Page 14 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

INTRODUCTION

SPEAKING OF CULTURAL STUDIES

When I am introduced to someone I have not met before and give my name, I find I am
then commonly asked what I do for a living. As a consequence, I am inevitably next
1
asked, ’so, what is cultural studies?’ Not wanting to bore the pants off my new-found
friend, I usually mumble something about it being a bit like anthropology but in
industrialized cultures or liken it to the more familiar sociology, ‘but with a stress on
culture’. It never feels very satisfactory but it is enough for the social talk of the
occasion. However, it would not be an adequate answer in the context of a more
professional intellectual inquiry. Thus, from its inception writers involved with cultural
studies have been interrogated as to its character and have obligingly asked themselves
the same question as my acquaintance, ‘what is cultural studies anyway’?
Though the asking of the question is understandable, it is to some extent misguided.
I would suggest that when we ask about what cultural studies ‘is’ we are being tricked
by the grammar of everyday English language into taking a mistaken pathway. Rather,
the topic is more auspiciously pursued with the query ‘how do we talk about cultural
studies and for what purposes?’ than by asking the question ‘what is cultural studies?‘.
This is so because the word ’is’ comes loaded with the assumptions of
representationalism. When we ask the question ‘what is cultural studies?’ the use of’is’
implies that such a thing as cultural studies exists in an independent object world and
that we can know and name it. That is, the sign ‘cultural studies’ actually pictures a
substantive thing.
However, we cannot know what something ‘is’ when ‘is’ suggests either a
metaphysical universal truth or an accurate representation of an independent object
world. Language does not accurately represent the world but is a tool for achieving our
purposes. Knowledge is not a matter of getting an accurate picture of reality, but of
learning how best to contend with the world. Since we have a variety of purposes, we
develop a variety of languages. Thus, in re-describing the question ‘what is cultural
studies?’ as ‘how do we talk about cultural studies and for what purposes?’ we are
making the switch from a question about representation to one concerning language
use.
The idea that we cannot definitively say what an event ‘is’, and that we have different
languages for different purposes, is not simply the preserve of the philosophy of language
but is one shared by the ‘hard’ sciences. For example, at the core of quantum physics is
a wave–particle duality by which all quantum entities can be treated as both waves and
particles; as being in a particular place (particle) and in no certain place (wave). Under
some circumstances it is useful to regard photons (quantities of light) as a stream of
particles, while at other times they are best thought of in terms of wavelengths. Equally,

1 Throughout this Introduction, terms that appear in the body of the dictionary are highlighted in bold
text type, and cross-references to biographical entries are set in sans serif type.

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