The Everyday Life of Cultural Studies

Abstract

The migration of the tag 'cultural studies' across national borders and onto an increasing number of book jackets, course calendars, conference notices, and journal issues suggests the possibility of an emerging consensus on the kind of practice that is to be performed under this rubric. Yet when confronted with its rising institutional and international currency, many people working in the field insist on the importance of keeping its official definition open. The success of cultural studies prevails in tension with its emergence from a politically charged critique of the inherited assumptions that have guided the organization and production of knowledge in the academy. Consequently, a common refrain within cultural studies warns that if the field is to maintain its oppositional stance against the elastic forces of hegemony, it cannot merely provide a venue for interdisciplinary study, but must remain 'actively and aggressively anti-disciplinary,' stubbornly resisting its own formalization within an institutional apparatus (Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichler, 2). By withholding the declaration of its proper place within the university, cultural studies stays in touch with the politics of a domain that historically has been bracketed off from academic scrutiny. This domain provides cultural studies, in the absence of a defined disciplinary frame, with a kind of rallying cry. The field's theoretical limits are almost always invoked with an appeal to its phantom substratum, with an affirmation that cultural studies exists in the name of everyday life or it had best not exist at all.