The idea of deep surfaces in cultural studies

Abstract

This paper argues that Cultural Studies has tended in the past to arrive at a methodological impasse by failing to adequately theorise the status of the object of a 'cultural' study. The paper suggests that a dialogue with Psychoanalysis may provide scholars of Cultural Studies with a way to move beyond this impasse. I propose that the object of Cultural Studies can be viewed as an example of a 'deep surface' rather than as deep structure, in order to identify the ways in which deep structures come to be manifest in individual acts of production.