We also saw that Cultural Studies was accused of not having clear answers and we found that these were the main critiques from those who could not accept the inherent uncertainty, provisionality and indeterminacy, which are the features of Cultural Studies. It was also seen that if we are not careful then it may definitely fortify dominant ideologies, and, in giving too much importance to audience and audience resistance, may give a lopsided power to consumer sovereignty.

Let us recall one of the formulations of Stuart Hall:

“Social relations do exist. We are born into them. They exist independently of our will. They are real in their structure and tendency. Social relations exist, independent of mind, independent of thought. And yet they can only be conceptualized in thought, in the head.”

This really is one of the ways in which we can defend Cultural Studies. Cultural Studies never says that there is no reality; there is no real arena in which things happen. It does not contest the fact that cultural forms are tangible, that the body is real for instance, and that there are modes of production that determine the way of life we lead. But as a process one has to conceptualize these things, one has to write about it in a certain way, and this first happens in thought and concepts.

In building discourses about culture issues of identity, subjectivity, power, and representation feed back into the very materiality of things so much so that the material is also at a level textual . And therefore, as long as we have a judicious balance between the text and its underlying political economy, we cannot go wrong in Cultural Studies.