INSTRUMENTOS DE EVALUACIÓN

I begin, then, with an assessment of the social environment in which the hero of heroic fantasy exists, positing that the pre-industrial clime is not an essential social setting, although by far the most utilised, but the social convention of gift-giving is. Gifts incorporate the hero into society, obliging as well as enabling him to fulfil his destiny of eschewing totalitarian chaos for a more enlightened order. After Mauss I refer to this gift economy as a “moral economy”; however, morality as an idea has not been intrinsic to the cultural studies project.28 _{Given that cultural studies has generally refused to accept the}

28 _{Although the terms “ethics” and “morality” are sometimes used interchangeably in that they} both dwell on the issues of what is good and what is bad, I use morality here to specifically refer to a behavioural code that originates with the individual but submits those actions or ideas to the benefit of the social group (see The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy 366-7). Where ethics is more closely aligned with a formalized doctrine for a particular group (business ethics, religious ethics), morality implies that consideration of what is right and wrong has begun with the autonomous individual, taking into account personal and group welfare. I posit that where ethics is imposed upon the individual by the group for the benefit of the latter, morality, with decision-making coming from the individual, allows for the potential that the individual has a better understanding of what is right and wrong than the received wisdom of the group and so opens up the possibility of social change. This is most obvious in Harry Potter, with the hero refusing to condone bureaucratic bungling as the Ministry of Magic incarcerate innocents as a means to presenting an image of positive action and ameliorating widespread panic. The heroic fantasy, then, promotes the “reflexivity” that Giddens identifies as problematic for the

evaluative judgements of the Frankfurt School or liberal humanism, it follows that this critical theory does not indulge in evaluation per se; whether the cultural artefact or practice under consideration is right or wrong, good or bad, is not for the cultural studies critic to assess, but rather to reveal the “real” or obscured impetus for such cultural effects – to contextualise: “contextualism aims to understand any event relationally, as a condensation of multiple determinations and effects . . . and embodies the commitment to the openness and contingency of social reality where change is the given norm” (Grossberg, “Does Cultural Studies” 4).

Chris Barker, however, advocates a paradigm shift for cultural studies from the politics of inequality to the “life-politics of meaningfulness” (Making

Sense 20). Although these two goals are not necessarily disparate, Barker argues

that it is time for cultural studies to focus upon the emotional paucity of western societies where few are absolutely poor in a material sense:

We need such a spiritual intelligence in relation to a rampant consumer culture that is producing more discontent than happiness because of the black hole of meaninglessness that remains after

individual within late modernity, but offers relief by presenting a moral code or order upon which readers can base their own conduct.

consumption is over. We also need it in relation to the stress, fatigue and social isolation that mark western culture. (20)

For some cultural studies critics such concerns have always been central to their work. Fred Inglis, for example, believes “the heart of the matter for

Cultural Studies is the study of values in culture, where culture simply is the system of humanly expressive practices by which values are renewed, created, subverted, and contested” (Cultural Studies 38). Given that I read the heroic fantasy as responding to the oppressive deconstruction of the individual and his social environment, I place the genre’s moral code and its corresponding imagined security - ontological and physical – at the heart of this thesis. Wayne Booth has warned that:

Anyone who attempts to invite ethical criticism back into the front parlour, to join more fashionable, less threatening varieties, must know from the beginning that no simple, definitive conclusions, lie ahead. . . . But if the powerful stories we tell each other really matter to us – and even the most sceptical theorists imply by their practice that stories do matter – then a criticism that takes their “mattering” seriously cannot be ignored. (4)

I propose that the heroic fantasy conveys a healing narrative for the individual in late modernity. The current phenomena deriving from The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter suggest that collectively we are indulging in “ahistorical nostalgia” (aided and abetted by the culture industries), “as we often do,” Kimmel writes, “during periods of uncertainty, suggesting that earlier times were happier, easier, and more stable times” (262). These stories therefore “matter”, given that they represent a dominant fantasy of the time.

So, unlike Stuart Hall, I do give a damn about popular culture other than as a road to a socialist utopia; with heroic fantasy‘s influence so pervasive, I care very much about the types of images, ideas and behaviour the consumer is encouraged to accept. It may be that I personally prefer marginal heroic

fantasies, such as Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and Le Guin’s Earthsea stories, but it is the conservative fantasies that are finding particular purchase at the turn of the millennium – and I’m

interested in finding out why.

The following chapter, therefore, considers how the hero finds

“meaningfulness” through social obligation. Capitalism promotes the self as the endlessly desiring subject, but heroic fantasy holds up the hero as finding purpose and peace by subsuming the individual to the collective, which is in large part produced through the social contract of gift-giving. How this

concept of a moral economy “survives” commodification is the subject of chapter four.