Page 26 - Culture and Cultural Studies

AN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL STUDIES 25

There are two central concerns that have emerged in and through postcolonial theory
(Williams and Chrisman, 1993), namely those of domination–subordination and
hybridity–creolization. Questions of domination and subordination surface most directly
through colonial military control and the structured subordination of racialized groups.
In more cultural terms, questions arise about the denigration and subordination of
‘native’ culture by colonial and imperial powers along with the relationship between place
and diaspora identities.
The question of hybridity or creolization points to the fact that neither the colonial nor
colonized cultures and languages can be presented in a ‘pure’ form. Inseparable from each
other, they give rise to forms of hybridity. In metropolitan cultures like America and
Britain, this concept is reworked to include the hybrid cultures produced by, for example,
Latino-Americans and British Asians.

THE NEW CULTURAL STUDIES PROJECT

Hall and Birchall’s edited book New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory (2006) makes
the claim that there is a ‘new’ wave of cultural studies. In particular they are interested in
the place of theory in cultural studies. They do this by presenting the work of what they
argue is a ‘post-Birmingham-School’ generation of cultural studies writers such as Neil
Badmington (writing about posthumanism); Caroline Bassett (writing about digital cul-
tures); Dave Boothroyd (writing on drugs); Jeremy Gilbert (writing about anti-capitalist
politics); and Joanna Zylinska (writing about bioethics in the age of new media), amongst
a number of other writers.
They also explore the work of thinkers who influenced and informed the ‘new’ cultural
studies. Here a decidedly ‘old’ list of philosophers appears including Deleuze, Laclau,
Agamben, Bataille, Zizek and others. So what is ‘new’ here is the use to which these phi-
losophers are put by the latest wave of cultural studies writers, as Hall and Birchall see it.
The writing of the new cultural studies as presented in the volume is disparate and not
easily lumped together. It is hard to see, in many ways, how this adds up to something that
could be seen as a coherent new project. There does seem to be a touch of hype about the
book’s title. That said, some thematic strands do emerge:

v theorists trying to conceive of democracy and politics in new ways using the work
of Laclau and Mouffe, Deleuze, Agamben and Luhmann, in which ideas drawn
from Marxism and materialism are prominent (see Chapter 14);

v theorists that challenge the intersection between human and non-human or not-
human; between nature (biology) and culture (technology/science) and between
human/animal. Key theorists here include Haraway, Ihde, and Latour. A key
theme is the convergence of culture and science in which science is understood

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