).
📜 Reporting SublimityThe poetic or elevated framing of accounting as a medium for storytelling, disclosure, and narrative creation.“Reporting sublimity is often rendered by personal accounts… where words or music reveal song or speech” (Brown, 2018, p. 4).
🎭 Performative ApproachRecognizes that meaning arises not just from what is written, but through how texts are enacted or interpreted by readers.“The fate of any account lies in the actor’s translation” (Catasus, 2008, p. 1007).
Contribution of “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown to Literary Theory/Theories
🎨 Literary Theory📚 Contribution📝 Referenced Quotation from the Article
🔍 Reader-Response TheoryEmphasizes the active role of the reader in constructing meaning. Brown’s analysis invites readers to engage deeply with the metaphorical structure, highlighting the subjectivity of interpretation.“The actor’s processes of translation used in this study are directed towards the purposeful detection and interpretation of accounting-related metaphor-use” (Brown, 2018, p. 3).
🌀 Post-StructuralismSupports the view that meaning is not fixed and is generated through interpretation, fragmentation, and ambiguity. Brown shows how metaphors challenge literal meanings and encourage multiplicity.“Texts may be open to arbitrariness and go beyond one-to-one correspondence” (Brown, 2018, p. 3).
🧠 Cognitive PoeticsIntegrates linguistics and literary criticism, showing how cognition shapes interpretation of literary texts. Brown uses conceptual metaphor theory to show how cognition structures literary meaning.“Metaphors… are constituted by relationships among concepts” and serve “to lend substance to abstract or elusive concepts” (Walters-York, 1996, p. 119).
🧱 New HistoricismConnects literature to its cultural, social, and economic context. Brown examines Eliot’s background in banking and accounting to interpret the poem’s metaphoric imagery.“Eliot may have been exposed to facets of accounting and accountability that ultimately influenced the discourse, signification and textuality of the poem” (Brown, 2018, p. 2).
📖 Interdisciplinary Literary TheoryPromotes integrating methods and insights from other disciplines. Brown’s work bridges literary analysis and accounting theory, opening new paths for interpretation.“The relevance of interpreting the forms of accounting metaphors… is that it draws attention to accounting’s presence in a social and historical milieu” (Brown, 2018, p. 2).
🧚 Aestheticism and SymbolismBrown shows how Eliot’s symbolic and aesthetic language can be interpreted through metaphorical structure, reflecting both sensory imagery and deeper symbolic meanings.“The expressive aesthetic form of accounting renders a prosaic and spiritual account by Prufrock” (Brown, 2018, p. 11).
🕊️ Existential Literary CriticismThe poem is traditionally seen as reflecting existential anxiety. Brown complements this by linking Prufrock’s indecision to metaphors of measurement, liability, and identity.“The eventual absence of non-current property assets… are then overtaken by the intangible liabilities of human anguishes for reflection, re-reflection and self-doubt” (Brown, 2018, p. 11).
Examples of Critiques Through “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
📚 Literary Work🔍 Critique via Brown’s Metaphorical Framework Explanation Using Brown’s Method
🕰The Waste Land – T.S. EliotForm 4 Metaphors & Reporting SublimitySimilar to Prufrock, this poem’s fragmented structure and spiritual decay can be read through metaphors of accounting “liabilities,” “broken time,” and “intangible losses” — highlighting disordered epistemic systems (Brown, 2018, pp. 4, 11).
💔 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott FitzgeraldFragments of Accounting Identity & Aesthetic AccountingGatsby’s lavish lifestyle and obsession with wealth can be viewed as metaphorical “balance sheets” of identity and emotion—symbolizing how self-worth is calculated and presented aesthetically (Brown, 2018, p. 4).
🧭 Heart of Darkness – Joseph ConradTransformative Accounting & Epistemic TransferMarlow’s journey can be analyzed as a metaphorical audit of colonialism’s moral bankruptcy, requiring “epistemic shifts” between imperial rhetoric and inner truth (Brown, 2018, pp. 3–4).
🎭 Hamlet – William ShakespeareForm 3 Metaphors & Existential MeasurementHamlet’s delays and soliloquies can be seen as metaphorical “revisions,” where action is deferred like a financial audit. “Do I dare disturb the universe?” echoes Hamlet’s own paralysis (Brown, 2018, p. 8).
Criticism Against “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
  • 🔸 Overextension of Accounting Frameworks
    The analysis might be seen as forcing accounting metaphors onto a poem not originally intended to carry such meanings, potentially overshadowing its literary, existential, and modernist themes.
  • 🟠 Limited Engagement with Broader Literary Criticism
    Brown focuses primarily on accounting metaphors and gives less attention to well-established literary interpretations, such as psychoanalytic, feminist, or formalist readings of Prufrock.
  • 🔹 Risk of Reductionism
    By interpreting complex poetic imagery through the lens of accounting, there’s a risk of reducing the poem’s rich ambiguity to technical or disciplinary terms, limiting the scope of its literary resonance.
  • 🟡 Speculative Metaphor Interpretation
    The identification of Form 4 metaphors—where neither tenor nor vehicle is stated—can appear speculative or subjective, as it relies heavily on inferred meanings not directly supported by textual evidence.
  • 🟢 Interdisciplinary Accessibility
    While innovative, the highly specialized accounting terminology may alienate readers from literary or humanities backgrounds unfamiliar with accounting theory or jargon.
  • 🔴 Historical Context May Be Overstated
    The argument that Eliot’s accounting-related background significantly shaped Prufrock may be overstated, especially given that he wrote the poem before his formal employment at Lloyd’s Bank.
  • 🔵 Potential Confirmation Bias
    Since the analysis sets out to find accounting metaphors, there’s a chance it selectively highlights lines that suit this interpretation while ignoring those that resist such reading.
Representative Quotations from “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown with Explanation
🎯 Quotation Explanation
🔵 “The poem relies on accounting metaphors that use either unstated vehicle concepts, unstated tenor concepts or both to convey dense messages of accounting.” (Abstract)Highlights how Eliot’s metaphors operate on a conceptual level, requiring deep interpretation to uncover implicit financial imagery.
🟢 “Metaphors… transfer meaning from one epistemic element or domain to another to generate new understandings.” (p. 1)Emphasizes metaphor as a cognitive bridge, aligning with conceptual metaphor theory central to Brown’s framework.
🟣 “Form 4 metaphors… appear erratically structured or ambiguous.” (p. 4)Introduces the most complex metaphor category—neither literal nor figurative terms are named—requiring imaginative leaps.
🔴 “The poem’s references to tangible non-current property assets… are interpreted as fragments of reporting identity.” (p. 11)Links the material imagery in the poem (e.g., streets, rooms) with accounting’s structural components, such as asset classification.
🟠 “Do I dare disturb the universe?” also reminds audiences of the potentiality of accounting… (p. 8)Connects Prufrock’s existential questioning with the transformative, even philosophical, power of accounting theory.
🟡 “Measured out my life with coffee spoons” might be seen as a spiritual emblem of accounting… (p. 11)Reinterprets this iconic line as an understated metaphor for accounting’s obsession with measurement and detail.
🔵 “Accounting’s transformative precepts create symbolic power structures of control over domains of attire and vanity.” (p. 8)Demonstrates how accounting extends metaphorically into cultural, aesthetic, and personal identity domains.
🟣 “Poetry is recognized as a form of accounting scholarship that offers fruitful paths for understanding accounting endeavour.” (p. 4)Reframes poetry as an epistemological tool that can be used for critical insights into accounting practice.
🟢 “The Love Song dares to question accounting’s deeper purpose…” (p. 12)Suggests that Eliot’s work can critique and reimagine accounting beyond numbers—into ethical and philosophical realms.
🔴 “Readers must make a considerable epistemic shift… to expose the hidden meanings of accounting resting behind the poem’s images.” (p. 12)A call to readers to engage cognitively and creatively, as understanding the metaphors demands an interdisciplinary mindset.
Suggested Readings: “A Metaphorical Analysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot” by Alistair Brown
  1. Brown, Alistair. “A metaphorical analysis of the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot.” Accounting Forum. Vol. 42. No. 1. No longer published by Elsevier, 2018.
  2. Locke, Frederick W. “Dante and T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock.” MLN, vol. 78, no. 1, 1963, pp. 51–59. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3042942. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  3. Lowe, Peter. “Prufrock in St. Petersburg: The Presence of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 28, no. 3, 2005, pp. 1–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25167524. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.
  4. Jacobs, Willis D. “T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’” The News Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, vol. 8, no. 1, 1954, pp. 5–6. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1346407. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

“What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson: Summary and Critique

“What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson first appeared in 1986 in the journal Social Text, and has since become a foundational work in the field of cultural studies and literary theory.

"What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?" by Richard Johnson: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson

“What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson first appeared in 1986 in the journal Social Text, and has since become a foundational work in the field of cultural studies and literary theory. In this seminal essay, Johnson articulates a tripartite framework for understanding cultural studies: text-based approaches, studies of production, and investigations into lived cultures. He critiques the limitations of each when treated in isolation and calls for a more integrated, conjunctural method that maps the “social life of subjective forms” across production, representation, and consumption (Johnson, 1986, p. 69). Johnson underscores the importance of formal analysis inherited from structuralism and semiotics, yet warns against “structuralist foreshortenings” that abstract texts from their socio-historical contexts (p. 63). He emphasizes the significance of everyday reading practices, noting that real readers engage with texts in varied, historically contingent ways that cannot be fully explained by textual positioning alone (p. 67). By weaving together linguistic theory, Marxist critique, psychoanalysis, and ethnographic inquiry, Johnson expands the theoretical terrain of cultural studies and asserts its importance in rethinking literature not merely as artistic production but as a site of ideological negotiation and cultural struggle.

Summary of “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson

Cultural Studies as a Multi-Moment Inquiry

Johnson proposes that cultural studies engages with “a circuit of culture”, encompassing production, textual forms, and lived experience, rather than isolating any single element.
“Each aspect has a life of its own… but after that, it may be more transformative to rethink each moment in the light of the others” (p. 74).


📚 Text-Based Analysis and Its Limitations

He explores how humanities disciplines (especially literary studies) have contributed rigorous textual analysis, yet have often lacked broader social application.
“There is a tendency for the tools to remain obstinately technical or formal… buried in a heightened technical mystique” (p. 60).
Johnson warns against “the abstraction of texts from the other moments” of cultural circulation (p. 63).


🧠 The Importance of Formalism (But Not Too Much)

Johnson values structuralist and semiotic methods for identifying forms of subjectivity but critiques their overdetachment from social life.
“A little formalism turns one away from History, but that a lot brings one back to it” – quoting Roland Barthes (p. 61).
He insists on “describing them carefully, clearly, noting the variations and combinations” of narrative and symbolic forms (p. 60).


📺 Critique of Structuralist Foreshortening

He critiques approaches like those in Screen theory for focusing narrowly on “the productivity of signifying systems” and neglecting real contexts of production and readership (p. 65).
“There is no real theory of subjectivity here… no account of the carry-over or continuity of self-identities from one discursive moment to the next” (p. 69).


👥 The Reader as a Social Subject

Johnson emphasizes the gap between “the reader in the text” and “the reader in society”, stressing that actual readers bring complex histories and identities to texts.
“Textual materials are complex, multiple, overlapping, coexistent… all readings are also ‘inter-discursive’” (p. 67).
He argues that we must “trace what stories are already in place” before understanding how texts are received (p. 69).


🧵 Connecting Lived Culture to Public Forms

In his third approach, Johnson highlights the importance of studying how marginalized groups appropriate and rework dominant cultural forms in everyday life.
“Typically, studies have concerned the appropriation of elements of mass culture and their transformation according to the needs and cultural logics of social groups” (p. 72).


🚩 Critique of Expressivism and Cultural Empiricism

Johnson is cautious about uncritical celebration of “authentic” experience, arguing that such approaches can romanticize and oversimplify complex social realities.
“Research of this kind has often mediated a private working-class world and the definitions of the public sphere with its middle-class weighting” (p. 71).


🔧 Toward a Post-Post-Structuralist Theory of Subjectivity

Johnson calls for a theory of subjectivity that integrates structure with lived agency and historical transformation.
“Human beings and social movements also strive to produce some coherence and continuity… and through this, exercise some control over feelings, conditions and destinies” (p. 69).


📈 Future Directions: Integrated, Conjunctural Cultural Studies

He concludes by advocating for conjunctural analysis that traces cultural forms across different moments—production, representation, and lived practice—recognizing their “inner connections” (p. 74).
“We need to trace what Marx would have called ‘the inner connections’ and ‘real identities’ between them” (p. 74).


Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson
Theoretical Term ExplanationUsage in Article
🔄 Cultural CircuitA model mapping culture through interconnected moments: production, text, reading, lived culture.Johnson structures the essay around this framework, urging integrated, non-linear analysis (p. 73).
🧩 Subjective FormsCultural patterns (like narratives or rituals) shaping personal identity and lived experience.Seen as central to how people “live, love, suffer… and die by them” (p. 60).
🧠 SubjectivityThe condition of being a culturally and historically formed subject.Johnson critiques theories that overlook how people “inhabit” forms over time (p. 69).
🧱 StructuralismA theoretical lens emphasizing deep structures—especially linguistic ones—within culture.Johnson values its analytical tools but critiques it for “structuralist foreshortening” (p. 65).
🌀 Post-StructuralismA framework stressing fragmentation, instability, and process in meaning and identity.Johnson says it offers “radical constructivism” but lacks a complete theory of subjectivity (p. 69).
🗣️ InterpellationAlthusser’s idea that ideology calls individuals into subject roles through discourse.Johnson uses this to analyze how texts “position” readers (p. 66).
🧵 IntertextualityThe idea that all texts reference and echo others across media and genres.“Texts are encountered promiscuously… overlapping, coexistent, inter-discursive” (p. 67).
⚖️ HegemonyGramsci’s concept of dominant cultural power achieved by consent, not coercion.Central to Johnson’s CCCS tradition, especially in analysis of lived experience and class (p. 72).
✍️ Reading PositionThe position a text offers to a reader for decoding and engaging with meaning.Johnson discusses “positioning” in media and how it affects interpretation (p. 66).
🎭 RepresentationHow people, issues, or groups are portrayed in cultural forms and discourse.Johnson urges that representations be studied as “representations of representations” (p. 75).
Contribution of “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson to Literary Theory/Theories
  • 📚 Expansion of Textual Theory
    Johnson critiques traditional textual analysis for its formalist limitations, emphasizing that texts must be read in relation to their production, reception, and social context. He challenges the isolation of texts in literary studies, arguing:

“The ultimate object of cultural studies is not… the text, but the social life of subjective forms at each moment of their circulation” (p. 62).
This redefines the function of the text within culture and aligns cultural studies with a dynamic model of interpretation.

