Grossberg (1984), "Strategies of Marxist Cultural Interpretation"

Grossberg (1984) aims to clarify debates about where Marxist cultural interpretation is and should be. He argues that the purpose of Marxist interpretation should be to describe and intervene into texts' function in culture and society. Specifically, Marxist analysts should look at how texts function in the real, concrete lives of human beings to recreate power relations.

Under this umbrella, Grossberg (1984) sees two broad questions:

1. The politics of textuality -- By "politics of textuality," Grossberg (1984) describes the changing meaning of "text" for scholars from a variety of perspectives. Debates about texts depend on where the critic sees the text originating in the cycle of communication as well as how the critic views the roles of encoding and decoding.

2. The problematic of cultural studies -- Grossberg (1984) uses "the problematic of cultural studies" to describe the relationship between society and culture. The politics of texts are defined in part by where society ends and culture begins, as well as how the two interact with one another. Grossberg (1984) notes that lived experience may also be a part of this equation for some critics.