This paper proposes a postmodernism and cultural studies influenced collorary to Cynthia Dillard's notion of "an endarkened feminist epistemology." The paper illustrates that Dillard has developed the notion principally as enabling of a project of recueillement: the articulation of a black feminist epistemology and research paradigm. What remains unaddressed in this project (albeit understandably), is the question of what difference difference makes within an endarkened epistemology. Illustrating that difference always compounds and complicates matters, the paper proceeds to draw on postmodernist and cultural studies theory to work with the ways in which race, gender, and sexual orientation interplay to produce an articulation that does not displace the notion of an endarkened feminist epistemology but rather runs parallel and acts as a corollary in the same dual project of contributing to both the "curiously belated" examination of race and racism in educational research in general, and the development of a black feminist epistemology and research paradigm in particular.
This article challenges the widely held assumptions that cultural studies originated in Britain and that the CCCS at Birmingham was the first site of organized cultural studies. Drawing on the very characteristics ascribed to early cultural studies work, the article illustrates that various moments at various other locations, from the Folk Schools of Denmark in the 1920s to Highlander School in North America's Appalachia in the 1930s to the Kamiriithu project in Kenya in the 1970s could and should be identified as 'other' origins of cultural studies. The aim in generating a multiplicity of origins is not to suggest that the Birmingham origin is 'false' but to underscore the point that cultural studies has multiple origins rather than a singular origin; to provide concrete examples of those other origins that are too seldom suggested and almost never pinpointed; and, most importantly, to contribute to the evolution of a more international cultural studies as well as to keeping cultural studies in progressive, anti-disciplinary flux.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.