  • 👥 Contribution to Reader-Response Theory
    Johnson shifts the emphasis from the text to the reader, criticizing structuralist and psychoanalytic models that “ascribe this capacity [to read critically] to types of text” rather than to actual, socially situated readers (p. 68).
    He promotes studying how “subjective forms are inhabited” across class, gender, and historical contexts (p. 67), enriching theories of reading with contextualized agency.
  • 🛠️ Refinement of Marxist Literary Theory
    Drawing on Gramscian concepts of hegemony, Johnson situates cultural practices within larger structures of class and power. He moves beyond economic determinism, advocating for cultural struggle as a site of political agency:

“Popular cultural forms… may permit a questioning of existing relations or a running beyond them in terms of desire” (p. 73).
This situates literature within ideological and class-based formations, advancing a non-reductive materialist theory.

  • 🧬 Critique of Structuralism
    While acknowledging the insights of semiology, narratology, and Saussurean linguistics, Johnson argues that structuralism tends to abstract texts from lived experiences and production contexts:

“Formalism… is the abstraction of texts from the other moments” (p. 63).
This helps bridge literary theory with social and cultural analysis, fostering a more integrated approach.

  • 🌪️ Advancement of Post-Structuralist Insights
    Johnson affirms post-structuralism’s critique of the unified subject, but insists it lacks a theory of self-production and continuity. He argues for a “post-post-structuralist” theory of the subject that can account for identity transformation and political consciousness (p. 69).
    This challenges post-structuralist theory to evolve and address historical and collective subjectivities.
  • 📜 Revision of Canon and Literary Value
    He questions how “criteria of ‘literariness’ themselves come to be formulated and installed in academic, educational and other regulative practices” (p. 62).
    This contribution encourages literary theory to interrogate the construction of the literary canon through ideology and institutional power.

Examples of Critiques Through “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson
📖 Literary Work🧩 Critique Through Johnson’s Framework
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen🧠 Subjective Forms & Gender Conventions
Using Johnson’s insights on romance narratives, this novel can be read not just as a literary classic but as a carrier of gendered social forms. It reflects “the symbolic resolutions of romantic love” and the social structures that define conventional femininity and marriage rituals (p. 60). Austen’s text can be studied in comparison with popular romance genres and their ideological role in shaping feminine subjectivities.
🚀 The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells📺 Production Context & Ideological Discourses
Johnson’s emphasis on cultural production enables an analysis of this novel as part of imperialist-era anxieties, shaped by Victorian scientific discourse and colonial expansion. The alien invaders mirror Britain’s own colonial logic, showing how cultural texts embed and circulate dominant “ideological problematics” (p. 63). It’s not just about Martians—it’s about empire, technology, and fear.
💔 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë📽️ Reading Positions & Psychoanalytic Narratives
Cultural studies helps unpack how this novel constructs intense subject positions through gothic and romantic tropes. Johnson’s critique of formalist psychoanalysis aligns with viewing the text as mapping contradictory subjective forms, rather than offering a neat psychological theory. Heathcliff’s identity and Cathy’s longing reflect socially-produced inner narratives, not just personal pathology (p. 66–67).
📺 Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding📰 Intertextuality, Popular Culture & Gender
A contemporary cultural text that directly interacts with romantic conventions and media culture. Through Johnson’s lens, this is a prime example of how mass-mediated narratives construct feminine identity, echoing the links between “romantic fiction” and public rituals like “the Royal Wedding” (p. 60). The novel’s diary format reveals the inter-discursive nature of subjectivity in modern life.

Criticism Against “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson

🔍 Over-Theorization Without Practical Application
Johnson’s essay, while rich in theoretical insight, is sometimes criticized for being too abstract. The complex layering of ideas on subjectivity, textuality, and production risks alienating readers or practitioners looking for concrete methodologies or real-world applications.

🌀 Ambiguity Around Subjectivity
Although Johnson advocates for a post-structuralist understanding of the subject, some critics argue that he does not offer a clear or usable theory of subjectivity. His critique of existing theories (e.g., psychoanalysis, semiotics) is sharp, but his own suggestions remain conceptually vague (p. 67–69).

⚖️ Balancing Acts That Result in Dilution
Johnson attempts to synthesize production, text, and lived culture into a single cultural circuit. However, this inclusivity may result in a lack of analytical sharpness—trying to address all areas at once can lead to intellectual diffusion rather than focus (p. 73–74).

📚 Dismissiveness Toward Literary Criticism
Literary scholars have critiqued Johnson for his apparent dismissal of “literary value” and canonical study. While he critiques “literariness” as a regulatory construct (p. 63), some argue this position undervalues aesthetic complexity in favor of ideology critique.

🎭 Neglect of Aesthetic Experience and Emotional Response
By focusing so heavily on ideological and discursive formations, Johnson’s framework is seen by some as neglecting the emotional, affective, or aesthetic engagement readers have with texts—an aspect central to understanding cultural resonance.

🌐 Eurocentric/Anglocentric Bias
Johnson’s examples (e.g., the Royal Wedding, CND campaign, British film theory) reflect a Western-centric focus, raising questions about the global applicability of his model. Cultural studies from postcolonial or non-Western contexts often feel marginalized in his framework.

🧪 Insufficient Methodological Guidance
Though Johnson critiques formalism and empiricism, he offers no concrete methodology for conducting cultural studies research. Scholars have noted the absence of replicable research strategies, making it difficult for new researchers to follow.

Representative Quotations from “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson with Explanation
🔹 Quotation💬 Explanation
🌍 “Cultural studies is now a movement or a network… It exercises a large influence on academic disciplines…” (p. 38)Johnson opens by defining cultural studies not as a rigid discipline, but a flexible, influential field spanning multiple domains.
🧪 “Critique involves stealing away the more useful elements and rejecting the rest.” (p. 39)He defines “critique” as a selective, alchemical process crucial to the development of cultural studies.
📚 “Cultural processes are intimately connected with social relations, especially with class relations and class formations…” (p. 40)Johnson emphasizes the Marxist foundations of cultural studies, linking culture with power and class.
🧠 “Consciousness… the subjective side of social relations.” (p. 44)He introduces consciousness as a key abstraction for understanding how individuals experience and produce culture.
📖 “Subjectivity in cultural studies includes the possibility that some elements are subjectively active without being consciously known.” (p. 44)Johnson differentiates consciousness and subjectivity, emphasizing hidden or unconscious cultural dynamics.
🌀 “Culture is neither an autonomous nor an externally determined field, but a site of social differences and struggles.” (p. 40)Culture is described as a contested space, where meaning and power are constantly negotiated.
🧱 “All social practices can be looked at from a cultural point of view, for the work they do, subjectively.” (p. 45)Cultural studies, for Johnson, expands to everyday activities, not just media or art.
🔧 “We need histories of the forms of subjectivity where we can see how these tendencies are modified…” (p. 45)He calls for historicized accounts of subjectivity that go beyond abstraction.
🔄 “What if existing theories… actually express different sides of the same complex process?” (p. 46)Johnson suggests a pluralistic framework, acknowledging the partial truths of different approaches.
🧩 “It is not there­fore an adequate strategy for the future just to add together the three sets of approaches…” (p. 73)He warns against simplistic integration of methods and calls for a transformative synthesis instead.
Suggested Readings: “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” by Richard Johnson
  1. Johnson, Richard. “What is cultural studies anyway?.” Social text 16 (1986): 38-80.
  2. Johnson, Richard. “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” Social Text, no. 16, 1986, pp. 38–80. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/466285. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.
  3. Wellman, Mariah L. “1983—Stuart Hall Visits Australia and North America.” Lateral, vol. 8, no. 1, 2019. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48671448. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.
  4. Cornis-Pope, Marcel. “Cultural Studies and Multiculturalism.” Modern North American Criticism and Theory: A Critical Guide, edited by Julian Wolfreys, Edinburgh University Press, 2006, pp. 126–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctv2f4vjsb.21. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.

“The Politics Of Naming” by Catherine Walsh: Summary and Critique

“The Politics of Naming” by Catherine Walsh first appeared in Cultural Studies in 2012, within Volume 26, Issue 1, and was part of a broader intellectual dialogue on the decolonial and inter-epistemic reconfiguration of knowledge systems in Latin America.

"The Politics Of Naming" by Catherine Walsh: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “The Politics Of Naming” by Catherine Walsh

“The Politics of Naming” by Catherine Walsh first appeared in Cultural Studies in 2012, within Volume 26, Issue 1, and was part of a broader intellectual dialogue on the decolonial and inter-epistemic reconfiguration of knowledge systems in Latin America. Emerging from earlier work presented at a 2009 symposium and first published in Spanish in Tabula Rasa (2010), this article stands as a foundational text in the field of Latin American (inter)Cultural Studies. Walsh interrogates the naming of “Cultural Studies” itself, arguing that such terminology is entangled in colonial and Eurocentric legacies that obscure the complex histories, epistemologies, and struggles native to Abya Yala—a term preferred by Indigenous peoples over “Latin America.” Her critical intervention reconceptualizes Cultural Studies as a transdisciplinary and political project deeply embedded in decolonial praxis, drawing from four legacies: the disciplinary legacies of European academia, the Birmingham School (particularly Stuart Hall’s articulation of culture, race, and power), Latin American cultural thought, and the lived epistemologies of Indigenous and Afro-descendant social movements. The article’s importance in literature and literary theory lies in its call to reframe knowledge production beyond Eurocentric paradigms, advocating for inter-cultural, inter-epistemic, and decolonial methodologies that not only analyze culture but actively transform social realities. It significantly broadens the scope of literary theory by foregrounding the politics of knowledge, identity, and naming as foundational to both textual interpretation and institutional critique.

Summary of “The Politics Of Naming” by Catherine Walsh

🔸 Naming as a Colonial Practice of Power and Erasure
Walsh begins by emphasizing that the very act of naming in Latin America is a legacy of colonial power. She asserts that naming has historically functioned to impose external epistemologies and erase local identities:

“The politics of naming have always had great significance in Latin America… subordinated differences to map out an image according to their own heuristic code of naming” (Walsh, 2012, p. 109).
The term “Latin America,” she notes, is itself a colonial imposition, with Indigenous communities preferring Abya Yala, meaning “lands in full maturity.”


🔸 Decolonizing Cultural Studies: From Object to Intervention
Walsh critiques how Cultural Studies, when uncritically transplanted into Latin American contexts, often replicate Western academic structures. Instead, she advocates for a model that emerges from lived struggles and knowledge systems:

“The project of Cultural Studies… seeks to cross, transcend and go beyond the limits that traditionally have seen culture as an object of study” (Walsh, 2012, p. 116).
She calls for (inter)Cultural Studies that actively intervene in society, not just analyze it.


🔸 Four Legacies Shaping (Inter)Cultural Studies in Latin America
Walsh outlines four key legacies that shape her approach:

  1. Scientific Disciplinarity – a Eurocentric system that privileges so-called objective knowledge and marginalizes alternative rationalities.

“The humanities were set up not as areas of knowledge per se… but instead as something more ephemeral” (Walsh, 2012, p. 110).

  1. Birmingham School & Stuart Hall – inspiring a political vocation of theory grounded in lived struggles.

“I come back to the critical distinction between intellectual work and academic work… They are not the same thing” (Hall, 1992, cited in Walsh, 2012, p. 112).

  1. Latin American Cultural Thought – including thinkers like Martí, Mariátegui, and Barbero, but critiqued for often being confined to elite mestizo academia.
  2. Social and Epistemic Movements – rooted in Indigenous and Afro-descendant activism, these movements generate theory and challenge coloniality.

“Movements provoke theoretical moments and historical conjunctures insist on theories” (Hall, 1992, cited in Walsh, 2012, p. 112).


🔸 The Inter-cultural, Inter-epistemic, and De-colonial Dimensions
Central to Walsh’s project are three interrelated pillars:

  • Inter-culturality is not just diversity but a transformative political project:

“It does not simply add diversity… but rather to rethink, rebuild and inter-culturalize the nation” (Walsh, 2012, p. 117).

  • Inter-epistemicity involves valuing knowledge produced outside Western academic frameworks:

“To think with knowledges produced in Latin America… by intellectuals who come not only from academia, but also from other communities” (Walsh, 2012, p. 118).

  • De-coloniality challenges the colonial matrix of power, including epistemological dominance:

“At the centre… is capitalism as the only possible model of civilization” (Walsh, 2012, p. 119).


🔸 Academic Tensions and Resistance to the Project
Walsh details the resistance her program at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar has encountered from traditional academic institutions:

“Our concern here is not so much with the institutionalizing of Cultural Studies… but with epistemic inter-culturalization” (Walsh, 2012, p. 121).
She links this to broader neoliberal reforms that have depoliticized and re-disciplined Latin American academia.


