So-Called Cultural Studies: Dead Ends and Reinvented Wheels
Cultural Studies, 12 (4):
476--497 (October 1998)DOI: 10.1080/09502386.1998.10383116
Abstract
In the UK we have recently witnessed a series of attacks on the overall project of cultural studies, both in the popular press and, within the academy, by scholars associated with the more established disciplines of sociology and anthropology. The critiques variously argue that cultural studies has led us into a political 'dead end' (in particular, in its emphasis on the study of cultural consumption); has abandoned 'politics' altogether (at least, in one definition of the term); has done little more than reinvent (in ignorance) the old (and indeed outmoded) theoretical wheels of an earlier intellectual tradition, and/or that, in general, the 'excesses' of its project have only confirmed the worst fears of those who were opposed to it in the first place. In these critiques it is argued that it is (somehow) both time to move 'beyond' cultural studies altogether, and time to return to the more secure disciplinary foundations and rigorous methodological procedures of sociology, and/or political economy and anthropology. This article considers the theoretical and political occasions of this interesting (hyper?) critical phenomenon, and considers whether, notwithstanding the very real current problems and divisions within cultural studies itself, the contributions of cultural studies over the last twenty years have now so transformed our field of study that the critics' proposed return to 'The Good Old Ways' may simply no longer be possible (even if it were desirable).