Cultural studies should be a political act against the institutionalizing processes of becoming disciplined
Keyword: cultural studies
Q3C
Cultural Studies would, could, should, must, will, and does begin queerly in the middle of things.
Queer
Creative
Critical
Compositionism
Academic
Cultural studies should be a deliberate site of sustained and sustainable struggle.
Cultural Studies Should Gamify
I’ve created GamifytheCSA.org, an experiment in gamifying the academic conference. Gamifying the CSA will enhance serious play in discourse and practice and expand the scope of the conference, with models in business and social networking with programs such as FourSquare, and extending to health and fitness, with programs such as Zombies, Run!, and the list goes on.
Lateral is Back
Lateral II is also, like the first, a braiding of research threads. This time we offer a triple helix. The Cultural Industries thread, curated by Jaafar Aksikas, presents a conversation between two nodes of cultural studies that move in and outside the academy Ien Ang’s Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney, and the Cultural Studies Praxis Collective at the University of Washington. This intersectoral work hints at an alter-economy, what it terms a negotiation with partners for critical purchase that complicates the reductive rubrics of neoliberal exchange. The Theory Thread, curated by Patricia Clough features a dossier on digital feminism assembled by Katherine Behar. This too is an effort to find value beyond measure, but also to refuse the algorithms of success, to assert the ungoogleable, the necessary failure, in pursuit of an anti-search engine that might power other reservoirs of thought. The Universities in Question Thread, is curated by student activists Megan Turner and Niall Twohig, and art from the smARTaction collective curated by Tina Orlandini. This dossier of manifestos and art works from various university mobilizations and occupations from Quebec, Cairo, Occupy Wall Street, University of California, and University of Puerto Rico, document the creativity that lies within critical mobilizations and the contagious proliferation of forms that this emergent politics takes.
Critical Purchase in Neoliberal Times
‘Critical Purchase in Neoliberal Times’ is an edited conversation with Ien Ang and three members of the Cultural Studies Praxis Collective (CSPC): Miriam Bartha, Bruce Burgett, and Ron Krabill. The transcript of the conversation conducted at the University of Washington was reworked and revised by the interlocutors. The document as a whole surfaces and addresses a series of questions about engaged and community-based forms of cultural studies scholarship; multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and media policy; and the future of the transnational field of cultural studies in the context of the neoliberal turn in global higher education.
Editors’ Introduction
In this inaugural issue, Lateral takes the form of a cluster of four research threads. The initial threads converge around a consideration of knowledge formations, institutional and material location, and political intervention and implication. The initial four threads are meant as an exploration of what is possible and an invitation for further work. Theory and Method, curated by Patricia Clough, treats various forms of knowing and being in cultural studies research. Creative Industries, curated by Jaafar Aksikas, invites composite methodological approaches to intersectoral flows inside and outside the university. Universities in Question, curated by Bruce Burgett and Randy Martin, decenters established claims for disciplinary, labor, and political economic legitimations for higher education. Mobilisations, Interventions, and Cultural Policy curated by Emma Dowling, pursues current transformational activisms to rethink values of polity, policy, and participation.
“Nothing gold can stay:” Labor, Political Economy, and the Birmingham Legacy of the Culture Industries Debate
Over the course of the last 150 years or so, we can see three distinct phases of the culture industry. More specifically, there have been (at least) three eras marked by different configurations of the relationship between culture, politics, the dominant mode of production and the commodification of culture. Cultural Studies emerged from the second era, whose contours I’ll explore here; and we are now in a liminal phase brought on by the uncertain conflagration between the neoliberalism, convergence culture, and nascent popular uprisings under the banner (and hashtag) #occupyeverywhere. This third phase, or conjuncture, once again reconfigures these relations, making it important to revise the theoretical assumptions and political strategies that were adhered to in an earlier era of “the culture industry.” I will outline the direction I think this points to both in our understanding of the culture industries and in terms of political and theoretical strategy going forward.
Introduction: Theory and Method
The Theory and Method Thread of Lateral launches its first publication with two essays, one by John Mowitt of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at University of Minnesota and one by Jared Sexton, Director of African American Studies, School of Humanities at University of California Irvine. Together their essays along with responses by Christina Sharpe of American Studies at Tufts University, Adam Sitze of Black Studies and Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College and Morgan Adamson of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at University of Minnesota, all take theory to one of the most pressing, worldly and yet intimate, of issues faced by each of us, whether working in and/or outside the academy: that is, the conditions of study, or studies, in the University.
Lateral Moves – Across Disciplines
“Lateral Moves – Across Disciplines” is an edited conversation with Randy Martin and three members of the Cultural Studies Praxis Collective (CSPC): Miriam Bartha, Diane Douglas, and Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren. The original conversation took place at the University of Washington’s Simpson Center for the Humanities in 2007. The transcript of the conversation was reworked and revised by the interlocutors and Bruce Burgett, the co-director (along with Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren) of the CSPC. The document as a whole surfaces and addresses a series of questions about interdisciplinarity, cultural studies, and the humanities; about creativity, agency, and advocacy; about different forms of professional, disciplinary, and civic education; and about knowledge, labor, and organizing.