🔸 Reclaiming Intervention as Ethical and Political Practice
In closing, Walsh returns to Stuart Hall’s concept of “intervention” as a guiding principle for Cultural Studies:

“To consider Cultural Studies today a project of political vocation and intervention is to position—and at the same time build—our work on the borders… of university and society” (Walsh, 2012, p. 122).
The goal is to foster knowledge that is rooted in life, struggle, and transformation, not detached academicism.

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “The Politics Of Naming” by Catherine Walsh
🔤 Concept📖 Explanation📌 Reference / Quotation from Article
🏷️ Politics of NamingRefers to how naming is not neutral but tied to colonial power, used to impose meanings and erase Indigenous identities and knowledge systems.“The politics of naming have always had great significance in Latin America… subordinated differences to map out an image…” (p. 109)
🌎 Abya YalaIndigenous name for Latin America, meaning “lands in full maturity”; it resists colonial naming and asserts cultural sovereignty.“‘Latin’ America is, in fact, a clear example of this naming… Indigenous peoples prefer to refer to the region as Abya Yala” (p. 109)
📚 (Inter)Cultural StudiesA rethinking of Cultural Studies as a political, decolonial, and inter-epistemic project grounded in struggle and transformation rather than just academic analysis.“The project of Cultural Studies… seeks to cross, transcend and go beyond the limits that traditionally have seen culture as an object of study” (p. 116)
🔄 Inter-epistemicA framework that promotes dialogue between different systems of knowledge, especially non-Western epistemologies, challenging Eurocentric dominance.“To think with knowledges produced in Latin America… is a necessary and essential step both in de-colonization and in creating other conditions of knowledge” (p. 118)
🤝 Inter-culturalityNot just coexistence of cultures but an active political project of structural transformation, aimed at rebuilding institutions and nationhood from a pluralistic foundation.“Inter-culturality… positioned as an ideological principle grounded in the urgent need for a radical transformation of social structures” (p. 117)
🧠 Colonial Matrix of PowerCoined by Aníbal Quijano, this refers to the systemic structures of domination (race, knowledge, economy) imposed by colonialism and still embedded in modernity.“By colonial matrix, we refer to the hierarchical system of racial-civilizational classification…” (p. 118)
🔬 Scientific DisciplinarityThe rigid Western academic system that separates and hierarchizes knowledge, privileging “objective” science and marginalizing other forms of knowing.“The problem of scientific disciplinarity began in Europe… imposed and reconstructed in the twentieth century…” (p. 110)
⚙️ ArticulationStuart Hall’s idea of forming alliances and convergences across differences for political and epistemic action; critical in decolonial Cultural Studies.“Assuming articulation as a political-intellectual and also epistemological force…” (p. 113)
💬 Regime of RepresentationA concept from Hall that refers to how media and language construct “truths” that stereotype and sustain racial and cultural hierarchies.“Illustrating the way that the practices of representation construct… continued subjugation of African descendents” (p. 113)
🧭 Epistemic DisobedienceThough not explicitly named as such, Walsh aligns with this idea by Mignolo—refusing to obey Eurocentric knowledge norms and advocating for alternatives grounded in lived realities.Implicit in “questioning from and with radically distinct rationalities, knowledge, practices and civilizational-life-systems” (p. 119)
🔧 IndisciplinarityA methodological stance rejecting rigid academic boundaries, allowing the blending of activist and scholarly approaches rooted in social movements.“The subject of dispute is not simply the trans-disciplinary aspect… but also its ‘indisciplinary’ nature…” (p. 120)
Contribution of “The Politics Of Naming” by Catherine Walsh to Literary Theory/Theories

🔄 Postcolonial Theory
Walsh expands postcolonial theory by emphasizing the limits of postcolonial discourse when applied to Latin America. She critiques its tendency to remain textual and elite, shifting the focus toward lived struggles, knowledge systems, and political intervention rooted in Indigenous and Afro-descendant movements. Her call for “naming” as a site of colonial power resonates with postcolonial concerns, but her decolonial stance goes further by centering epistemic sovereignty.

“The politics of naming have always had great significance in Latin America… subordinated differences to map out an image according to their own heuristic code of naming” (Walsh, 2012, p. 109).
“Inter-culturality has marked a social, political, ethical project… to rethink, rebuild and inter-culturalize the nation” (p. 117).


🌐 Decolonial Theory (Modernity/Coloniality Group)
Firmly situated in the modernity/coloniality/decoloniality school, Walsh’s work is a practical manifestation of its core ideas. She emphasizes inter-epistemic dialogue, the deconstruction of the colonial matrix of power, and the repositioning of the university as a space for pluriversal thinking. Her model of (inter)Cultural Studies acts as a decolonial educational and theoretical project.

“Our concern here is not… institutionalizing Cultural Studies. Better yet… with epistemic inter-culturalization, with the de-colonialization and pluriversalization of the ‘university’” (p. 121).
“By colonial matrix, we refer to the hierarchical system of racial-civilizational classification…” (p. 118).


📚 Cultural Studies (Hall/Birmingham School)
Walsh reclaims and recontextualizes the political legacy of Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School by aligning it with Latin American struggles. She upholds Hall’s idea that “movements provoke theoretical moments” and expands it to include epistemic movements, led by historically marginalized communities. Her version of Cultural Studies is not disciplinary but political, embodied, and decolonial.

“Movements provoke theoretical moments and historical conjunctures insist on theories” (Hall 1992, cited in Walsh, 2012, p. 112).
“A practice which understands the need for intellectual modesty… not substituting intellectual work for politics” (p. 112).


📖 Critical Theory
By challenging the hegemonic Eurocentric academic canon, Walsh intervenes in critical theory by critiquing the Western monopoly on reason and knowledge production. She promotes a critical interculturality that integrates decolonial and ethical commitments into theory-making itself.

“To question the supposed universality of scientific knowledge… that does not capture the diversity… or the counter-hegemonic alternatives” (p. 111).
“We are concerned… with a thinking from the South(s)… to open, not close, paths” (p. 121).


🔬 Theory of Representation
Building on Hall’s theory, Walsh deepens its application to Latin America by showing how colonial regimes of representation have structured epistemic and social exclusions. Her focus is not only on discursive stereotyping but also on material and institutional naming practices that shape power and identity.

“Practices of representation construct and contribute to the stereotyping… within a supposedly naturalized structure and regime of truth” (p. 113).


📏 Institutional Critique / Knowledge Production
Walsh critiques the disciplinary boundaries and neoliberal restructuring of academia in Latin America. She pushes for a radical rethinking of what counts as knowledge, who produces it, and where—a critique of both content and academic form.

“Discipline… works to negate and detract from practices… that do not fit inside hegemonic rationality” (p. 111).
“The project seeks to cross, transcend and go beyond the limits that traditionally have seen culture as an object of study” (p. 116).

Examples of Critiques Through “The Politics Of Naming” by Catherine Walsh
📖 Literary Work🔍 Critique Through Walsh’s Lens🧩 Relevant Concepts from Walsh
🌴 Heart of Darkness by Joseph ConradWalsh would critique the portrayal of Africa as a space defined by European naming and erasure. The text exemplifies the colonial matrix of power, reducing African subjectivity and reinforcing imperial epistemologies.🏷️ Politics of Naming, 🔬 Representation, 🌐 Colonial Matrix of Power
👑 Things Fall Apart by Chinua AchebeAchebe’s narrative reclaims African identity and challenges colonial representations by centering Igbo knowledge and language. Walsh would view this as a strong inter-epistemic response to Western hegemonic narratives.🔄 Inter-epistemicity, 🧠 Epistemic Disobedience, 🤝 Cultural Repositioning
💃 The House of the Spirits by Isabel AllendeWalsh might explore how the novel critiques authoritarian regimes yet often centers mestizo elite narratives. She would question which voices are elevated and which are absent—emphasizing the need to account for subaltern knowledges.📚 Disciplinary Critique, 🧭 Geopolitics of Knowledge, 🔍 Voice and Erasure
👣 Ceremony by Leslie Marmon SilkoSilko’s novel exemplifies decolonial healing through Native epistemologies, ancestral knowledge, and land-based storytelling. Walsh would affirm its inter-cultural and spiritually grounded resistance to colonial worldviews.🌱 Ancestrality, 🤝 Inter-culturality, 🔧 Indigenous Epistemologies
Criticism Against “The Politics Of Naming” by Catherine Walsh

🔍 Over-politicization of Academic Discourse
Some may argue that Walsh’s insistence on political engagement in academic work risks collapsing the line between scholarship and activism.

Critics might ask: Can Cultural Studies maintain critical distance if it becomes a project of intervention rather than reflection?


📏 Anti-Disciplinarity as Methodological Risk
Her call for “indisciplinarity” challenges academic norms, but critics may argue that rejecting disciplinary boundaries can result in conceptual vagueness or lack of methodological rigor.

Without clear academic frameworks, how do we ensure accountability, coherence, and evaluative criteria in research?


🌍 Limited Scalability Beyond Andean/Latin American Contexts
Walsh grounds her theory deeply in Latin American epistemologies and struggles. While powerful regionally, some may question its applicability across global contexts, particularly in societies without a similar history of Indigenous-Afro-descendant political movements.

Is her model of (inter)Cultural Studies transferable beyond Abya Yala?


🧠 Complex Language and Dense Theoretical Style
The article uses highly theoretical, sometimes abstract language that might alienate non-specialist readers or those outside the decolonial academic community.

Could the accessibility of her transformative ideas be hindered by their presentation?


📚 Insufficient Engagement with Alternative Views within Latin America
While Walsh critiques Eurocentrism and disciplinary knowledge, she may be seen as underrepresenting dissenting Latin American scholars who support modernization or universalist frameworks from within the region.

Does her framework fully acknowledge intra-regional diversity and contestation?


⚖️ Tension Between Inclusion and Exclusion
Despite her commitment to pluralism and dialogue, some might find Walsh’s tone to marginalize scholars who remain within traditional academic paradigms, potentially reproducing the very exclusions she critiques.

Can decolonial thinking risk becoming a new orthodoxy, dismissing other valid intellectual paths?


Representative Quotations from “The Politics Of Naming” by Catherine Walsh with Explanation
📌 Quotation🧠 Explanation
“The politics of naming have always had great significance in Latin America.”Naming is not neutral; it reflects long-standing colonial structures that suppress Indigenous identity and reframe entire regions through foreign lenses.
“‘Latin’ America is, in fact, a clear example of this naming… indigenous peoples prefer to refer to the region as Abya Yala.”Illustrates epistemic resistance—Indigenous peoples reclaim meaning through language and identity, rejecting colonial terminology.
“Cultural Studies has opened up spaces that question, challenge and go beyond this model…”Celebrates Cultural Studies as a field that resists colonial academic structures and fosters critical inquiry beyond traditional disciplines.
“To think with knowledges produced in Latin America… is a necessary and essential step…”Calls for the recognition of marginalized knowledges and the inclusion of subaltern epistemologies in academic discourse.
“The de-colonial does not seek to establish a new paradigm… but a critically-conscious understanding of the past and present.”Emphasizes that decoloniality is not a rigid framework but a dynamic and ethical stance of reflection and resistance.
“It is to refute the concepts of rationality that govern the so-called ‘expert’ knowledge…”Critiques the hegemony of Western rationality and promotes epistemic disobedience against dominant academic paradigms.
“Cultural Studies… constructed as a space of encounter between disciplines and intellectual, political and ethical projects…”Reframes Cultural Studies as an active and inclusive space that merges theory with lived struggle and ethical commitment.
“It is in this context that we can engage… and ask about the politics and the political of Cultural Studies in Latin America today…”Encourages continuous questioning of academic knowledge—what is studied, who studies it, and for what political purpose.
“Our interest is not… to promote activism… but instead to build a different political-intellectual project…”Clarifies that the project is more than activism—it is about epistemological transformation and theoretical resistance.
“To consider Cultural Studies today a project of political vocation and intervention is to position… our work on the borders of… university and society.”Frames intellectual work as socially engaged, situated between institutional critique and public transformation.
Suggested Readings: “The Politics Of Naming” by Catherine Walsh
  1. MIGNOLO, WALTER D., and CATHERINE E. WALSH. “The Decolonial For: Resurgences, Shifts, and Movements.” On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, Duke University Press, 2018, pp. 15–32. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11g9616.5. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.
  2. Denham, Robert D., editor. “Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books.” The Reception of Northrop Frye, University of Toronto Press, 2021, pp. 23–470. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctv1x6778z.5. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.
  3. “Individual Authors.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 13, no. 3/4, 1986, pp. 437–560. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831353. Accessed 11 Apr. 2025.
  4. Walsh, Catherine. “THE POLITICS OF NAMING: (Inter) Cultural Studies in de-colonial code.” Cultural Studies 26.1 (2012): 108-125.

“The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English” by Dieter Riemenschneider: Summary and Critique

“The Global and the Local: Cross Cultural Studies of the New Literatures in English” by Dieter Riemenschneider first appeared in World Literature Written in English in 2004, Volume 40, Issue 2 (pp. 106–109), and was later published online by Routledge on July 18, 2008.

