“And the Heavyweights Enter the Ring” (Joshua Salyers)

This title comes from the May 1999 special issue of the Hispanic American Historical Review (HAHR). This issue titled Lucha Libre, using wrestling as a metaphor, featured several leading scholars in Mexican history who had either taken a cultural turn in their work or remained staunch critics of the “new cultural history.”  Scholars practicing the new cultural history argued that cultural studies allowed historians to break with structural theories, such as cultural hegemony (in the Gramscian definition rather than a negotiated hegemony), to produce more nuanced histories. This often required historians to focus on audiences or receivers of the materials produced by those who controlled the cultural means of production. Thus, histories that focused on consumer over producer relationships with popular culture were likely to occur in initial cultural studies. However, simply because a scholar sought to shift the focus of his or her field to emphasize the way in which consumers affect mass-produced popular culture, does not imply that such a scholar was denying the importance of producers in shaping that culture.

This summarizes my opinion of Lears’ critique of Levine’s argument in the American Historical Review’s issue on folk and popular culture. These prominent historians in American history had a similar discourse over the promises and pitfalls of cultural studies seven years prior to the HAHR’s issue. Thus, the debates over top-down and bottom-up studies (especially those in the 80s) were especially contentious at the time of this issue. Stephen Haber’s article in the HAHR issue, “Anything Goes,” addressed some areas of concern for cultural historians. He argued that as a natural result of attempting to reject structural approaches to history, cultural historians had allowed themselves infinite subjects of study without the process of validation because they hardly defined their terms (cultural historians often rejected categories imposed by the historian on his/her historical subjects). While Haber’s critique held some degree of truth (although he basically accused cultural historians of being post-modernists) it seemed to originate from his dedication to top-down history (he specializes in economic history). Likewise, Lears’ critique of Levine seemed to originate from the same impulse. I am less familiar with Lears’ work, so this analysis is based on his critique alone. Lears’ criticism of Levine’s argument was one of emphasis. For Lears, Levine’s focus on consumers indicated an analytical neglect of producers in creating popular culture. The historical profession had largely focused elite creations of culture and theories of cultural hegemony to that point and Levine sought to shift the focus, not ignore producers in cultural negotiations. With that said, Lears’ essay stands as a reminder to historians interested in popular cultural that a consumer only emphasis of mass popular culture is too simplistic. Just as Haber reminded cultural historians to define their terms, Lears’ impulse to keep the producers of mass culture in the discussion stood as a reminder to historians of mass popular culture to analyze the negotiations between consumers’ choices and producers’ intentions.