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Colloquim: "Zadig's Method," the Historical Sciaices, Museums and the

Performance of Progress

Tony Bennett, professor at Griffith University (Austraha) and direc-

tor ofthe Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, was at Carleton this Spring to

present a paper at a public forum sponsored bythe Department of Sociology

and Anthropology, the Centre for Research on Culture and Soaety, and the

School for Studies in Art and Culture. Bennett is the author of numerous

books and articles inthefield ofmedia and cultural studies, indudingPopular

Culture: Themes andIssues ( 1 98 1 ), BondandBeyond: The PoUtical Career

ofa Popular Hero (with Janet Woollacott, 1987), and Outside Literature

(1990).

Bainett's recent work signals a curious retreat from his earlier

preoccupations with the 'Gramscian' tradition in cultural studies. Originally

intoided to overcome the perceived impasse betweai 'culturalist' and 'struc-

turalist' approadies in British cultural studies, the incorporation ofGramsci 's

notion of 'hegemony'—a state ofmoral, cultural and political leadership that
is actively won and not simply imposed upon subordinate social groups

—

offered the discipline a less mechanistic and monolithic view ofthe ideologi-

cal domination of a ruling class or bloc. Whereas structuralist formulations

of ideology suggested that cultural change and political resistance were next

to impossible since dommation was achieved through manipulatmg the world

view ofthe masses, the concept ofhegemony stressed that in order for cultural

leadership to be achieved, dominant groups must 'negotiate' or engage with

opposing groups.

In British cultural studies, the turn to Gramsci signalled a profound

shift in thinking. Popular culture was no longer seen as part of some

rqjressive ideological apparatus nor, alternatively, as an impulsive and

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Alternate Routes, Volumell, 1994

liberating expression ofthe 'people'. Rather, it was viewed as contradictory

and contested—it was both dominated and oppositional . The field ofpopular
culture was implicated in the struggle for hegemony in so far as it remained

structured by the attempt of the ruling class to secure hegemony, and by the

actions of other groups to oppose that project. Politically, cultural studies

diampioned a transformative politics of 'counter-h^emony '—oforganizing
or articulating subjects into a collective political force to challoige the

dominant power bloc. Developed against the backdrop ofThatcherism and its

accompanying 'enterprise culture,' this political project took on an added

urgency.

Despite Bennett's pivotal contribution to this important theoretical

shift, his current work argues for a move 'beyond hegemony'. For Bennett,

the politics of counter-h^emony is "institutionally indifferent." Since all

cultural practices are conceived as bound up with the struggle for h^emony,

the dominant tendency has been to see cultural struggle as the same in all

cases. In effect, cultural studies has paid insufficient attention to the specific

sets of discursive and structural power relations that operate withm distmct

cultural practices.

Bennett's current work on the 19th century museum is partially an

attempt to work through these issues. Bennett rejects the view that sees the

museum simply as an ideological instrument of the ruling bloc. Instead, he

intends to explore in detail the specific practices, techniques, and operations

ofthe museum that constitute it as a 'technology' (in Foucault's sense of the

term) that produces a socially coded vision ofthe past. This vision, expressed

through the performative r^mes of the museum, conscripts subjects as
active participants in the scientific and reformist narrative of progress.

The 'Zadig' that Bennett refers to in his lecture is a character drawn

from Voltaire and later adopted by Thomas Huxley. Zadig possessed the

remarkable power of 'backtelling'—by looking at tracks left by an animal he
was able to faithfully visualize and reconstruct that animal. This process of

generating retrospective visions—of making the invisible visible—is mir-
rored in the modem scientific method where causes are inferred from effects.



For Bennett, the 1 9th century British museum is principally a narrative
machinery for 'backtelling'. The museum makes history 'visible' through the
application of certain apparatuses or sets of technologies. Spatially, the

museum is organized to compress time into a visible and performable
'pathway' through history. Through techniques of 'typological display' in

which similar artifacts from vanous time periods are presented in series from

the 'simple' to the 'complex,' the museum encourages visitors to engage m
an "organized walkingthrough evolutionary time." Witnessing, for example,

the progression from an Aboriginal throwing stickto a spear, bow and arrow,
and eventually a modem gun, visitors become 'self-teaching,' actively
aigaging in a progressive, civilizing, and heuristic performance.

Typological displays had deeper political motivations, according to

Bennett. Showing progress as a succession of incremental improvements

suggested that the rate of social change was a pre-ordained law of history.

This view contrasted sharply with emerging notions of revolutionary social-

ism which advocated that human societies could 'jump' from one stage to
another. Not surprisingly, the didactic message oftypological displays were |y^
first directed at the working class at the Bethel Green Museum in London.
Here, the 'technology of the series' was codified to create a progressive but

conservative subject, one that recognized the 'inevitability' of gradual

reform.

The 1 9th century British museum, therefore, worked to reinforce other

emerging social institutions. From new pedagogical techniques in education

to emerging methods of clinical psychology, the era was characterized by the

development of 'regimes of truth' that emphasized discipline, training, and

self-improvement. Increasingly, human beings were seen as creatures in need
of progressive improvement and development.

While any clear assessment of Bennett's research is premature at this

point, his work does nevertheless raise some intriguing questions about the

nature of political interventions into the arena of cultural policy. The types

of interventions suggested by the perspective ofhegemony have been largely

discursive—i.e. restructuring representational practices in order to allow for



Alternate Routes, Volumel 1, 1994

the emergence ofan oppositional subject. The difficulty with this position, as

Bennett's analysis suggests, is that it fails to connectthis 'counter-hegemonic'

politics with the larger structural conditions that determine rqjresaitational

practices in the first instance. The promise of Bennett's work is that by

providing an examination of the forms and relations of political conflict

specific to particular cultural technologies, his analysis may in fact lead to
more concrete political intervmtions that are capable ofaffectingthe actions

of agaits within those technologies.

David C. Robinson

Carleton University

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