Cultural Studies: Generations

Posted on | February 28, 2007 | 2 Comments

So aside from all the important things like wishing my Dad Happy Birthday and getting my haircut today I’m currently arranging hotels and train transfers while working on the lecture I’m giving at the University of Tampere next week. It’s on generationalism and cultural studies, and I’ll base it on arguments I make in my book as well as some new material I’m working on for one of the papers I’m doing at Cultural Studies Now in July (the paper’s called “‘A momentarily fixed passion’: The changing ‘we’ of cultural studies’ vocation” and it’s part of a panel on generationalism that also includes Kate Crawford, Gil Rodman and Jason Wilson).

I’m finding Gary Hall and Clare Birchall’s recent book, New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory really useful for fleshing out some of these issues. It’s an edited collection of essays – some of which are written by close colleagues and friends of mine – and in the next few posts I’ll share a few of my notes. It’s got some great pieces worth tracking down and discussing further (on Agamben, Zizek and Badiou in particular) as well as plenty of fresh thinking about the politics of internationalisation.

Jean and I have discussed the problems of generational positioning before in the issue of Continuum we edited, and while in the lecture I’ll suggest gender and geography have been equally significant factors in finding an appropriate cultural studies speaking position, it seems to me generational shifts are one of the more realistic – if often simplistic – ways of discussing the field’s awkward relationship to the academy on one hand and theory on the other.

Anyway, I’ll have more to say as I get further in to this, but to get the ball rolling, here’s an interesting snippet from Jeremy Gilbert‘s chapter ‘Cultural Studies and Anti-Capitalism’:

… anti-capitalist literature and practice rarely if ever demonstrate any awareness of cultural studies’ existence. A partial exception is Naomi Klein, who counterposes the anti-sweatshop movement to the campus-bound narcissism of identity politics (Klein 2000), while also directly and indirectly drawing on work in the cultural studies tradition in making its arguments about the commodification of the image in the emergence of brand culture. But Klein’s tendency to reinvent the Situationist/Frankfurt-School wheel is also depressing to anyone with an undergraduate knowledge of cultural theory. More widely, the movement in fact displays many of the features of the Anglophone left which helped to provoke cultural studies into existence in the first place. A complete failure even to begin to understand what might be at stake in winning popular support and a self-righteous contempt for the totality of popular culture are the main features of any discussion of cultural issues within the anti-capitalist literature. More striking, however, is the simple absence of such discussion at all. A glance at any Indymedia site reveals the extent to which the general engagement with ‘cultural’ issues – from the ‘arts’ to ‘lifestyle’ questions – is at best marginal and more commonly non-existent. A puritanical abstention from ordinary cultural life – apart from the obligatory attendance at samba drumming classes and occasional punk gigs – is a notorious feature of ‘activist’ life. (p. 194)

Category: Reading, Research

Comments

2 Responses to “Cultural Studies: Generations”

  1. glen
    February 28th, 2007 @ 11:38 am

    mel, as we have previously discussed, a project bridging the gap between the “disseminators” and the “inheritors” through a tracing of the networks of distribution, collaboration and (non)institutionalisation through the remnants of the archive and an investigation into the publishing regimes of bygone eras may be useful for expositions of generational shifts.

  2. sushil_yadav
    March 4th, 2007 @ 3:41 pm

    In response to your post on “cultural studies”:

    The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.

    The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

    Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.

    Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
    Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
    Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.

    Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

    If there are no gaps there is no emotion.

    Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.

    When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.

    There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.

    People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.

    Emotion ends.

    Man becomes machine.

    A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

    A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

    A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.

    Fast visuals/ words make slow emotions extinct.

    Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys emotional circuits.

    A fast (large) society cannot feel pain / remorse / empathy.

    A fast (large) society will always be cruel to Animals/ Trees/ Air/ Water/ Land and to Itself.

    To read the complete article please follow either of these links :

    PlanetSave

    EarthNewsWire
    sushil_yadav

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