Mediation (Marxist Theory and Media Studies) - Marxist Theories of Media Studies

Marxist Theories of Media Studies

Many thinkers are now working at the intersections of Marxism and media studies, and are attempting to tease out the various interrelations, contradictions, and possibilies inherent in these two conversations. Recent books attest to the strength of such work.

Many of these thinkers see as their project the rehabilitation of Marxist theory and cultural studies in light of new forms of media and parallel social and historical developments and vice versa. As Deepa Kumar puts it, regarding aspects of Marxist theory such as dialectical materialism:

the method of analysis developed by Marx and Engels, is more relevant to media and cultural studies scholarship today for at least two reasons: the crisis of neoliberalism and the collapse of Stalinism….The time has come for critical scholarship to shake off the yoke of TINA (there is no alternative), and start to take seriously the bankruptcy of capitalism and the possibilities of a socialist alternative. (71)

Thus, Kumar sees the task of scholars of media and culture as twofold: “to explain and critique the state of culture and society, and then to act upon the world to change it. In taking up this challenge, classical Marxism as a guide to action has much to offer” (85). In addition, this type of work is possible according to Kumar due to the contradictory nature of media: “Media texts are contradictory, as all reality is contradictory. And contradiction allows for change within the totality of social relations. This change is the product of human beings resisting their conditions of oppression and exploitation” (p. 84).

And this contradictory nature of media, is in turn due to the ways that media are mediated in modern day culture: “In short, mass-mediated products are determined by various factors—the systems of ownership, the process of cultural production, the level of struggle, the state of consciousness in society at a given time, and so on. A dialectical method of analysis would involve studying all these factors within a concrete historical context so as to explain the multiple mediations that infuse a product of culture” (85). For many of these new thinkers, the very way that new forms of media are mediated by social actors, or way that these actors navigate the complex and contradictory forces of history, the material world, and culture through media is the key to the age old problem of mediation in Marxist theory.