Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Multiculturalism, which might be defined as a careful attention to and respect for a diversity of cultural perspectives, has been a crucial part of cultural studies throughout the history of the discipline. Cultural studies and multiculturalism at some fundamental level share the common mission of destabilizing the entrenched bodies of knowledge, ideological perspectives, and most particularly the representational and interpretive practices through which the dominant culture shapes and regulates the production and consumption of knowledge. Both academic discourses, in their original forms, fundamentally challenge traditional literary and cultural canons, what counts as “literature” and “culture,” as well as what are considered appropriate tools or modes of interpretation for assessing and analyzing literature and culture. In their most progressive forms, they are effectively allied and mutually supportive juggernaut theoretical movements and discursive fields that powerfully infiltrated and influenced reconfigurations of academic institutions in the 1980s and ‘90s, reshaping – or attempting to reshape – the contours and contents of traditional disciplines and their modes and methods of inquiry. While cultural studies has multiple intellectual and political sources, its emergence and development can certainly be traced to the mid-twentieth-century writings of Raymond Williams and ... log in or subscribe to read full text