Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A diverse body of work from different locations concerned with the critical analysis of cultural forms and processes in contemporary and near-contemporary societies. There is no stable or single version of “cultural studies,” any more than there is of “English” or the other familiar self-proclaimed academic “subjects.” Instead the provenance and purposes of work in cultural studies have in important ways been various and context-specific. Currently, work is being initiated and carried forward in disparate locations and academic circumstances despite the increased visibility of work grouped together as cultural studies in globalized academic publishing. Consequently any narrative of the “development” of cultural studies (particularly if it stresses founding “fathers” or places) tends to be misleadingly overcoherent, though since new ventures require myths of origins, references to, for example, a “Birmingham school” have acquired their own momentum and significance. In fact, despite the plethora of such narratives (which this version will not escape), self-questioning about intellectual and political purposes and appropriate academic (or extra-academic) locations for the work have been among the few consistent features of analyses now widely recognized for their intellectual vitality and their questioning of existing frames – even though the term “cultural studies” itself was first ... log in or subscribe to read full text