The Boratization Revisited: Thinking the "South" in European Cultural Studies

Abstract

The intention of the essay is to try to understand the broader cultural conditions that surround the articulations of cultural studies in South-European Academia, but also to address the apparent ethical and political irrelevance of those articulations. A catalyst of this discussion is the author's ongoing dissatisfaction with the widespread cultural studies activities in the South being mostly part of the corporatization and westernization of Southern universities, which are increasingly distant from their much needed ethico-political public mission in times of struggling democracies and crumbling welfare states. In the attempt to propose a viable framework for the necessary future reform of the anti-discipline, three different aspects are discussed as both indicative and instrumental: the ambivalent notion and destiny of Southern "citizenship" (as the politically and legally articulated aspect of a daily performed subjectivity and belonging), the phenomenon of the eliteless transitions (including the shifts in the Southern critical public), and the role of the academic and political Marxism (including its gradual dissolution or suppression).