"The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English" by Dieter Riemenschneider: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English” by Dieter Riemenschneider

“The Global and the Local: Cross Cultural Studies of the New Literatures in English” by Dieter Riemenschneider first appeared in World Literature Written in English in 2004, Volume 40, Issue 2 (pp. 106–109), and was later published online by Routledge on July 18, 2008. In this concise but provocative article, Riemenschneider reflects on the tensions and possibilities emerging from teaching New Literatures in English amidst the realities of globalization. Drawing from the 4th Social Forum in Bombay (2004), he explores how cross-cultural literary studies can respond to the socio-economic disruptions brought about by global capitalism, particularly in postcolonial contexts like India. He challenges the prevailing pedagogical focus on “writing back” to colonialism, advocating instead for the inclusion of texts that imagine and construct “different worlds.” Through close engagements with White Mughals by William Dalrymple and A Singular Hostage by Thalassa Ali, the article foregrounds themes of intercultural hybridity, historical co-existence, and the erased memory of transcultural interaction. Riemenschneider ultimately raises critical questions about literary canonicity, diaspora versus homeland narratives, and the responsibility of educators in shaping syllabi that resist both cultural homogenization and nationalist essentialism. His work is significant for its call to reevaluate literary and pedagogical priorities in an era where globalization both dissolves and redraws cultural boundaries.

Summary of “The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English” by Dieter Riemenschneider

🌍 Reimagining the Canon Beyond “Writing Back”

Riemenschneider challenges the dominant pedagogical focus on postcolonial “writing back” narratives and urges a shift toward texts that imagine alternative futures and explore constructive possibilities.

“Should not our common procedure of prioritizing texts that are ‘writing back’ be modified by more frequently including examples that probe into or even construct possible ‘different worlds’?” (Riemenschneider, 2004, p. 106)


💸 Globalization as Cultural and Economic Erosion

The article highlights how globalization leads to both material dislocation and the erasure of local specificities, especially in postcolonial societies.

“Destroys local sites of production and jobs… impoverishing an ever increasing number of an unemployed workforce… lost to the circulation of goods” (p. 106)


📚 Teaching Gap in Literary Academia

Despite an active scholarly community, there is a disconnect between literary research and teaching practices, particularly in the realm of New Literatures in English.

“Academics pursue research… but rarely give much time to the challenge of teaching what they are studying” (p. 106)


📖 Canon vs. Context: The Globalization Dilemma

Riemenschneider questions whether popular Indian writers like Narayan, Rao, and Seth, whose works don’t address globalization directly, are still fitting in a course addressing global issues.

“Can we responsibly promote the study of such texts… whose basic concerns are certainly not the economic and social havoc brought about by globalization?” (p. 107)


🤝 Hybridity and Harmony in Historical Encounters

In discussing Dalrymple’s White Mughals, Riemenschneider points to historical periods where East and West coexisted, offering models of intercultural hybridity and mutual transformation.

“A time… of surprisingly widespread cultural assimilation and hybridity” (p. 107)
“That East and West are not irreconcilable… They have met and mingled in the past” (p. 108)


🏰 From Cultural Exchange to Imperial Domination

Imperial strategies under British governance, such as those of Lord Wellesley, shifted relationships from fusion to conquest, marking a decisive break with earlier hybrid models.

India became “a place to conquer and transform” instead of “a place to embrace and to be transformed by” (p. 108)


🚪 Barriers to Cultural Crossing in Fiction

Through Thalassa Ali’s A Singular Hostage, the article examines how fictional colonial encounters often reinforce cultural boundaries rather than bridge them.

“Mutual prejudices… never at any time would permit either party to cross the boundary line between their respective worlds” (p. 108)


🌐 Diaspora as a Space for Alternative Imaginations

Riemenschneider sees diasporic writing as a more productive terrain for imagining “different worlds,” offering possibilities of hybridity and coexistence not bound by nationalist constraints.

“Is it then correct to say that an imagined different world is possible, more or less, only in the diaspora?” (p. 109)


🧭 Inclusive Teaching in a Globalized World

He ends with a strong call to educators to rethink curricula that either overly conform to Western literary dominance or promote rigid cultural essentialism.

“We must resist both, the globalizing homogenization and levelling as well as a fundamentalist-inspired defence of differences” (p. 109)


Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English” by Dieter Riemenschneider
Term / ConceptExplanationReference from the Article
🌍 GlobalizationA transformative force impacting economies, cultures, and education systems worldwide, often causing homogenization.“Globalization… destroys local sites of production and jobs…” (p. 106)
🏠 The LocalThe unique cultural and economic foundations of specific communities, often endangered by global integration.“Erasing not just local cultural specificities but threatening… underpinnings” (p. 106)
🔁 Intercultural HybridityThe fusion and blending of cultures through sustained contact, often explored in colonial and postcolonial contexts.“‘Chutnification’… cultural assimilation and hybridity” (p. 107)
📜 Canonical StatusThe inclusion of literary texts within an accepted body of ‘great works’; challenged by new postcolonial voices.“Texts… by now attained canonical status – such as… R.K. Narayan or Raja Rao” (p. 107)
Writing BackA key postcolonial tactic where authors challenge and respond to imperial narratives from the margins.“Our common procedure of prioritizing texts that are ‘writing back’…” (p. 106)
🌉 Cultural AssimilationA two-way (or sometimes one-sided) process of adopting another culture’s traits, often under imbalance of power.“Affected Muslim rulers… in a two-way process of cultural assimilation…” (p. 108)
✈️ Diaspora WritingLiterature by authors living outside their homeland, focusing on identity, dislocation, and hybridity.“Diaspora writing… challenges and possibilities of cultural assimilation…” (p. 109)
🌌 Alternative Worlds / AlterityThe creative and theoretical exploration of “different worlds” that challenge existing social, political realities.“Texts that… construct possible ‘different worlds'” (p. 106)
🎓 Pedagogical ResponsibilityThe critical duty of teachers to choose and frame texts that engage with global inequality and cultural change.“What decisions do we take in aiding our students?… responsibly promote…” (p. 107)

Contribution of “The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English” by Dieter Riemenschneider to Literary Theory/Theories

📚 Postcolonial Theory

Riemenschneider contributes to postcolonial literary theory by questioning the over-reliance on “writing back” narratives and proposing that literature can also imagine alternate futures rather than only respond to the colonial past.

“Should not our common procedure of prioritizing texts that are ‘writing back’ be modified by more frequently including examples that probe into or even construct possible ‘different worlds’?” (p. 106)


🌍 Globalization Theory in Literature

The article bridges globalization studies with literary pedagogy by emphasizing how economic and cultural globalization impacts the production and teaching of English literature in formerly colonized societies.

“Globalization… is in the process of erasing not just local cultural specificities but threatening to annihilate their very economic and social underpinnings” (p. 106)


🧩 Hybridity and Cultural Theory

Through references to Dalrymple’s White Mughals, the article engages with the concept of intercultural hybridity, a key idea in the works of Homi Bhabha, by exploring instances of cultural mingling in colonial India.

“A time… of surprisingly widespread cultural assimilation and hybridity” (p. 107)


🛤️ Diaspora and Transnational Theory

The text highlights diaspora literature as a space where authors explore identity through cultural dislocation and hybridity, aligning with theories of transnationalism and global citizenship.

“Diaspora writing… focus[es] on the challenges and possibilities of cultural assimilation…” (p. 109)


🏛️ Canon Critique and World Literature

Riemenschneider critically assesses the canonization of certain Indian English writers, questioning whether literary syllabi should prioritize established names or more politically engaged, local voices.

“Many of which have by now attained canonical status… whose basic concerns are certainly not the economic and social havoc brought about by globalization” (p. 107)


🧑🏫 Pedagogical Theory / Literary Education

He foregrounds pedagogical responsibility in literary theory, pushing scholars to align their teaching with current socio-political realities rather than remain locked in outdated canons.

“What decisions do we take in aiding our students?… Can we responsibly promote the study…” (p. 107)


🌐 Cosmopolitanism and Ethical Criticism

The article resonates with ethical and cosmopolitan literary criticism by promoting the idea that literature should foster global understanding and resist both homogenization and essentialist nationalism.

“We must resist both, the globalizing homogenization… and a fundamentalist-inspired defence of differences” (p. 109)


🔍 Historiographic Metafiction / Narrative Theory

By incorporating historically-grounded texts like White Mughals and A Singular Hostage, Riemenschneider explores how fiction and non-fiction can re-narrate colonial encounters, a core idea in historiographic metafiction.

“Dalrymple’s brilliant historical study… not the familiar story of European conquest… but the Indian conquest of the European imagination” (p. 107)

Examples of Critiques Through “The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English” by Dieter Riemenschneider
🌟 Title📖 Literary Work🧠 Critique Through Riemenschneider’s Framework
📜 R.K. Narayan & Raja RaoCanonical Indian authors are questioned for not engaging directly with the economic and cultural crises of globalization, despite their literary prestige.“Texts… whose basic concerns are certainly not the economic and social havoc brought about by globalization” (p. 107)
📚 William Dalrymple – White MughalsPraised for revealing intercultural hybridity in colonial India, showing the mutual transformation of East and West—an erasure of which the British later attempted.“Surprisingly widespread cultural assimilation and hybridity… ‘chutnification'” (p. 107)
🕊️ Thalassa Ali – A Singular HostageCriticized for portraying unchangeable cultural boundaries, where characters fail to bridge divides despite the potential for transcultural exchange.“Mutual prejudices… never at any time would permit either party to cross the boundary line” (p. 108)
✈️ Diaspora Authors (e.g. Jhumpa Lahiri, Meena Alexander)Diasporic writing is commended for exploring hybridity, identity, and the possibility of alternative worlds, aligning with the notion that “a different world is possible.”“Diaspora writing… focus[es] on the challenges and possibilities of cultural assimilation…” (p. 109)

Criticism Against “The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English” by Dieter Riemenschneider

🧭 Eurocentric Framing of Cross-Cultural Discourse

While the article advocates for global inclusivity, it paradoxically relies heavily on Western-authored texts (e.g., White Mughals, A Singular Hostage) to explore non-Western contexts, which may recenter Western perspectives in postcolonial studies.

The core examples are from William Dalrymple (British) and Thalassa Ali (American), potentially sidelining authentic indigenous voices.


📦 Limited Representation of Non-Indian Literatures

The article focuses almost exclusively on Indian or India-related texts, despite referencing “New Literatures in English” broadly. This regional limitation may weaken its claim to addressing the “global” comprehensively.

No significant mention of African, Caribbean, Aboriginal, or Pacific authors, which narrows the theoretical application.


🔍 Lack of Textual Analysis or Close Reading

Riemenschneider offers thoughtful thematic overviews but avoids in-depth literary analysis or textual critique of the works he discusses. This might appear more like a pedagogical essay than a rigorous literary-theoretical article.

The references to literary texts serve illustrative rather than analytical purposes.


🛑 Overgeneralization of Diaspora Writing

While highlighting diaspora literature as a site of cultural possibility, the article risks romanticizing hybridity and oversimplifying the diverse challenges faced by diasporic writers and communities.

“Is it then correct to say that an imagined different world is possible, more or less, only in the diaspora?” (p. 109) – This question itself may reduce diaspora writing to a monolithic category.


🎓 Abstract Pedagogical Proposals Without Implementation

Although Riemenschneider raises important questions about literary syllabi, the article lacks specific strategies or case studies on how to apply his pedagogical ideas in actual classroom settings.

The text ends with open-ended questions, but does not propose models for curriculum revision.


🧩 Neglect of Student-Centric Perspectives

While he emphasizes the teacher’s responsibility in choosing texts, the article omits any reflection on student reception, engagement, or learning outcomes—key elements in contemporary pedagogical theory.


📊 Minimal Engagement with Contemporary Theory

The article implicitly invokes theorists like Homi Bhabha (on hybridity), but it does not explicitly engage with or cite major voices in postcolonial or globalization theory, which limits its intertextual depth.

Representative Quotations from “The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English” by Dieter Riemenschneider with Explanation
🪄 Quotation 💡 Explanation & Context
🌍 “Globalization… nourishes the local population’s desire for non-local products… but destroys local sites of production.”Critiques the destructive paradox of globalization: it encourages consumption while erasing local industries (p. 106).
“Should not our common procedure of prioritizing texts that are ‘writing back’ be modified…?”Calls for expanding postcolonial literary pedagogy beyond resistance narratives to include visionary alternatives (p. 106).
🧑‍🏫 “Academics pursue research… but rarely give much time to the challenge of teaching what they are studying.”Points out the disconnect between scholarly output and pedagogical practice in the field of literary studies (p. 106).
📚 “Texts… whose basic concerns are certainly not the economic and social havoc brought about by globalization.”Critiques canonized Indian English writers for not addressing urgent global and local socio-economic realities (p. 107).
🔁 “‘Chutnification’… widespread cultural assimilation and hybridity.”Highlights Dalrymple’s use of Rushdie’s term to describe intercultural hybridity in colonial India (p. 107).
🧬 “That East and West are not irreconcilable… They have met and mingled in the past; and they will do so again.”Challenges the myth of cultural incompatibility, asserting a historical basis for coexistence and mutual influence (p. 108).
🕊️ “Mutual prejudices… never at any time would permit either party to cross the boundary line.”Criticizes A Singular Hostage for depicting entrenched cultural divisions without possibility for reconciliation (p. 108).
✈️ “Diaspora writing… focus[es] on the challenges and possibilities of cultural assimilation…”Recognizes the diaspora as a literary space where hybridity and negotiation of identity are richly explored (p. 109).
🌐 “Is it then correct to say that an imagined different world is possible… only in the diaspora?”Provokes debate about the limitations and possibilities of local vs. diasporic narratives in envisioning change (p. 109).
Suggested Readings: “The Global And The Local: Cross Cultural Studies Of The New Literatures In English” by Dieter Riemenschneider
  1. Zhang, Yehong, and Gerhard Lauer. “Introduction: Cross-Cultural Reading.” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 54, no. 4, 2017, pp. 693–701. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.54.4.0693. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.
  2. Riemenschneider, Dieter. “The ‘New’ English Literatures in Historical and Political Perspective: Attempts toward a Comparative View of North/South Relationships in ‘Commonwealth Literature.'” New Literary History, vol. 18, no. 2, 1987, pp. 425–35. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/468738. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.
  3. Wilson, Rob. “Doing Cultural Studies inside APEC: Literature, Cultural Identity, and Global/Local Dynamics in the American Pacific.” Comparative Literature, vol. 53, no. 4, 2001, pp. 389–403. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3593526. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.
  4. Damrosch, David. “Literatures.” Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age, Princeton University Press, 2020, pp. 207–52. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqsdnmc.11. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.

