And of course I’m wrapped up in this. The book is about cultural studies! But I don’t think I’m endorsing any hierarchy. You’re making me feel like I can’t share what I’m reading without having a political position on it.

What I am saying is that Rojek’s line is not new. Of course we should recognise new things when they happen. But his rhetorical stance this argument (repeated in various forms across a number of different articles) is not new, but all too familiar. He’s a bloody UK Professor! He is at the bloody centre of (usually subtly) anti-poco, anti-feminist, anti-queer CS “iconoclasm”. Seriously Mel, I think your book might have you a little too wrapped up in the CS hierarchy.

I can stomach the anti-Hallism of young neo-deluzians before this, sorry! At least they’re trying to go somewhere with their formalism.

1) Person X isn’t *really* political. They only sound political. [This is often followed with 'What is person X doing about Zimbabwe, they're pretty quiet about that, ha!']

2) Even though Person X takes the moral high ground they are in fact the ones in power! That’ll take a bit of the wind out of your sails eh?

The really simple issue is that these sorts of declamatory arguments never specifically account for what the arguer is doing about it. So in this case, for example, we should be suspicious of Hall’s “hegemony” (because it’s hegemonic!) and hearing more from… what, exactly? White guys like Rojek who write about leisure? Yeah, he’s representing the marginalised voices alright. Give me a break.

As Josh suggests, a reading of this positionality that can look forward would be helpful.

Your description of this as ‘war’ is really interesting Mel. It seems some of the most provocative work in cultural studies at the moment revolves around the question of who has the right to account for the field. This provokes intense debate as the speaking position adopted results in (includes?) assumptions about the right to occupy such a position. What flows are a pattern of disagreements about the legitimacy of the speaking position, or more properly, the subsequent contours of the field that emerge from the speaking position. This itself is nothing new; the politics revealed by speaking positions and discontent with the subsequent patterns of representation and power relations revealed are classic cultural studies topics. However, the current works being debated seem retrospective in their assessments of cultural studies, rather than the exploratory reviews accounting for the field that emerged in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Are these current descriptions of the field critical in their assessment more than previous edited collections attempting to ground the field by demonstrating its politics? Are the politics revealed by editing policies “less” controversial because absences can be filled by supplementary readings that may supplement, rather than challenge, the coherence of the account?

The current round of disputes articulate disjuncture across the field, which makes your suggestion that cultural studies may be suffering from its own success seem quite apt – is this a civil skirmish rather than a war? Are there distinct, opposing bodies taking aim at each other, or is cultural studies starting to eat itself?