Interrogating Cultural Studies

Edited By Paul Bowman

Description

This book presents a new approach to the field of cultural studies in the form of a series of interviews with some of the world's leading and emergent cultural theorists, including Simon Critchley, Jeremy Gilbert and Slavoj Zizek.



Framed by lively and informative introductions, which introduce the work of these thinkers, and which also introduce the reader to the crucial importance of the issues that the interviews address.



The book is an entertaining introduction to the key ideas in the field, the strengths and problematic weaknesses of cultural studies as a discipline, allowing the reader to chart its development, and to identify emerging trends.
Acknowledgements

Contributors

Introduction: Interrogating Cultural Studies

Section One: From Cultural Studies

1. Catherine Belsey: From Cultural Studies to Cultural Criticism?

2. Mieke Bal: From Cultural Studies to Cultural Analysis: ‘a controlled reflection on the formation of method’

3. Martin McQuillan: The Projection of Cultural Studies

Section Two: Cultural Studies (&) Philosophy

4. Simon Critchley: Why I Love Cultural Studies

5. Chris Norris: Two Cheers for Cultural Studies: A Philosopher’s View

Section Three: For Cultural Studies

6. Adrian Rifkin: Inventing Recollection

7. Griselda Pollock: Becoming Cultural Studies: the Daydream of the Political

Section Four: What Cultural Studies

8. Jeremy Gilbert: Friends and Enemies: Which Side is Cultural Studies On?

9. Julian Wolfreys: …as if such a thing existed…

Section Five: Positioning Cultural Studies

10. John Mowitt: Cultural Studies, in Theory

11. Jeremy Valentine: The Subject Position of Cultural Studies: Is There A Problem?

12. Steven Connor: What Can Cultural Studies Do?

Section Six: Against Cultural Studies

13. Thomas Docherty: responses

14. Lynette Hunter: unruly fugues

Index

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• Democracy

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849645010
• Langue: English

Extrait

Interrogating Cultural Studies

Theory, Politics and Practice

Edited by Paul Bowman

P Pluto Press LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA

First published 2003 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright © Pluto Press and the Contributors 2003

The right of the editor and contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 7453 1715 4 hardback ISBN 0 7453 1714 6 paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Interrogating cultural studies : theory, politics, and practice / edited by Paul Bowman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–7453–1715–4 (hbk) –– ISBN 0–7453–1714–6 (pbk) 1. Culture––Study and teaching. 2. Culture––Study and teaching––Interviews. I. Bowman, Paul, 1971– . HM623.I58 2003 306'.071––dc21

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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth EX10 9QG Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Towcester Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England

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… As If Such a Thing Existed … Julian Wolfreys

Part Four: What Cultural Studies

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Why I Love Cultural Studies Simon Critchley

Two Cheers for Cultural Studies: A Philosopher’s View Chris Norris

Part Two: Cultural Studies (&) Philosophy

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The Projection of Cultural Studies Martin McQuillan

Part Three: For Cultural Studies

Part One: From Cultural Studies

From Cultural Studies to Cultural Criticism? Catherine Belsey

From Cultural Studies to Cultural Analysis: ‘A Controlled Reflection on the Formation of Method’ Mieke Bal

Introduction: Interrogating Cultural Studies Paul Bowman

Acknowledgements

Contents

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Inventing Recollection 101 Adrian Rifkin Becoming Cultural Studies: The Daydream of the Political 125 Griselda Pollock

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Friends and Enemies: Which Side is Cultural Studies On? 145 Jeremy Gilbert

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Interrogating Cultural Studies

Part Five: Positioning Cultural Studies

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Cultural Studies, in Theory John Mowitt The Subject Position of Cultural Studies: Is There a Problem? Jeremy Valentine What Can Cultural Studies Do? Steven Connor

Part Six: Against Cultural Studies

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Responses Thomas Docherty Unruly Fugues Lynette Hunter