“On Literature In Cultural Studies” by John Frow: Summary and Critique

“On Literature in Cultural Studies” by John Frow first appeared in The Question of Literature, published in 2002 by Manchester University Press.

"On Literature In Cultural Studies" by John Frow: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “On Literature In Cultural Studies” by John Frow

“On Literature in Cultural Studies” by John Frow first appeared in The Question of Literature, published in 2002 by Manchester University Press. In this pivotal essay, Frow interrogates the complex relationship between literature and cultural studies, tracing the historical divergence of the two disciplines and advocating for their reconciliation. The core argument centers on the notion that cultural studies, in its foundational rejection of traditional aesthetic disciplines, particularly literary studies, did not entirely discard literature itself but sought to challenge and reframe the normative value systems that underpinned it. Frow critically examines how the category of “the literary” emerges through reflexive, sociological, and aesthetic structures—exemplified through close readings of The Radetzky March, Don Quixote, Lost Illusions, and Frank O’Hara’s The Day Lady Died. These examples illustrate literature’s paradoxical status: both commodified and elevated, embedded in social regimes while resisting total institutional capture. Ultimately, Frow’s work is significant for literary theory because it shifts attention from intrinsic literary qualities to the regimes of value and interpretation that condition how literature is read and understood. This approach repositions literature as one cultural regime among many, not inherently privileged, yet uniquely equipped to interrogate the very frameworks that sustain cultural value. Frow’s nuanced reconceptualization challenges essentialist definitions of literature and reaffirms the importance of theoretically informed reading practices in both literary and cultural studies.

Summary of “On Literature In Cultural Studies” by John Frow

🔁 The Foundational Tension Between Cultural Studies and Literary Studies

📚 Cultural studies was born out of a deliberate rejection of traditional disciplines such as literary studies, film studies, and art history. Yet, as Frow clarifies, this rejection was not of the aesthetic object itself, but of the normative frameworks that governed its placement and value:

“It is important to be clear that this was a refusal not of the object itself… but of the normative discourses within which the object and its ‘placing’ were defined” (p. 44).

🎭 However, this strategic distance eventually became a limitation, as it occluded crucial discussions of value within cultural texts — including literature — which cultural studies set out to theorize.


📖 Three Modes of Literary Emergence

  1. 📘 Reflexive Fiction and Truth in Literature
    Frow identifies epistemological reflexivity in works like The Radetzky March and Don Quixote, where literature reflects on itself through layers of truth and fiction.

“The narrative of a resistance to Literature has itself become a work of literature” (p. 45).

  1. 📰 The Corruption and Commodification of Literature
    In Lost Illusions, literature appears within a sociological reflexivity, entangled in journalism, commodification, and industrial production.

“The literary… is torn between the two and whose defining character is its status, and its dissatisfaction with its status, as a thing to be bought and sold” (p. 47).

  1. 🎤 Lyric Memory and Epiphany in Poetry
    Frank O’Hara’s The Day Lady Died presents lyrical emergence, where literature arises in a temporal rupture, transcending the mundane through memory and voice.

“The ‘emergence’ of the literary… is the effect of this shift of planes from the mundane to the epiphanic moment of memory” (p. 48).


Dual Temporality and Historical Value of the Literary

⚖️ Literature exists simultaneously as a historical institution and as a momentary event in reading. This creates a tension between canon formation and fleeting readerly experience.

“The concept of literary emergence… specifies a dual temporality: on the one hand… an act of reading; on the other… a structure of historical value” (p. 49).

📘 Frow challenges universal definitions of literature, noting that all such claims are normative and reflect institutionalized regimes of value rather than inherent qualities.

“Any attempt now to define the literary as a universal… fails to account for the particular institutional conditions of existence” (p. 49).


🏛️ The Literary Regime: Texts, Readers, and Institutions

🔧 Frow proposes the idea of a “literary regime”—a set of social and interpretive structures that assign value to texts and determine how they are read.

“The concept of regime shifts attention from an isolated and autonomous ‘reader’ and ‘text’ to the institutional frameworks which govern what counts as the literary” (p. 50).

📺 This regime is not superior to other cultural forms like film or television. Instead, it is simply one among many regimes of cultural value, shaped by relations, not essences.

“No special privilege attaches to a literary regime except insofar as such a privilege can be enforced by political means” (p. 51).


🔄 Reading as a Recursive and Relational Practice

🔍 Frow suggests we move away from fixed textual meanings and instead view reading as a dynamic practice, involving multiple layers of interpretive framing: from content to form, to technique, to institutional regimes.

“Textuality and its conditions of possibility are mutually constitutive and can be reconstructed only from each other” (p. 52).

🧠 Interpretation becomes a historical mediation, where meaning arises between the moment of writing and the moment of reception — not rooted in either alone.

“Any text which continues to be read… will in some sense not be the ‘same’ text” (p. 53).


🔄 Rethinking the Discipline of Literary Studies

🎓 Frow critiques the current state of literary studies as fragmented — divided between ethical, deconstructive, political, and bellettristic approaches — and lacking a unified theoretical core:

“In one sense, the discipline of literary studies is flourishing… in another, it has become lost in irrelevance” (p. 54).

🛠️ He advocates for a renewed literary pedagogy based not on canon or theory, but on a generalizable, reflective practice of reading that bridges literary and non-literary forms.

“It must be at once continuous with and richer than untutored practice… and be extrapolated from ‘literary’ texts to other discursive kinds” (p. 54).


The Ambivalence of Literary Emergence

🌀 Frow closes by noting that every instance of literary emergence simultaneously enacts and undermines the concept of literature itself. Literature, in this view, is inherently unstable, defined by the contradictions that animate it:

“These texts… can be taken as a figure for the institution of a reading that would at once display and displace the literary regime” (p. 55).


In Summary:
John Frow’s essay is a critical reconfiguration of the boundaries and assumptions of literary studies. By analyzing how literature emerges across texts, regimes, and historical contexts, Frow opens the door to a relational, politically aware, and reflexive understanding of literature’s role within cultural studies.

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “On Literature In Cultural Studies” by John Frow
🌟 Concept / Term📚 Explanation🔍 Reference / Quote
🎭 Cultural Studies’ Foundational RefusalCultural studies began with a deliberate rejection of traditional literary aesthetics, not the objects (literature, film, etc.) themselves but the normative discourses that assigned them value.“This was a refusal not of the object itself… but of the normative discourses within which the object and its ‘placing’ were defined” (p. 44).
🔁 Emergence of the LiteraryFrow identifies three “emergences” of literature—as epistemological reflexivity, sociological reflexivity, and lyrical temporality—moments when literature becomes aware of its own function.“The ‘emergence’ of the literary… is not only a punctual event… but a repeated structure of thematized reflexive reference” (p. 45).
Dual TemporalityLiterature operates in two temporalities: as a transient reading event and as a historically stabilized institutional value. These often contradict each other.“It specifies a dual temporality… as an act of reading… [and] as a structure of historical value” (p. 49).
🏛️ Literary RegimeA central concept—the literary regime—is the set of institutional, semiotic, and social frameworks that determine what counts as “literature” and how it is read.“To speak of a literary regime is to posit that it is one regime amongst others… existing in a relationship of overlap and difference” (p. 51).
🌀 Regime of the TextBorrowing from Marghescou, this refers to the semantic code that gives a text its meaning in opposition to its linguistic function.“Only a regime… could give form to this virtuality, transform the linguistic form into information” (p. 50).
🔄 ReflexivityLiterature often reflects on its own processes, becoming self-aware in its function. This is seen in Frow’s examples from Don Quixote, Lost Illusions, and O’Hara’s poem.“The work becomes aware of itself as the illusion that the illusory world… also is” (Adorno in Frow, p. 46).
🧩 Relational ReadingReading is not about extracting fixed meanings, but about tracing relationships between text, context, and framing structures. Interpretation is historically and institutionally conditioned.“Reading will… move from a focus on a ‘text’… to the relation between a text and the set of framing conditions that constitute its readability” (p. 52).
The Question of ValueFrow criticizes cultural studies for sidestepping the question of value, even though literature inherently provokes evaluative judgments.“The very force of its initial refusal of the normative has become a problem… since it occludes those questions of value” (p. 44).
⚖️ Relative RelativismCultural regimes aren’t absolutely distinct but overlap, contradict, and evolve. This avoids both essentialism and pure relativism.“We must think in terms of a relative relativism… between formations which are internally differentiated and heterogeneous” (p. 51).
🧠 Reading as PracticeFrow proposes reading not as decoding a text’s meaning, but as a structured social practice shaped by norms, institutions, and interpretive habits.“What goes on in a good practice of reading… is the relation between a text and the set of framing conditions” (p. 52).

Contribution of “On Literature In Cultural Studies” by John Frow to Literary Theory/Theories

📚 1. Poststructuralism & Reflexivity

🔍 Contribution: Frow extends poststructuralist ideas by exploring literature’s self-reflexive nature—its capacity to question and remake itself.

“The narrative of a resistance to Literature has itself become a work of literature” (p. 45).
🌐 Theoretical Tie: Builds on Paul de Man and poststructuralist thought, where language is unstable and meaning is deferred.
“The literary constitutes… a language aware of its own rhetorical status and its inherent liability to error” (p. 49).


🏛️ 2. Institutional Theory (Sociology of Literature)

📦 Contribution: Introduces the idea of the “literary regime”—institutions and social forces that define, categorize, and give value to literature.

“Texts and readings count as literary or nonliterary by virtue of protocols which govern this distinction” (p. 50).
🏛️ Theoretical Tie: Deepens Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and Tony Bennett’s work on cultural institutions, showing how literary meaning is socially regulated.


🌀 3. Reader-Response Theory (Relational Reading)

👁️ Contribution: Frow reorients attention from the text itself to the relation between the reader, the text, and its framing conditions.

“Reading… moves from a focus on a ‘text’… to the relation between a text and the set of framing conditions” (p. 52).
📖 Theoretical Tie: Expands on Stanley Fish and Wolfgang Iser by emphasizing the historical and institutional embeddedness of interpretation.


⏳ 4. Historicism / New Historicism

📜 Contribution: Proposes that literature’s meaning is always subject to changing regimes of reception, contesting any fixed or timeless interpretation.

“Any text which continues to be read… will in some sense not be the ‘same’ text” (p. 53).
🧭 Theoretical Tie: Resonates with Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicism in viewing literature as deeply entwined with historical conditions of both production and reception.


🧩 5. Cultural Studies / Anti-Canonism

🚫 Contribution: Argues against fetishizing the literary canon, calling instead for a theoretically aware and socially situated analysis of literature.

“The exclusion of the literary… was a strategic delimitation… but there is no reason… why this exclusion should continue” (p. 53).
📚 Theoretical Tie: Extends Stuart Hall’s cultural studies framework, encouraging integration of literary studies into the broader matrix of cultural regimes.


🧠 6. Critique of Universalism

🧱 Contribution: Refutes attempts to offer a unified, essentialist definition of literature by demonstrating its institutional and historical variability.

“Any attempt now to define the literary as a universal or unitary phenomenon… falls into the fetishism of a culture of social distinction” (p. 49).
📘 Theoretical Tie: Counters structuralist views (like Frye’s archetypes) by arguing for the pluralism and contingency of literary value.


🔧 7. Pedagogical Theory / Literary Education

🎓 Contribution: Reframes literary education as training in critical reading practices, not the transmission of timeless cultural value.

“What might count as useful knowledge… is less the imparting of systematic information than the teaching of a practice” (p. 54).
🛠️ Theoretical Tie: Contributes to critical pedagogy (e.g., Freire, Giroux), emphasizing interpretation as an empowering, reflective act.


⚖️ 8. Value Theory in Literature

📈 Contribution: Reopens the question of value in literature—not as eternal or intrinsic, but as socially and semiotically produced.

“The very force of its initial refusal of the normative has become a problem… it occludes those questions of value” (p. 44).
💬 Theoretical Tie: Challenges both formalism and radical relativism, offering a balanced, relational approach to literary valuation.


🧬 Summary

John Frow’s “On Literature in Cultural Studies” doesn’t simply intervene in literary theory—it restructures its foundation by:

  • Breaking down the boundaries between disciplines
  • Introducing the flexible but rigorous concept of regimes
  • Centering historical, institutional, and relational dynamics in literary meaning

It is a call for theory after theory, where critical reflection and cultural embeddedness take priority over rigid categories and static canons.

Examples of Critiques Through “On Literature In Cultural Studies” by John Frow
📘 Literary Work🎭 Type of Critique (via Frow)🧠 Key Insight / Concept🔍 Reference / Quotation
🇦🇹 Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March🧩 Epistemological ReflexivityLiterature as layered fiction; history becomes narrative myth. Trotta’s anger reflects how literature replaces lived truth.“The stability of the world, the power of the law, and the splendour of royalty are maintained by guile” (p. 45).
🇪🇸 Cervantes’ Don Quixote🔄 Fiction vs. FictionLiterature reflects on its own falsehood, creating an infinite loop of fictionalization. Quixote battles fictions within fictions.“The narrative of a resistance to Literature has itself become a work of literature” (p. 45).
🇫🇷 Balzac’s Lost Illusions🏭 Sociological Reflexivity / CommodificationShows literature’s uneasy position within the capitalist publishing industry—caught between art and commerce.“A writing… torn between the two… as a thing to be bought and sold” (p. 47).
🇺🇸 Frank O’Hara’s The Day Lady DiedTemporal Disruption / Lyric EmergenceThe poem transitions from mundane modern life to an epiphanic memory of Billie Holiday, illustrating how literature opens new time-frames.“The ‘emergence’… is the effect of this shift… from the book as packaged writing to the breathed authenticity of the voice” (p. 48).

