Cultural Studies emerged by displacing culturalism with Gramsci, structuralism, semiology, and discourse theory.

Evidence

Stuart’s approach, while initially much influenced by dialogues with the work of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, and Edward Thompson, gradually moved away from that left-wing “culturalist” perspective—and from the more fundamentalist forms of Marxism espoused by some parts of the New Left. This transition occurred at CCCS through a series of paradigm-shifting intellectual encounters both with revisionist forms of Marxism (especially Althusser, Poulantzas, and, most importantly, Gramsci), structural anthropology and linguistics (Lévi-Strauss, Saussure), semiology (Barthes and Veron), and later with psychoanalytic theory (both Freud and Lacan), deconstruction, and new forms of historical work based around discourse analysis of a variety of types (Foucault, Derrida). — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 19

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the precise theoretical lineage — culturalism versus structuralism/gramscism — that scaffolds cultural studies’ conceptual toolkit.
• XREF: Feeds directly into the Islamophobia field’s vocabulary: Gramsci’s hegemony and Foucault’s discourse are load-bearing concepts there.