However, ideology can also be used in a neutral sense (Ricoeur 1986) and this is
reflected in the work of Fred Inglis, who has written at length on children’s literature (for
example, Inglis 1975; 1981). Inglis favours, not cultural materialism, but cultural
hermeneutics. In Cultural Studies (1993), he argues in favour of making cultural studies
‘synonymous with the study of values (and valuing)’ (Inglis 1993:190). The book is
dedicated to the cultural anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, with his influential view that
‘man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun’ and that
those webs are what we call culture’. For Geertz, the analysis of culture, therefore, will be
‘an interpretive one in search of meaning’, and culture itself is defined as ‘an assemblage
of texts’ and ‘a story they tell themselves about themselves’ (Geertz 1975:5; 448). So the
model of cultural analysis Inglis favours is the interpretative one which aims not to
unmask texts, using such critical concepts as ideology or hegemony which deconstruct
and demystify ideologies, but to understand intersubjective meanings (Inglis 1993:148).
He argues against the tendency within cultural studies to collapse ‘both aesthetics and
morality into politics’ so that ‘the study of culture translates into politics without
remainder’ (175; 181). He quotes Dollimore and Sinfield’s statement (see above) that
cultural materialism ‘registers its commitment to the transformation of a social order
which exploits people on grounds of race, gender and class’ (Dollimore and Sinfield 1985:
viii) but asks, using the same phrase which formed the title of his book about children’s
literature (Inglis 1981), ‘What about the promise of happiness held out by art? What
about art itself?’ (Inglis 1993:181). Following Geertz’s concept, Inglis defines culture as,
‘an ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves’ (Inglis 1993:206) and argues
that our historically changing identity is formed from experience and the ‘narrative
tradition’ of which we are part. It is from this identity that we interpret the world. In a
passage strongly relevant to the study of children’s literature, (see, for example, Watkins
1994), he goes on to argue that
the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are not just a help to moral education;
they comprise the only moral education which can gain purchase on the modern
world. They are not aids to sensitivity nor adjuncts to the cultivated life. They are
theories with which to think forwards...and understand backwards.
Inglis 1993:214Because of the variety within the cultural studies paradigm and the dynamic nature of
the field, it is difficult to generalise about features which underlie such work in the
study of children’s literature. But the work of Fred Inglis (1981), Karín Lesnik-Oberstein
(1994), Jacqueline Rose (1984), Marina Warner (1994) and Jack Zipes (1979), although
in many respects very different, may be thought of as arising within a cultural studies
framework.
ReferencesBarker, E, Hulme, P. and Iversen, M. (eds) (1991) Uses of History: Marxism, Postmodernism and
the Renaissance, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
36 HISTORY, CULTURE AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE