Cultural studies: Crossing borders, defending distinctions

Abstract

To identify a set of defining traits and goals of the cultural studies field is the task of this intervention. It begins by investigating how leading actors in this field today define it: the Association for Cultural Studies and the journals Cultural Studies, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Inter-Asian Cultural Studies. Three main tropes are identified: diversity, contextualization and critique. Each of them has partly succeeded but other aims remain unfulfilled. Two central tasks are formulated. First, cultural studies needs a reinforced critical reflexivity to explain what it is and why it is needed as a driving force for interactive diversity, contextualizing meaning making and communicative critique. Second, the field needs to be on high alert, stepping forward and responding fast and loud to the current totalitarian threats against sustainable and resilient academic knowledge production.

On cultural studies, again

“…In his own reflections on the state of play of cultural studies, Swedish cultural studies scholar Johan Fornäs (2020) has remarked that: ‘All disciplines are historical constructions that are often internally very heterogeneous, merely held together by a shared history and a set of institutional arrangements.’ This is a critical statement, and it brings home the crucial importance of the hard work required to create the institutional and material conditions within which cultural studies work can be pursued. For me, it has meant becoming part of ‘management’ – all too often dismissed by academics as a hindrance to their ‘real’ intellectual interests – and helping to tweak the university’s orientations in such a way that the institutional environment is hospitable to cultural studies work.…”

Culture is transnational

“…Since quite early in my doctoral programme, I have become comfortable describing my professional self as a digital media scholar specializing in critical and cultural studies at the intersections of gender, sexuality, and transnationalism. While critical studies and cultural studies are not exactly the same, for me – and for many other scholars too (Fornäs, 2020) – they have been inseparably linked. Doing cultural studies translates into certain commitments that encapsulate a particular approach and sensibility with regard to scholarship.…”

Cultural studies in South Africa, or not

“…Cultural studies is proud to define itself as diverse and contextually specific (Fornäs, 2020: 299–300), paying attention to how concepts and experiences are impacted by different places, histories, geographies and economies. In keeping with this contextualisation, it may be useful for the field to consider what culture means in the context of South Africa.…”