🔍 Summary:
📂 Frameworks Applied by Frow🧵 Seen In
📘 Reflexivity (Text aware of its own fictionality)Don Quixote, The Radetzky March
🏛️ Institutional critique (Literature as product)Lost Illusions
⏳ Temporal layering (Memory & lyricism)The Day Lady Died

These critiques demonstrate Frow’s method of tracing how literature not only represents social and historical conditions but also performs and critiques its own status through institutional, commercial, and aesthetic lenses.


Criticism Against “On Literature In Cultural Studies” by John Frow

⚖️ 1. Relativism vs. Rigorous Criteria

📌 Criticism: Frow’s call for “relative relativism” may lead to a theoretical impasse where no stable criteria remain to distinguish meaningful from arbitrary interpretation.

His dismissal of universal literary value might be read as undermining normative critical judgment.

🔎 Why it matters: Without shared evaluative frameworks, literary criticism risks becoming purely contextual and losing its capacity to critique broader systems.


🌀 2. Vagueness in the “Literary Regime”

📌 Criticism: The term “literary regime”—while conceptually rich—is ontologically overloaded, blending institutional, textual, semiotic, and social dimensions without clear boundaries.

This may confuse rather than clarify how regimes function practically in shaping reading.

🔎 Why it matters: Readers may struggle to distinguish what counts as a regime versus broader cultural influence or personal interpretation.


🎯 3. Undervaluing the Aesthetic Dimension

📌 Criticism: By focusing on cultural and institutional framing, Frow potentially downplays the aesthetic and affective power of literature itself.

His emphasis on external regimes may neglect the formal innovations, beauty, or style of literary texts.

🔎 Why it matters: Many argue that literature’s unique value lies in its affective and stylistic power, not just its social embeddedness.


🧱 4. Risk of Disciplinary Dilution

📌 Criticism: Frow’s encouragement of interdisciplinary openness might inadvertently dissolve the specificity of literary studies into broader cultural studies.

“Literature” becomes just another “regime,” losing its traditional disciplinary coherence.

🔎 Why it matters: Some literary theorists fear this undermines the distinctive tools and methods of close reading, genre study, and formal analysis.


🗃️ 5. Abstract Overload and Accessibility

📌 Criticism: Frow’s language is dense and steeped in theoretical jargon, making the essay less accessible to non-specialists or students new to literary theory.

Terms like “hermeneutic bootstrapping” or “axiological regimes” can alienate readers unfamiliar with poststructuralist discourse.

🔎 Why it matters: For a piece partly about pedagogy and reading practices, the lack of clarity may hinder its impact in the classroom.


🧭 6. Limited Engagement with Non-Western Literatures

📌 Criticism: Frow’s analysis is heavily Euro-American, drawing examples only from Western canonical texts (Roth, Cervantes, Balzac, O’Hara).

This limits the scope of his claim that “literary value is institutionally constructed” across global cultural contexts.

🔎 Why it matters: A more inclusive global literary critique would enhance his argument about the variability of regimes across cultures.


🔍 7. Minimal Discussion of Reader Agency

📌 Criticism: While Frow critiques autonomous conceptions of the “reader,” he doesn’t give enough space to the lived experience and agency of actual readers.

His concept of the reader as a “function” within a regime may overlook how individuals interpret texts creatively or resist dominant regimes.

🔎 Why it matters: Ignoring reader subjectivity risks reducing reading to mere effects of institutional power.


🧠 Summary:

Frow’s essay is a seminal intervention in redefining the relationship between literary studies and cultural theory—but it also opens itself to critiques related to:

  • theoretical overreach 🌀
  • undervaluing form and aesthetics 🎨
  • abstract language barriers 🧱
  • Western-centrism 🌍
Representative Quotations from “On Literature In Cultural Studies” by John Frow with Explanation
🧠 Explanation
“The stability of the world, the power of the law, and the splendour of royalty are maintained by guile.” (p. 45)📚 Literature is shown to uphold social and political systems through fiction and myth, not objective truth—as in The Radetzky March.
“The narrative of a resistance to Literature has itself become a work of literature.” (p. 45)🔁 Resistance to literature still operates within literature; reflexivity makes literature self-perpetuating and self-critical.
“The literary… is torn between… the transcendent stuff of poetry… and the mere corruption of journalism.” (p. 47)⚖️ Highlights the tension between idealistic and commercial forces in literature, especially in Lost Illusions.
“The ‘emergence’ of the literary… is the effect of this shift… from the book as packaged writing to the breathed authenticity of the voice.” (p. 48)💨 Emphasizes the affective, almost sacred moment when literature transcends its form—seen in O’Hara’s poem.
“It specifies a dual temporality:… as an act of reading;… as a structure of historical value.” (p. 49)⏳ Literature lives both in momentary readings and in historical frameworks; Frow bridges text and institution.
“Any attempt now to define the literary… fails to account for the particular institutional conditions of existence.” (p. 49)🏛️ Universal definitions of literature ignore the complex systems that create and sustain literary value.
“Texts and readings count as literary… by virtue of protocols… governing this distinction.” (p. 50)🔐 What’s considered “literature” is decided not by the text itself but by social and cultural rules—regimes.
“The literary regime has no reality beyond the shape it gives to acts of reading.” (p. 51)🌐 Literature doesn’t exist independently—only through how it is used, read, and interpreted socially.
“Reading… moves from a focus on a ‘text’… to the relation between a text and the set of framing conditions.” (p. 52)🔍 Urges a shift from close reading to relational reading, connecting text with its interpretive context.
“There is no reason of principle why this exclusion [of literature] should continue to be sustained.” (p. 53)🤝 A call for reconciling literary studies and cultural studies—literature should be part of cultural analysis.

Suggested Readings: “On Literature In Cultural Studies” by John Frow
  1. Frow, John. “On Literature in Cultural Studies.” The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies (2005): 44-57.
  2. Birns, Nicholas. “Australian Literature in a Time of Winners and Losers.” Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead, Sydney University Press, 2015, pp. 3–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt19qgddn.5. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.
  3. Denham, Robert D., editor. “Essays, Articles, and Parts of Books.” The Reception of Northrop Frye, University of Toronto Press, 2021, pp. 23–470. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctv1x6778z.5. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.
  4. Meyer-Lee, Robert J. “Toward a Theory and Practice of Literary Valuing.” New Literary History, vol. 46, no. 2, 2015, pp. 335–55. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24542764 Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.

“Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher: Summary and Critique

“Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher, published in Social Text, No. 30 (1992), offers a deeply critical engagement with Raymond Williams’s theoretical legacy and its central role in shaping the field of cultural studies.

"Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies" by Catherine Gallagher: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher

“Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher, published in Social Text, No. 30 (1992), offers a deeply critical engagement with Raymond Williams’s theoretical legacy and its central role in shaping the field of cultural studies. Gallagher highlights the transformation from asymmetrical disciplinary boundaries—where literature was often passively interpreted through sociological lenses—toward a more reciprocal, interdisciplinary paradigm, largely influenced by Williams’s insistence on cultural specificity and complexity. Williams challenged the reductive binary between “Culture” (as elite, artistic production) and “culture” (as everyday life), advocating instead for an integrated conception where cultural artifacts and social processes are deeply intertwined. Gallagher explores how Williams’s strategic ambiguity in using the term “culture” allowed for a richer, less deterministic analysis of social phenomena, while also recognizing the conceptual difficulties and mystique this ambiguity invited. Particularly insightful is her critique of Williams’s attempt to distinguish cultural signification from other social functions—such as economic exchange—through examples like food and money. Gallagher argues that Williams’s materialist commitments occasionally obscure the semiotic operations of such phenomena, revealing tensions in his framework. Ultimately, this article is significant in literary theory for exposing both the generative and limiting aspects of Williams’s cultural materialism, encouraging critics to grapple with the historical and semiotic complexity of culture itself.

Summary of “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher

📘 Reciprocity in Interdisciplinary Study
Gallagher highlights the shift in the relationship between literary and social studies, noting that prior to the 1980s, the approach was largely one-sided: literature was examined through sociological lenses, but not vice versa.

“No matter how intertwined literature and society were imagined to be, however, the relationship… was essentially non-reciprocal” (p. 79).

🔁 Emergence of Cultural Studies
This evolving reciprocity between disciplines formed the basis of what Gallagher defines as Cultural Studies—a field marked by methodological fluidity and resistance to fixed definitions.

“‘Cultural Studies’ specifies neither a well-defined object nor a method of analysis” (p. 80).

🔍 Critique of the Term “Culture”
Gallagher critiques the inflation and ambiguity of the word “culture” in contemporary discourse, likening it to its Arnoldian predecessor.

“We may have rejected the restriction of ‘Culture’… nevertheless, our use of ‘culture’ and Arnold’s have more in common than is generally recognized” (p. 81).

🎭 Williams’s Productive Ambiguity
Williams deliberately maintained ambiguity in defining “culture” to avoid reductive binaries such as art/society or base/superstructure.

He resisted “reification” by playing “the meanings off against each other” to prevent one-way determinism (p. 82).

🌀 Particularity over Abstraction
Williams emphasized cultural specificity over analytical abstraction, encouraging critics to regard culture as a “complex of lived relationships” rather than a static societal whole.

“Culture” connotes a “vital whole” that is “more deeply constitutive of subjectivity” than “society” (p. 83).

🔄 Culture as Signifying System
In his later work Culture/The Sociology of Culture, Williams defined culture as “the signifying system through which necessarily (though among other means) a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored” (p. 83).

💰 The Money Paradox
Gallagher critiques Williams’s attempt to exclude money from cultural analysis, exposing a contradiction:

Money is not cultural “because the needs and actions of trade and payment are dominant” (p. 84).
Yet, when money’s materiality becomes excessive or symbolic (as in rare coins), Williams acknowledges it as cultural—a paradox she finds illuminating.

⚖️ Materiality vs. Signification
Gallagher explores the tension between material presence and signifying function, noting that for Williams, “phenomena disappear from ‘culture’ for two opposite reasons: they are either too material… or not material enough” (p. 85).

🧩 Limits of Signification in Cultural Studies
Gallagher warns that cultural studies often mystifies its objects by treating their excess of meaning as inherently profound, echoing Arnoldian ideals.

“We may be succumbing to a new mystique of culture” (p. 81).

💡 Final Reflection on Cultural Theory’s Tensions
Gallagher argues that instead of reconciling immanence and signification, cultural theory should embrace their historical tensions and resistances.

“We cannot understand the historical function of the object until we understand its peculiar ways of emptying itself of immediate comprehensibility” (p. 88).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher
Theoretical Term / ConceptExplanation and Reference
Cultural StudiesDescribes a flexible interdisciplinary field that transcends rigid binaries of literature and society. It emerged through a new reciprocity of methods and objects of study. Gallagher notes it “specifies neither a well-defined object nor a method of analysis” (p. 80).
Signifying SystemDefined by Williams as “the signifying system through which necessarily (though among other means) a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored” (p. 83). It bridges anthropological and artistic views of culture.
ParticularityWilliams emphasized cultural artifacts as uniquely specific and resistant to abstraction. Gallagher writes that he aimed to replace “artistic autonomy with that of specificity” (p. 83).
Mystique of CultureA term Gallagher uses critically to describe how cultural studies sometimes mystifies culture by attributing excessive, ineffable meaning—echoing the Arnoldian notion of “Culture” (p. 81).
ReificationWilliams sought to avoid reification—the reduction of complex concepts into static definitions—by using the ambiguity of the term “culture” productively (p. 82).
Immanence and SignificationGallagher examines the tension between the materiality (immanence) of cultural objects and their symbolic function (signification). This is explored through food and money: both signify, but often invisibly or contradictorily (pp. 84–86).
Cultural MaterialismWilliams’s framework that integrates cultural expression with material conditions of existence. However, Gallagher notes its limit when he excludes money as “not manifestly cultural” due to its abstract, dissolved signifying role (pp. 87–88).
Contribution of “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher to Literary Theory/Theories

📚 Contribution to Cultural Materialism
Gallagher deepens our understanding of cultural materialism by illustrating how Williams substituted “culture” for “society” to emphasize a “complex of lived relationships” rather than abstract structures.

“Culture was vital and enduring, yet evolving… more deeply constitutive of subjectivity than the word ‘society’ could suggest” (p. 83).
🔗 Relates to: Raymond Williams’s Cultural Materialism / New Historicism

🔄 Interdisciplinary Reciprocity
She underscores the shift from one-way interdisciplinary use (sociology reading literature) to a mutual methodological exchange, thereby legitimizing literary analysis within social theory.

“One is not surprised to find… Hayden White defining the tropes of historical analysis, John S. Nelson detailing the complex ‘plots’ of political science…” (p. 79).
🔗 Relates to: Interdisciplinary Theory / Sociology of Literature

🎭 Critique of Autonomy in Formalism
Gallagher challenges formalist ideas of aesthetic autonomy, aligning with Williams’s view that cultural texts are never isolated but embedded in social processes.

“Williams… succeeded in replacing the idea of artistic autonomy with that of specificity” (p. 83).
🔗 Relates to: Anti-Formalism / Reader-Response and Materialist Criticism

💬 Expansion of the Semiotic in Culture
By analyzing how signification operates even in non-literary domains (e.g., food, money), Gallagher helps expand the semiotic scope of literary theory to encompass broader cultural practices.

