Page 16 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

INTRODUCTION

A CULTURAL STUDIES CREATION STORY

In describing cultural studies as a language-game I have tried to stress two things; first
that the field is defined by its ways of speaking rather than by a fixed object of study and xv
second that cultural studies is not one thing, but rather is constituted by a plurality of
lineages – though they are connected by kinship ties. Indeed, I have tried within the
dictionary to be inclusive of the many traditions of cultural studies.However, it is also
the case that I acquired my understanding of cultural studies in a particular way and that
this history has shaped the dictionary. That is, this story of cultural studies, multi-
stranded though it is, has been shaped by the who, where, when and why of its ‘author’.
Thus, this dictionary is ‘positioned’ where the concept of positionality indicates that
the production of knowledge is always located within the vectors of time, space and
social power.
Consequently, I shall say a little about my own cultural studies creation story even
while I acknowledge there are others that could be drawn on. I was an undergraduate
in the sociology department of the University of Birmingham (UK) from 1975 to 1978
during which time the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was at its high
point under the directorship of Stuart Hall. I was never a member of the CCCS, but I was
aware of its work; I read their papers, I attended some lectures given by Stuart Hall, I
mixed in the campus political milieu in which some Centre members were active. I even
secretly snuck into the occasional CCCS seminar undetected. I was somewhat in awe of
Stuart Hall as he walked around the campus and thought that cultural studies was the
most exciting intellectual project I had ever encountered. Later my doctoral supervisor
at the University of Leeds (UK) was Janet Wolff, herself a graduate of CCCS. I have been
good friends with Chris Pawling, a former Centre member and a colleague of Paul Willis
at the University of Wolverhampton (UK). Thus, the so-called Birmingham School was
and is my starting point for an exploration of cultural studies.
For me there is a line to be drawn between the study of culture and institutionally
located cultural studies. The study of culture takes place in a variety of academic
disciplines – sociology, anthropology, English Literature etc. – and in a range of
geographical and institutional spaces, but this is not necessarily cultural studies. While
the study of culture has no origins this does not mean that cultural studies cannot be
named, and the formation of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at
Birmingham University (UK) in the 1960s was a decisive organizational instance. Since
that time cultural studies has extended its intellectual base and geographic scope and
there are self-defined cultural studies practitioners in the United States, Australia, Africa,
Asia, Latin America and Europe with each ‘formation’ of cultural studies working in
different ways. Thus, while I do not want to privilege British cultural studies per se, I am
pointing to the formation of cultural studies at Birmingham as an institutionally
significant moment. Contemporary sociology is not the work of Marx, Durkheim and
Weber any more than science is the domain of Newton and Einstein alone, but it is hard
to study these subjects without discussing these figures. Likewise, contemporary cultural
studies is not the Birmingham School, but any exploration of the field does need to
engage with its legacy.
My version of cultural studies begins then with neo-Marxism and its engagement