Notes on Contributors Index

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Acknowledgements

This book would not have happened were it not for my friend, Mark Little, of the University of Northumbria. The idea was born in con- versation with him, we discussed ideas and deliberated who to invite, together. I am indebted to him for his support, intellectual stimula- tion and friendship during its preparation. No less importantly, I am grateful to Anne Beech at Pluto Press, just as I owe thanks to every one of the contributors to this collection, all of whom deemed it worthwhile enough to devote a lot of time and energy to. Thanks also to Alison Rowley, who carried out one of the interviews; and to Diane Elam, Sue Golding, Gary Hall, and Joanna Zylinska, all of whom have helped me to do this in various ways. Margaret Shaw, Head of Media and Cultural Studies at BSUC, worked timetabling wonders to help me out, and Fiona Montgomery, Head of School, provided some financial support for me to carry out a couple of the interviews. Many thanks to Barbara Engh for pointing me in this direction in the first place, years ago. Above all, though, I am indebted to my wife, Alice. Any errors, oversights, deficiencies, or faux pas, either of (inevitable mis)representation in the various introductions, or in the organisation and editing overall are, I hope, entirely my own.

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Introduction: Interrogating Cultural Studies Paul Bowman

MISREPRESENTATION, MISCONSTRUAL

Few, if any, entire academic fields have attracted more consistently febrile attention than cultural studies. It has always received criticism, invective, vituperation; often angry, often confused and confusing (mis)representations of what it is, what it does, and why it goes about things the ways it does. It has also, of course, had its fair share of celebration, (over)indulgent congratulation and flattery. These two types of reaction entail each other: if cultural studies has often announced itself as being somehow messianic or at least deeply consequential – ‘radical’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘emancipatory’, and so on – then it is surely inevitable that those who are not involved who often, obliquely or directly, find themselves to be the objects of its cutting critiques, will protest. On reflection, more or less everyone else in the university, every other discipline, has at one or another time been critiqued, criticised, even excoriated, by cultural studies. Those in the ‘old’ arts and humanities disciplines, those in the sciences, those who are involved in anything even remotely uncritical of things like ‘capitalism’ and ‘patriarchy’ have regularly found themselves accused of being not only old fashioned and out of date (hurtful and offensive enough accusations in themselves), but also to be responsible for perpetuating such evils as sexism, racism, elitism, ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism, homophobia, right-wing con- servatism, capitalist domination, social exclusion, and so on. When they retort that, actually, no, they do not believe themselves to be evil ministers of all forms of domination, exploitation, and exclusion, a chorus of cultural studies critics unequivocally reply: ‘Oh yes you 1 are, you just don’t understand the ways in which you are.’ Celebration and condemnation are entailed from the outset. And in many respects, this has become the dominant form of debate

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around cultural studies, a discourse that has become something like a merry-go-round, or a pantomime (albeit one which may well have profoundly serious consequences). Cultural theorists of the notion of ‘performativity’, who argue that there is emancipatory potential in everyone’s propensity to ‘perform’ (and hence establish) different social identities, which might thereby transform the socio-political world, could perhaps do worse than to work out a way for cultural studies to step out of the pantomime-like, discursive black hole within which it has become embroiled. Amusing as ‘What you’re doing is bad!’, ‘Oh no it isn’t!’; ‘Oh yes it is!’, ‘Oh no it isn’t!’, can be for any young subject, surely one must grow out of it, or grow stale and pathetic. Needless to say, of course, this state of affairs is not simply something internal to cultural studies: it’s not exclusively its own fault, it does take two to tango. But if cultural studies is content to blame and decry others (who in turn criticise and deride it) for the lamentable quality of these academic exchanges, then, you could say, it has no one to blame but itself. This book was conceived with a view to attempting to transform the terms of the debate, and to do so paradoxically by reiterating some extremely traditional questions. My belief is that the histor- ically necessary and once vitally effective ‘high polemical moment’ of cultural studies has today become less than enabling, and more of an encumbrance. The radical polemics of the past have passed. Of course, what they concern has not been completed, finished, or exhausted. That is not what I’m suggesting. Cultural studies is indeed an incomplete project. However, just because evidence abounds of the continued proliferation of its chosen problematics, that does not mean that its own traditional strategies, or its standard ways of trying to intervene, have not become tired. What demands more attention today is the modality or manner of cultural studies’ efforts. The Foucauldian lessons about the need to repeat, in as many contexts and places as possible, that which you want to become laid down as ‘true’ in the ‘hearts and minds’ of the many, isn’t much jus- tification for this repetition when what is predominantly getting repeated is a fevered and systematically misrepresentative farce. What is repeated, regularly and in dispersion, are not simply the lessons of cultural studies (its intended messages), but rather their ‘reception’: not what they ‘in themselves’ articulate, but how they become articulatedassomething within a wider discursive context, for a wider audience.

