Page 6 - Culture and Cultural Studies

AN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL STUDIES 5

analysis, ‘which is embedded, descriptive, and historically and contextually specific’, there
are some concepts in cultural studies across the globe which form ‘a history of real
achievements that is now part of the cultural studies tradition’, and to do without which
would be ‘to willingly accept real incapacitation’ (Grossberg et al., 1992: 8). Concepts are
tools for thinking and acting in the world.

Cultural studies as politics

It remains difficult to pin down the boundaries of cultural studies as a coherent, unified,
academic discipline with clear-cut substantive topics, concepts and methods that differenti-
ate it from other disciplines. Cultural studies has always been a multi- or post-disciplinary
field of enquiry which blurs the boundaries between itself and other ‘subjects’. Yet cultural
studies cannot be said to be anything. It is not physics, it is not sociology and it is not lin-
guistics, though it draws upon these subject areas. Indeed, there must be, as Hall (1992a)
argues, something at stake in cultural studies that differentiates it from other subject areas.
For Hall, what is at stake is the connection that cultural studies seeks to make to mat-
ters of power and cultural politics. That is, to an exploration of representations of and
‘for’ marginalized social groups and the need for cultural change. Hence, cultural studies
is a body of theory generated by thinkers who regard the production of theoretical knowl-
edge as a political practice. Here, knowledge is never a neutral or objective phenomenon
but a matter of positionality, that is, of the place from which one speaks, to whom, and
for what purposes.

THE PARAMETERS OF CULTURAL STUDIES

There is a difference between the study of culture and institutionally located cultural
studies. The study of culture has taken place in a variety of academic disciplines – sociol-
ogy, anthropology, English literature, etc. – and in a range of geographical and institutional
spaces. However, this is not to be understood as cultural studies. The study of culture has
no origins, and to locate one is to exclude other possible starting points. Nevertheless this
does not mean that cultural studies cannot be named and its key concepts identified.
Cultural studies is a discursive formation, that is, ‘a cluster (or formation) of ideas,
images and practices, which provide ways of talking about, forms of knowledge and con-
duct associated with, a particular topic, social activity or institutional site in society’ (Hall,
1997a: 6). Cultural studies is constituted by a regulated way of speaking about objects
(which it brings into view) and coheres around key concepts, ideas and concerns. Further,
cultural studies had a moment at which it named itself, even though that naming marks
only a cut or snapshot of an ever-evolving intellectual project.

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