What's Left? Portuguese Cultural Studies

Abstract

To start an introduction to a thematic issue on Portuguese Cultural Studies that purportedly aims at bringing attention to such studies and to foster themwith the question of what's left? may seem odd at least, if not completely misguided. But of course, the question is intended not as aprovocation but as a serious appeal to take stock, right from the beginning, both of the way in which any supposedly new method, disciplinary aggregate, or even inclination, in academic discourse must first of all contend with previous, established forms with which it clashes, as well as to the way in which Cultural Studies has always been involved with the political and specifically with a certain kind of left politics. From the evergrowing pile of studies and discussions on what exactly might constitute Cultural Studies, it is evident that one of its main areas of contention involves literary studies, traditional literary studies at least, of the kind that have formed the backbone of university education in the Arts for a great part of the twentieth century. The debate is anything but academic since what is at stake is not simply one label or another but, rather, the configuration of what ought to be higher learning, what might constitute scholarship, what passes for theoretical rather than applied knowledge, the formation and division of labor in universities, the intellectual grounding of new generations of students who, for the most part, bereft of possibilities for an academic career will join a work force more often than not shaped by the desires and needs of multinational corporations, and perhaps the very idea of the university itself. Conflicts among diverse university bodies are of course nothing new and Kant's Der Streit der Fakultaten [ I 7981 remains a key text to guide us in understanding many aspects of the contemporary struggles. Cultural Studies, such as have been gaining ground especially in American and other Anglophone universities have clashed directly with a variety of more traditional disciplines, chiefly with literary studies, history, anthropology and sociology. For literary studies the advent of Cultural Studies might seem particularly nefarious given the endemic lack of confidence among many of its practitioners as to the value of the discipline they practice when compared to other more clearly scientific or objective ones, and certainly when confronted with increasing demands for accountability by society at large. Add to this declining enrollments, students who arrive at the gates of the University with ever less general humanistic knowledge, externally imposed budgetary restraints, and the increasing popularity of media and communication studies, and the stage is set for a murderous struggle. However, one should be careful not to lose sight of particular circumstances and positionings. Portuguese Studies are not directly comparable to American Studies and there are also important differences between what we might understand as Portuguese Studies as they are practiced in Portugal or Brazil, and as they take shape in other countries. Furthermore, when speaking of Portuguese Studies one cannot be certain of having a consensus at all. Clearly, it would seem that in any variant the study of literature would be central, if by literature we understand those canonized texts that have been most influential in shaping an idea of Portuguese culture across the centuries. But the study of such