From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure - The Effects of Gramscianism on Cultural Studies (Paperback, New)

"From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure" arises from reading and teaching Gramscian work in cultural studies, education, media studies, leisure and politics over the last 20 years. It argues that Gramscian work is undoubtedly powerful and persuasive. Indeed by the 1990s one can almost say that it has become the governing orthodoxy. Harris reads the work critically and in detail, tracing arguments across time and across different specialisms, assessing them, and trying to examine how they deal with critics and with new challenging topics. He maintains that cultural studies contains many absences, silences and closures, and that it deploys a number of narrative techniques to remain credible. Wide-ranging and critical, "From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure" provides a critical assessment of one of the most fashionable and powerful intellectual traditions in contemporary social science. This book aims to help students to read Gramscian work critically and decide where its strengths and weaknesses lie for themselves, and make them less dependent on the Gramscians' own accounts and agendas.