Cultural Studies: Poetic over Rhetoric?

Here is the question -- does the discipline of cultural studies value poetic over rhetoric? And if so, what does this mean to the future of the field?

I tend to endorse a somewhat Derridean poststructuralist view of meaning-making. I believe that nothing is stable -- for a reader, every sign is affected by context, situated in a historical and personal moment, and will necessarily be altered by/in the future. In this sense, language and cultural texts deny access to any real "truth" -- it only allows access to contextual, unstable meanings.

In an attempt to answer the question above, I'd suggest that the English studies still endorses a somewhat limited definition of "rhetoric," and thus it seems that we privilege poetic. "Poetic" (consumption of texts) has a very broad and fluid identity in cultural studies projects. The texts served up for analysis are broadly defined -- written texts, music, art, advertising, film....etc. However, when analysis does occur -- when theory occurs -- we don't think of this as production or as a rhetorical act. Our view of rhetoric is very narrow, and seems only to include production of physical objects. Because theory is intangible, it isn't considered rhetorical.