Introduction

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Of course, we cannot ultimately control how what we say is received, nor how we ourselves are represented. But, of course, we also can. If not ‘ultimately’, then at least in certain contexts, in certain scenes, at certain times. Perhaps not ‘in the heat of the moment’, as it were, as in the initial polemical explosion of cultural studies’ appearance as part of a larger ‘discursive formation’ of basically very angry political and cultural movements. But perhaps one can begin to consider what one looks like to your interlocutors, if not when the flames themselves are under control, then at least when one’s relationship with the task becomes more structured, more regular. The present moment of cultural studies’ familiarity – 2 its familiarity to itself and to its others – by virtue of its very pre- dictability, affords a unique opportunity for reassessment, and hence a new chance for revivification. What does the face cultural studies presents to the world look like and signify, and what reactions will that presence most likely elicit? There have got to be different ways of making something present, presenting ourselves, our case. But of course, I do not wish to simplify things. The polemical force of cultural studies’ accusations about the largely unrecognised political aspects inextricably entailed by all forms of pursuits of knowledge, and (perhaps) all forms of cultural practice, was eminently valuable, and must never be devalued or forgotten. The battles should certainly be memorialised, revisited. There is a value in taking the kids to the pantomime, as it were, and in studying it; a need to rake and re-rake through the lessons of this history; for, as John Mowitt has argued, ‘what we believe to have happened to us bears concretely on what we are prepared to do with ourselves both now and in the future, [and] the formation of such a memory is inseparable from 3 historical, and ultimately political, practice’. Today, is cultural studies’ responsibility really just a straightfor- 4 ward process of pointing out the deficiencies of its academic others? True, such work has effects. But perhaps they are not so straightfor- wardly transformative, radical or emancipatory as they are often claimed to be, or as it was once thought they might be. One of the unintended consequences of cultural studies’ polemical elaboration might well be its having become the unknowing participant in a repetitive and increasingly normal pantomime, that has been mis- recognised or misdiagnosed, believed to be ‘crucial’ or ‘central’, but which may well be off the mark. Of course, the repetition of something that appears to be the ‘same’ will also be different each time it occurs: polemicists will necessarily modify their positions,

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changes will occur. But one of these changes is also the growing insti- tutionalisation of cultural studies itself. And if it is institutionalised as an acceptable actor in nothing more than a novel academic pantomime, then is this really all it could or should be? I do not want to become too skewed by the effects of thinking in terms of metaphors and facile analogies of the carnivalesque: the idea of figuring the contemporary scene as a pantomime now threatens to dominate my entire efforts to think cultural studies’ 5 relation to the other disciplines and institutions. So, to echo more than one contributor to this collection, the question, first of all, is howto conceive of cultural studies: which metaphors have structured its history; which metaphors has it, does it, should it, ‘live through’, and what effects have these had on what it can see, think, know and be inclined to do? There are many other metaphors, equally suggestive. One can think of cultural studies as the incessant irritant, the annoying little parasite that won’t shut up and leave everyone else alone; that speaks out, that shouts too loud, that may well therefore be unknowingly placing itself in more and more jeopardy, actually becoming more threatened to the extent that it threatens or is capable of threatening – in short, more literally endangering its life to the extent that it is institutionalised and apparently ‘stable’. This idea is contrary to the way that most people interpret its growing institutionalisation. But perhaps establishing a greater insti- tutional stability for cultural studies actually conceals its fragility, or the increasing likelihood of its demise. So what form should or must its apparently growing ‘stability’ take? One idea has always been that its proliferation reduces its ability to be cutting edge, radical or transformative. But what edges need to be cut now anyway? And is it, indeed, as valuable, urgent, radical and transformative as it sometimes claims; or is this its delusion, its ideology? The mainstays of the regulative fictions of cultural studies have always been its (fetishistic?) attachments to the marginal, the abject, and to ‘resistance’. Perhaps this is why it fears ‘success’: as this would call its bluff, blow its cover. Is the ‘proper’ cultural studies world view nothing more than an expression of its resentment? And, in any eventuality, what is the relation between its regulative fictions and its academico-political potential? Is its growing stability and pro- liferation helpful or deleterious to its ethico-political aims and intentions? Are its aims and intentions ‘realistic’? Need they be? What relation do its conscious intentions have to the consequences or effects its existence and activities have produced, wittingly or