“The signifying system… includes not only the traditional arts… but also all the ‘signifying practices’—from language… to fashion and advertising” (p. 83).
🔗 Relates to: Structuralism / Semiotics

📖 Deconstruction of Cultural Unity
She critiques Williams’s essentialist tendencies and shows how his analysis inadvertently reinforces the mystique of culture as irreducibly meaningful—mirroring the “presence” fetishized in Derridean deconstruction.

“We may be succumbing to a new mystique of culture” (p. 81).
🔗 Relates to: Poststructuralism / Deconstruction

🧱 Material Signification and Marxist Limits
Gallagher exposes limits in Williams’s Marxist materialism, such as his exclusion of money from cultural analysis, revealing contradictions in the application of base/superstructure distinctions.

“Money’s ineligibility for culture might stem partly from its dissolution into the economic” (p. 87).
🔗 Relates to: Marxist Literary Theory / Political Economy of Culture

🌐 Contribution to Cultural Theory’s Object of Study
She interrogates what counts as a cultural object, criticizing both Arnoldian high culture and the overexpansion of “culture” into everything.

“The puzzling thing about these writings is their almost programmatic refusal to tell us what isn’t culture” (p. 80).
🔗 Relates to: Cultural Theory / Critique of Essentialism

🧠 Epistemological Self-Reflexivity
Gallagher’s essay itself is a meta-theoretical reflection on the conditions and limits of theorizing culture, making it a model for critical theory that interrogates its own foundations.

“We cannot understand the historical function of the object until we understand its peculiar ways of emptying itself of immediate comprehensibility” (p. 88).
🔗 Relates to: Critical Theory / Meta-theory


Examples of Critiques Through “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher
Literary WorkCritical Lens (from Gallagher on Williams)Application of Theory
🎭 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia WoolfCulture as a Signifying SystemClarissa’s social rituals and postwar trauma express Williams’s idea of culture as a system through which social life is “communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored” (p. 83). Daily routines become saturated with symbolic significance.
🔄 Hard Times by Charles DickensAgainst the Society/Culture BinaryDickens’s portrayal of industrial life critiques utilitarian logic not as separate from art but as embedded in cultural practices. This aligns with Williams’s view that culture and society form a lived, indivisible whole (p. 82).
💰 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldMateriality and Money as SignifierGatsby’s wealth represents Gallagher’s critique of Williams’s paradox on money: money functions as a signifier but becomes “cultural” only when its materiality disrupts smooth signification (pp. 84–86). The novel exposes this symbolic breakdown.
🌌 Song of Solomon by Toni MorrisonMystique of Culture and ParticularityMorrison’s narrative resists total interpretability, embodying Gallagher’s “mystique of culture” critique (p. 81). Folklore, names, and memory act as overdetermined cultural signs that defy reductive analysis.
Criticism Against “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher

🔍 Overemphasis on Ambiguity
Gallagher frequently critiques Williams’s refusal to define “culture” with precision but does not provide a clear alternative herself. Her argument may seem to circle around the problem of definition without offering a constructive framework.

She acknowledges that “culture” resists coherence but doesn’t resolve how cultural critics should proceed (p. 88).

📏 Unclear Analytical Boundaries
In critiquing Williams’s treatment of money and food, Gallagher suggests a paradox, but her analysis can itself seem caught in the same ambiguity—blurring the line between cultural and economic domains without clear criteria.

Her own treatment of signifying systems may “replay the tension” she accuses Williams of mishandling (pp. 85–87).

⚖️ Heavy Reliance on Williams
Although Gallagher sets out to critique Williams, much of her essay relies heavily on his formulations and terms. At times, it reads more as an elaboration of his ideas than a decisive intervention or revision.

She notes Williams’s contradictions but continues to work within his framework rather than proposing a new paradigm (p. 82–83).

💭 Underdeveloped Engagement with Alternative Theorists
Gallagher name-drops major thinkers (e.g., Laclau, Mouffe, Hayden White), but does not deeply engage their theories. This limits the depth of her comparative critique and the potential for triangulating Williams’s ideas in a broader intellectual field (p. 79).

🧱 Structural Complexity and Density
The prose of the article is dense, with extended metaphors and abstract formulations. This stylistic complexity may obscure her core arguments, making the essay less accessible even to theoretically informed readers.

🔄 Inconsistent Use of Materialism
Gallagher critiques Williams’s cultural materialism for privileging the material, but she herself occasionally reverts to a form of symbolic idealism—treating excess or opacity as inherently valuable without fully explaining why.


Representative Quotations from “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher with Explanation
Quotation Explanation
🎭 “Williams… succeeded in replacing the idea of artistic autonomy with that of specificity.” (p. 83)Marks Williams’s shift away from formalism toward a focus on particularity and embedded cultural meaning.
📘 “Cultural Studies specifies neither a well-defined object nor a method of analysis.” (p. 80)Emphasizes the open, interdisciplinary nature of cultural studies, in contrast to rigid literary or sociological methodologies.
🔍 “We may be succumbing to a new mystique of culture.” (p. 81)Gallagher warns that cultural studies risks re-mystifying culture as ineffably profound, echoing the elitist “Culture” of Arnold.
🔄 “Culture was vital and enduring, yet evolving… more deeply constitutive of subjectivity than the word ‘society’ could suggest.” (p. 83)Reflects Williams’s idea that “culture” captures the active, lived quality of experience better than “society.”
💬 “What is the relationship of this Culture to its culture?” (p. 82)Williams reframes binary questions about art and society to emphasize interrelation rather than hierarchy.
💰 “There is no real doubt that in any genuine currency the needs and actions of trade and payment are dominant, and the signifying factor, though intrinsic, is in this sense dissolved.” (p. 84)Gallagher uses this to show Williams’s theoretical difficulty in addressing symbolic systems like money within cultural analysis.
🧠 “Culture… is the signifying system through which necessarily (though among other means) a social order is communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored.” (p. 83)Williams defines culture in semiotic terms, making it central to the mediation of all social practices.
⚖️ “Phenomena disappear from ‘culture’ for two opposite reasons: such ‘other’ phenomena are either too material… or not material enough.” (p. 85)Gallagher critiques this paradox in Williams’s logic, exposing the instability in defining what counts as “cultural.”
🌌 “The object… at once calls forth and exceeds our analyses.” (p. 81)Points to the idea that cultural artifacts resist full interpretation due to their complexity—fueling the “mystique of culture.”
🔗 “You know the number of times I’ve wished that I had never heard of the damned word.” (p. 88)Williams’s own frustration with defining “culture,” reinforcing Gallagher’s thesis on the term’s conceptual instability.
Suggested Readings: “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies” by Catherine Gallagher
  1. Gallagher, Catherine. “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies.” Social Text, no. 30, 1992, pp. 79–89. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/466467. Accessed 9 Apr. 2025.
  2. Gallagher, Catherine. “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies.” Cultural Materialism: On Raymond Williams, edited by Christopher Prendergast, NED-New edition, vol. 9, University of Minnesota Press, 1995, pp. 307–19. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttspjc.17. Accessed 9 Apr. 2025.
  3. Gallagher, Catherine. “Response to Aronowitz and Ross.” Social Text, no. 31/32, 1992, pp. 283–85. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/466233. Accessed 9 Apr. 2025.
  4. Jay, Martin. “Politics and Experience: Burke, Oakeshott, and the English Marxists.” Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme, 1st ed., University of California Press, 2005, pp. 170–215. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pp784.9. Accessed 9 Apr. 2025.

“Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies ” by Stuart Hall: Summary and Critique

“Psychoanalysis and Cultural Studies” by Stuart Hall first appeared in Cultural Studies, Volume 32, Issue 6, in 2018. Originally delivered as a talk at the ICA in London in 1987 and later edited by Lawrence Grossberg.

"Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies " by Stuart Hall: Summary and Critique
Introduction: “Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies ” by Stuart Hall

“Psychoanalysis and Cultural Studies” by Stuart Hall first appeared in Cultural Studies, Volume 32, Issue 6, in 2018. It was originally delivered as a talk at the ICA in London in 1987 and later edited by Lawrence Grossberg. The essay marks a significant moment in cultural theory where Hall traces the complex and transformative “interruption” of psychoanalysis into the domain of Cultural Studies. The article is pivotal in rethinking how questions of subjectivity, sexuality, and representation—previously overlooked by Cultural Studies—are radically reframed through psychoanalytic discourse, particularly following the Lacanian rereading of Freud and its interaction with feminism. Hall emphasizes that this engagement does not provide a seamless integration but rather an enduring tension, where the unconscious disrupts sociological and ideological analyses, challenging Cultural Studies to confront its historical neglect of the psychical dimensions of culture. Notably, Hall critiques both the limits of traditional Marxist paradigms and the dogmatic rigidity of certain Lacanian interpretations, insisting on the necessity of a dual awareness: one that speaks to both the psychic and the social without reducing one to the other. His essay remains a foundational intervention in literary and cultural theory, inviting scholars to grapple with the uneasy, yet productive, dialogue between inner psychic structures and outer sociopolitical realities.

Summary of “Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies ” by Stuart Hall

🔍 Psychoanalysis as a decisive but incomplete interruption in Cultural Studies
Hall argues that psychoanalysis did not merge seamlessly into Cultural Studies, but rather interrupted it, transforming its theoretical foundations. This intervention, however, remains “incomplete,” leaving unresolved tensions.

“The displacements, theoretically and in terms of the forms of study… have been irrevocably transformed by the opening up of the spaces and questions which psychoanalysis poses to it” (Hall, 2018, p. 889).
The essay traces how this disruption reshaped Cultural Studies, especially through the challenges of subjectivity, representation, and the unconscious.


📚 Only post-Lacanian psychoanalysis had a transformative impact
Hall distinguishes between earlier forms of psychoanalysis and the radical shift brought by Lacan’s rereading of Freud. It was this version that made psychoanalysis relevant to cultural theory.

“The decisive impact in cultural theory has been made by that form of psychoanalysis which arises after the Lacanian rereading of Freud” (p. 890).
Lacan’s emphasis on language, the symbolic order, and the divided subject significantly reframed core concepts in Cultural Studies.


🌸 Feminism and psychoanalysis as a dual break
The conjunction of post-Lacanian psychoanalysis and feminism brought radical reconfigurations to how Cultural Studies understands identity and social life.

“It is the couplet post-Lacanian psychoanalysis and feminism which disrupts Cultural Studies, reposing questions about subjectivity, sexuality, the unconscious, representation, language…” (p. 891).
This double intervention forces Cultural Studies to confront dimensions it previously ignored—especially gender and the psychic.


🧠 The unconscious challenges sociological models of the self
Cultural Studies had long relied on models of the subject shaped by Marxist or anthropological thought. But the Freudian unconscious—especially as reformulated by Lacan—displaces those assumptions.

“There is always… something irretrievably lost, a fundamental displacement” in the process of identity formation (p. 891).
This irreducibility of the unconscious renders simplistic “inside/outside” models of self and culture untenable.


⚧️ Sexuality enters Cultural Studies via psychoanalysis
Hall critiques Cultural Studies for historically ignoring sexuality and sexual difference, treating cultural subjects as asexual.

“It walked and talked and looked at and attempted to analyse a culture… as if the subjects of culture were unsexed” (p. 891).
Psychoanalysis, especially in feminist contexts, brings sexuality and its unconscious dimensions to the center of cultural analysis.


👥 Subjectivity is not unified but fragmented and processual
Traditional Cultural Studies conceived of subjects as unified individuals or collective identities. Psychoanalysis breaks this illusion.

“Subjectivity as a constitution… which cannot be formed without fragmentation and displacement” (p. 893).
Rather than being a coherent entity, the subject is a site of division and contradiction—never whole or finished.


💬 Ideology as representation, not illusion
Marxist theories often described ideology as “false consciousness,” but psychoanalysis reframes ideology as a system of representations.

“The shift from the notion of an illusion to a system of representations… upon which the effectivity of ideology depends” (p. 893).
This emphasizes how subjects internalize ideology not just cognitively but affectively—through unconscious structures of recognition and misrecognition.


🧩 Language is central to subject formation and cultural life
Building on Lacan, Hall emphasizes that language is not just a medium of communication but the structure through which subjects and meanings are constituted.

“The unconscious is structured like a language… the subject is constituted in and through language” (p. 894).
Language thus becomes foundational to the analysis of culture, identity, and power in post-psychoanalytic Cultural Studies.


🚧 Critique of Lacanian dogmatism and metaphor becoming doctrine
Although Hall values Lacanian insights, he critiques the dogmatic tendencies within Lacanian theory—especially its transformation of metaphor into rigid principle.

“What began as a set of very important perceptions were transformed into a kind of dogmatic doxology” (p. 894).
This rigid formalism can limit the openness and usefulness of Lacanian thinking.


⚖️ Need to balance the psychic and the social
Hall warns that the rise of psychoanalysis led some scholars to neglect the social altogether, replacing social critique with subjectivity.

“They still require a theory of subjectivity, but they cannot be replaced by a theory of subjectivity” (p. 895).
Cultural theory must engage both domains—psychic and social—without collapsing one into the other.


🔥 The internalization of violence complicates political struggle
Psychoanalysis reveals that violence is not merely external or structural—it is internal, part of psychic life.

“Psychic life itself is aggressive and violent… the violence is already in our inside” (p. 896).
This insight complicates political action, challenging simplistic binaries of good/evil or oppressor/oppressed.


🧭 Towards a politics that recognizes radical subjectivity
Although psychoanalysis helps us understand our inner complicity in domination, it remains unclear how these insights can generate political change.

