Madelyn Week 6

 In the readings for today, I was stuck on the Grossberg's chapter on articulation and the shortcomings of structuralist and poststructuralist theories in relation to methods in cultural studies. I was interested in the ways that he discussed how the plane of meaning has dominated the structure of cultural studies projects, and how this then has caused a simplification within the field concerning the definition of culture. 

This part in the reading really resonated with me in the sense that there is the constant expectation of the "so what"/"what does this mean" in my own writing and work. Which, from one perspective, I understand the need for this demand in that I am writing into a discourse with a set of expectations for how ideas are presented. However, Grossberg's discussion also raises the question of what is being missed in analysis conducted under a dominant framework, and how method comes to shape the results of one's study. I also understand that I am in the English department and he is discussing cultural studies, however expanding notions of what can be considered a text and what can be considered as "valuable" work on that text seems to me like an excellent way to integrate more interdisciplinary practices within certain fields. I am curious to hear other's perspectives on this topic. I am interested also in how he views the relationship between method and product, with his constant references to storytelling, and the potential change this can bring to the study of the humanities. 

On a more technical note, I am wondering how Grossberg's discussion of reality relates to his claims about articulation, he states: "What is crucial here is the rejection of the model of culture defined by the need to construct a correspondence between two parallel, nonintersecting planes- language and reality. Such a correspondence opens the project of interpretation, language interprets or represents reality, and criticism comments on that interpretation. It is also the rejection of a model of reality as a transcendental whole existing outside of history and practices. Reality here is a structure of effects, marked by a multiplicity of planes of effects and the ways they intersect, transverse and disrupt each other." I can understand he claims that reality is not simply a chaotic and incomprehensible chain of relations/effects that cannot be tracked, that there are threads to unravel and connections to be undone and remade. However, I wonder also about the implications in discussing reality in this way.