I assume that some of us are called upon to teach introductions to cultural studies. This coming spring, I am scheduled to teach such a class at the graduate level. In the face of the current state of the nation (and the world), I have decided to try something different. To use the class to actually begin to do the sort of collaborative conjunctural analysis that is one of the most powerful and productive models of doing cultural studies. I have pasted in below the description of my idea (and already students from many departments including undergraduates have enrolled) and a number of faculty have asked if they can join the conversation.
I am writing to the listserv because I am curious as to whether anyone else is planning to do something similar because I would welcome cross-institutional conversations, including those that would cross national boundaries (because many places in the world are facing what appear on the surface at least to be similar struggles and transformations). Perhaps some of you can imagine other ways of joining the project embodied in the class.
Please feel free to contact me on or off the listserv, as you see fit.
Thanks.
As new projects and struggles to transform the world have brought about profound economic, political, sociological and cultural changes, political intellectuals have a responsibility to understand "what's going on," to analyze how these changes are realized, lived, represented and resisted in significantly different ways by different peoples in different political, cultural and geographical positions around the globe, and, through their intellectual and imaginative efforts, to open up further possibilities for struggle and change.
Given recent events, I propose that we use the class to actually at least plan out and begin a conjunctural analysis of the state of play, the balance in the field of forces, in post-electoral U.S. (which does not eliminate the need to talk about other contexts) and its relations more globally, since this many developments in the U.S. bear a striking resemblance to developments in a variety of other nations and regions.
While the Republican victory has elicited many oversimplified explanations, while progressives and centrists have found many causes on which to lay the blame, this actually seems like a time when the sort of conjunctural analysis that cultural studies supposedly practices could make an important and unique contribution. With this is mind, the class will emphasize the practice of cultural studies by beginning to work on, collaboratively, such an analysis. We will read works in cultural studies, of course, from a variety of different perspectives, places, disciplines, etc.. You will get the necessary introduction to the literature but now selected and organized more by the ability to contribute to a collective cultural studies project.
As such, the class will attempt to ask how one does critique that embraces the complexities and contradictions, the struggles over articulations, even those that have apparently been solidified. That does not assume too quickly that you know the enemy, understand the problems (and problematics), know how to interpret events or people's actions, have a grasp of the major structures of feeling. That does not confuse the hard work of analysis and the construction of hope and possibilities with the work of celebrity intellectuals. That does not think that all problems can be solved by finding the right theory in advance, or assuming that we understand the nature of the political struggles. That thinks about the complexities and contradictions, and does not dismiss the very project of a popular politics (which takes people, their common sense, their conditions and their feelings" seriously) because they define the ground on which any democratic politics is built. That does not think that the problems end when you think you have identified the enemies because you may be wrong (and because various "lefts," while not the enemy, may be part of the problem in successfully confronting the enemies and transforming the trajectories of history and the balances in the fields of force). Where does one start? How would you organize the field of investigation? How would you divide up the labor? Assuming that our goal is to say something that is not obvious, not redundant, not oversimplified, but instead is useful and has the capacity to change both our strategies and the configuration of political constituencies, the class will quite literally be a collaborative interdisciplinary research experience (maybe at bit like The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies). While, obviously, we will have to draw on the competencies of those involved, be aware that this might also mean that we all have to go off and do research, perhaps in relatively unfamiliar areas—at least to the pointing of deciding collectively upon some of the readings.
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