“What forms of politics and cultural struggle might come out of these new kinds of conceptions… remains an intractable puzzle” (p. 896).
Hall leaves us with a challenge: to rethink both theory and practice in light of the complex interrelations between psyche, power, and culture.

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies ” by Stuart Hall

🌟 Concept (with Symbol)📚 Explanation💬 Reference from Article
🔍 Post-Lacanian PsychoanalysisA reinterpretation of Freud through Lacan that emphasizes language, the symbolic order, and the fragmented subject. It brought cultural theory into new territories.“The decisive impact in cultural theory has been made by that form of psychoanalysis which arises after the Lacanian rereading of Freud” (p. 890).
🧠 The UnconsciousThe realm of hidden mental activity that drives behavior, shaping subjectivity beyond conscious control. It disrupts sociological models of the self.“The presence of the unconscious means that it is not possible… to accept a sociological… account” (p. 891).
👤 SubjectivityNot a fixed identity but a fragmented and constantly shifting construct shaped by unconscious processes, language, and power.“Subjectivity as a constitution… cannot be formed without fragmentation and displacement” (p. 893).
⚧️ Sexual DifferenceA central concern of psychoanalysis and feminism. Previously ignored by Cultural Studies, it highlights how identity is constructed through gendered binaries and power.“Cultural Studies had absolutely nothing to say about it… as if the subjects of culture were unsexed” (p. 891).
🖼️ Ideology as RepresentationMoves beyond seeing ideology as illusion or “false consciousness,” framing it instead as structured systems of meaning, language, and subjectivity.“Transform this conception of ideology… to a system of representations… on which the effectivity of ideology depends” (p. 893).
💭 FantasyNot just imagination, but structured desires and unconscious narratives (often sexualized) embedded in institutions and ideologies.“At the centre of institutions are… fantasies of power… without which no proper account… can be given” (p. 892).
🔄 DisplacementA psychoanalytic process where meaning is never direct—always deferred or transformed. Reflects the loss or shift in identity and cultural expression.“There is always… something irretrievably lost, a fundamental displacement” (p. 891).
🗣️ Language & the Symbolic OrderLanguage doesn’t merely reflect meaning—it produces subjects and social reality. Key to Lacan’s theory, it’s central to how culture and self are formed.“The unconscious is structured like a language… constituted in and through language” (p. 894).
🧾 RepresentationGoes beyond visuals—refers to systems of meaning-making central to ideology, identity, and cultural production.“Obliges us to look at [ideology] as a system of representation” (p. 893).
📚 Cultural StudiesThe interdisciplinary field concerned with analyzing culture, power, and identity. Hall critiques its early neglect of sexuality and unconscious processes.“Cultural Studies had absolutely nothing to say about [sexuality]…” (p. 891).
Contribution of “Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies ” by Stuart Hall to Literary Theory/Theories

🔍 Redefining the Subject as Fragmented, Not Unified
Hall challenges the humanist conception of a stable, coherent subject prevalent in earlier literary theory. He introduces the psychoanalytic idea of the subject as split, dislocated, and constructed through processes of language and fantasy.

“Subjectivity as a constitution… cannot be formed without fragmentation and displacement” (Hall, 2018, p. 893).
This rethinking aligns with poststructuralist literary theory and changes how characters, narrators, and authors are interpreted.


🧠 Emphasizing the Unconscious in Cultural and Literary Analysis
Hall insists that the unconscious is a vital domain for understanding culture, ideology, and identity—moving beyond surface meanings.

“The presence of the unconscious means that it is not possible… to accept a sociological… account of how the inside gets outside and the outside gets inside” (p. 891).
This enriches psychoanalytic literary criticism by reaffirming the power of hidden desires and repression in textual production and interpretation.


🖼️ Transforming Ideology from Illusion to Representation
One of Hall’s most important contributions is shifting the understanding of ideology in literary theory. Rather than a “false consciousness,” ideology is seen as a system of representation that actively shapes subjectivity and meaning.

“The shift from the notion of an illusion to a system of representations… on which the effectivity of ideology depends” (p. 893).
This deepens Marxist literary theory and intersects with post-Althusserian analysis.


🗣️ Foregrounding Language as Structuring, Not Reflective
Drawing from Lacan, Hall shows that language produces meaning and identity rather than merely expressing them.

“The unconscious is structured like a language… the subject is constituted in and through language” (p. 894).
This insight reinforces structuralist and poststructuralist approaches in literary theory, where language is not transparent but generative.


⚧️ Introducing Sexual Difference as Central to Cultural and Literary Theory
Hall critiques Cultural Studies—and by extension, literary criticism—for historically ignoring sexuality. He argues that psychoanalysis and feminism force literary theory to engage with sexual difference as a site of meaning and conflict.

“Cultural Studies had absolutely nothing to say about it… as if the subjects of culture were unsexed” (p. 891).
This aligns with feminist psychoanalytic readings, like those by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose.


💭 Bringing Fantasy into the Analysis of Institutions and Texts
Hall incorporates fantasy—especially sexual and power fantasies—into the core of institutional and cultural analysis. This adds a new dimension to literary theory’s treatment of genre, narrative, and discourse.

“At the centre of institutions are… fantasies of power… without which no proper account… can be given” (p. 892).
In literary terms, this supports deeper readings of symbolic structures in fiction and drama.


📚 Expanding Cultural Studies to Include the Psychical
Hall expands the scope of Cultural Studies, traditionally focused on the social and historical, to include the psychical and libidinal.

“It is only when psychoanalysis… focuses radically on its own object… that it throws an important, piercing but uneven light” (p. 890).
This shift reorients literary theory toward questions of interiority, trauma, repression, and symbolic meaning.


🔄 Questioning Smooth Theoretical Synthesis
Hall resists the totalizing integration of psychoanalysis with literary and cultural theory. Instead, he advocates for holding the tension between the psychic and the social.

“They still require a theory of subjectivity, but they cannot be replaced by a theory of subjectivity” (p. 895).
This stance challenges literary theories that seek unified explanatory models, favoring hybridity and contradiction.


🔥 Challenging the Idea of Pure Political Resistance
By showing that violence and repression are internal as well as external, Hall complicates the idea of ethical purity in political or literary resistance.

“Psychic life itself is aggressive and violent… the violence is already in our inside” (p. 896).
This affects literary theory’s engagement with the political, suggesting that texts and subjects are never outside complicity.


🧩 Inspiring New Interdisciplinary Methods in Literary Criticism
Hall’s essay bridges psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, and semiotics—encouraging interdisciplinary approaches in literary studies.

“Some grasp of the social whole… does require an ability to speak both these languages together in some way” (p. 895).
This opens literary theory to richer, more pluralistic readings.


Examples of Critiques Through “Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies ” by Stuart Hall

📚 Literary Work (with Symbol)🔍 Critical Focus through Hall’s Framework🧠 Explanation Based on Hall’s Concepts
🧛 Dracula by Bram StokerSexual repression, fantasy, and ideology of the imperial bodyThe vampire represents repressed sexuality and unconscious desire, while colonial fear and Victorian morality form an ideological system of representation (Hall, 2018, p. 893). The fantasy of control and purity masks cultural anxieties around the foreign “Other.”
🪞 The Bell Jar by Sylvia PlathFragmented subjectivity and psychic violence under patriarchal institutionsEsther Greenwood’s mental breakdown illustrates Hall’s view of subjectivity as a constitution of fragmentation and displacement (p. 893). Cultural institutions (family, work, psychiatry) are embedded with fantasies of power and sexual difference (p. 892).
🕳️ Invisible Man by Ralph EllisonMisrecognition, racial ideology, and representational systemsThe protagonist’s invisibility reflects Hall’s notion that ideology functions through systems of misrecognition and unconscious positioning (p. 893). His journey critiques cultural structures that refuse to “see” Black subjectivity within symbolic orders of dominance.
🧵 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean RhysColonial displacement, female subjectivity, and cultural fantasyAntoinette’s madness and erasure reveal the double break of psychoanalysis and feminism (p. 891). Her fragmented identity critiques how empire imposes ideological fantasies and sexual control on colonized women through language and cultural repression.

🧩 How This Reflects Hall’s Method:

Each critique uses Hall’s core insights:

  • Unconscious drives disrupt social narratives 🧠
  • Ideology is embedded in systems of representation 🖼️
  • Subjectivity is constructed, not given 👤
  • Fantasy underpins power and institutions 💭
  • Intersection with feminism and race reveals deeper displacements ⚧️🌍
Criticism Against “Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies ” by Stuart Hall

🌀 Over-Complexity and Theoretical Density
Hall’s engagement with Lacanian psychoanalysis and its abstract language can alienate readers unfamiliar with psychoanalytic discourse.

“What began as a set of very important perceptions were transformed into a kind of dogmatic doxology” (Hall, 2018, p. 894).
📚 Critics argue this dense jargon may obstruct accessibility and interdisciplinary dialogue.


⚖️ Imbalance Between the Psychic and the Social
Although Hall insists on holding both domains in tension, some critics say the essay leans too far into subjectivity, potentially marginalizing material social structures.

“They still require a theory of subjectivity, but they cannot be replaced by a theory of subjectivity” (p. 895).
🌍 This concern reflects ongoing debates about how much psychoanalysis can explain systemic oppression, class struggle, or political change.


📉 Difficulty in Generating Political Praxis
Hall himself questions whether psychoanalysis can support political struggle, as it often emphasizes internal contradiction and complicity over clear agency.

“Whether it generates a politics or not, I don’t know… remains an intractable puzzle” (p. 896).
🚫 Critics may see this as undermining radical activism, favoring introspection over action.


🗣️ Ambiguity in Language and Terminological Slippage
Hall critiques Lacan for turning metaphors into literal claims (e.g., “the unconscious is a language”), yet he relies on similarly slippery formulations in parts of his own argument.

“The enormously suggestive metaphor… becomes… a really concrete established fact” (p. 894).
🔄 This opens his own essay to charges of imprecision.


🧠 Theoretical Elitism
The reliance on high theory—Lacan, Althusser, Freud—without extensive grounding examples or literary applications may seem elitist or detached from everyday cultural practices.
🎓 Critics from more practice-based traditions might see Hall’s psychoanalytic turn as moving away from grounded empirical Cultural Studies.


📌 Resistance from Within Cultural Studies
Traditional Cultural Studies emphasized materialism, empiricism, and class; integrating psychoanalysis disrupted this lineage, leading some to view it as a theoretical detour.

Hall acknowledges: “Cultural Studies had absolutely nothing to say about [sexuality]”—but some may argue that its original strengths were diluted in the psychoanalytic turn.

Representative Quotations from “Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies ” by Stuart Hall with Explanation
💬 Quotation 📚 Explanation
🔀 “The displacements… have been irrevocably transformed by the opening up of the spaces and questions which psychoanalysis poses to it.” (p. 889)Psychoanalysis did not smoothly integrate with Cultural Studies—it disrupted its foundations and introduced new questions about identity, power, and meaning.
⚧️ “It is the couplet post-Lacanian psychoanalysis and feminism which disrupts Cultural Studies.” (p. 891)This key fusion opens critical pathways for rethinking subjectivity, sexuality, and representation within both literary and cultural theory.
🧠 “There is always… something irretrievably lost, a fundamental displacement.” (p. 891)Reflects the psychoanalytic idea (especially Lacanian) that identity formation is structured around lack, loss, and non-closure.
“Cultural Studies had absolutely nothing to say about it… as if the subjects of culture were unsexed.” (p. 891)A strong critique of early Cultural Studies for ignoring gender and sexuality, which psychoanalysis and feminism later forcefully foregrounded.
👤 “Subjectivity as a constitution… cannot be formed without fragmentation and displacement.” (p. 893)Hall challenges the humanist notion of a stable self; identity is a process marked by division and psychic contradiction.
💭 “At the centre of institutions are… fantasies of power… without which no proper account… can be given.” (p. 892)Cultural and social institutions are shaped not only by structures but also by unconscious fantasies—especially around power and sexuality.
🖼️ “Transform this conception of ideology… to a system of representations… on which the effectivity of ideology depends.” (p. 893)Moves from the Marxist idea of ideology as illusion to a more psychoanalytic view of ideology as embedded in symbolic representation.
🗣️ “The unconscious is structured like a language… constituted in and through language.” (p. 894)Highlights Lacan’s core idea that identity and meaning are produced through symbolic systems, not pre-existing essence.
🚫 “What began as a set of very important perceptions were transformed into a kind of dogmatic doxology.” (p. 894)Hall critiques how Lacanian theory, once radical, became rigid and closed, limiting the openness of cultural and theoretical inquiry.
🧩 “What forms of politics and cultural struggle might come out of these new kinds of conceptions… remains an intractable puzzle.” (p. 896)While psychoanalysis reveals deep insights, Hall admits that its translation into clear political or activist strategies remains unresolved.

Suggested Readings: “Psychoanalysis And Cultural Studies ” by Stuart Hall
  1. Hall, Stuart. “Psychoanalysis and cultural studies.” Cultural Studies 32.6 (2018): 889-896.
  2. WILSON, ARNOLD. “Science Studies, Context, and Psychoanalysis.” American Imago, vol. 72, no. 2, 2015, pp. 211–27. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26305117. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.
  3. YOUNG-BRUEH, ELISABETH, and MURRAY M. SCHWARTZ. “Why Psychoanalysis Has No History.” American Imago, vol. 69, no. 1, 2012, pp. 139–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26304908. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.
  4. Simms, Karl. “PSYCHOANALYSIS.” Key Ideas in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language, edited by Siobhan Chapman and Christopher Routledge, Edinburgh University Press, 2009, pp. 189–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g09vvm.71. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.