Contemporary Cultural Studies Research Articles

Report on culture towards critical rapport: basis for cautious, conscious and careful contemporary cultural studies and literacy

PurposeThis paper offers a critical exegesis of popular culture and its intersections with the other cultural expressions in the contemporary Philippine scene. As a distinct Reformed-Evangelical critique, the paper hopes to shed light on the areas of popular culture that are often assumed rather than discussed; affirmed but not analysed.Design/methodology/approachAlthough the following exposition is readily and arguably Western by orientation, most especially on the (post)modern mood in the space it belongs, as hegemonised by Anglo-American discourse, most of the concepts that this paper tackles are definitely universal and principled in praxes. The persuasion is that these criticisms will cover even the Filipino sub-/culture and sensibility in its attempt to exegete culture ontologically and contemplate on the phenomenon of popular culture at the very least. In that case, everyone who reads and specialises in cultural hermeneutics is thereby urged to offer a conscious understanding, comprehension and correspondence on the aforementioned particular aspects, albeit not everyone in the masses can readily grasp what this paper intends to build its discourse on. In carrying out this cultural exegetical task, certain markers and indicators will be used as halters, so to defamiliarise one’s attention on matters that may have immediate correspondence to the Filipino culture in its contemporary scene/sense, be it urban, suburban or rural depending on the spatial location of the readers as they interact with this treatise. As a whole, this paper endeavours to mould and uphold one’s glocal consciousness, distinctions, and differentiations in the assessment of culture, popular culture and popular culture in the Philippines vis-a-vis or vs other factors of this shared reality, sub-/culture and literacy and their probable popular culture counterparts elsewhere in the signifying and significant human experiences, challenges and perspectives.FindingsThe paper finds out that without a critico-practical approach to the implications of popular culture, it will be an insidious challenge to anyone who wishes to coexist with it, most especially the subcultural expressions of certain communities.Originality/valueThe paper possesses novelty in its being an intersection of cultural studies, criticism, theology and philosophy as basis for interpretation of certain socio-cultural phenomena in the contemporary urban space.

Культурный трансфер в семиотической модели перевода (на примере художественного текста Дж. Хеллера)

The goal of the work is to identify the influence of temporary discursive practices on specific translation decisions. From this goal follow specific tasks in this work: to present discursive and interpretive models of translation; correlate the provisions of these concepts with real translation practice; use factual material to show translation decisions determined by temporary discursive practice. The article also explores ways to convey culturally significant information, provides successful and controversial cases of solving translation tasks through linguistic means. Translation problems, including literary translation, in contemporary philological and cultural studies are interdisciplinary. Only at the intersection of semiotic concepts and literary approaches it is possible to determine the accuracy and completeness of translation decisions in the practice of literary translation. In turn, the study of the issue of cultural transfer in this case, based on various translations of J. Heller’s novel, allows us to overcome the limiting framework of purely philological approach in translation studies. Comparing the work of translators with respect to the same text - in our case, “Catch-22” fills the-abstract concept of the “translator’s figure” with real content, especially when considering the socio-cultural environment that influenced the specificity of translation decisions. The article represents an analysis of current issues in the theory and practice of literary translation. The work offers a review of modern translation models, primarily a discursive model of translation, interpretative concept and the perception of translation as an interpretation of the source text in the existing discursive practice. This research is funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant No. AP23485752).

Myth, Insects, and Surrealism: the Influence of Henri Bergson on the Writings of Roger Caillois

The focus of this text is the influence of Henri Bergson’s ideas concerning instinct, intelligence and myth on the work of Roger Caillois. My aim is to offer a reading of intellectual history which draws Bergson back into the orbit of the French avant-garde in the 1930s. In doing so, I highlight the axiomatic presence of Bergson’s ideas on Caillois’ work, which can be described as the combining of contemporary philosophical, cultural, and social science studies with the surrealist method, most notably exemplified by the unlikely juxtaposition of the study of relations between insect behaviour and the myth-making function in humans. While the historical reception of Bergson’s ideas has largely mapped the waning of his influence in the inter-war period, I wish to present one strong case in which Bergson’s thought continued to have formative influence. It is largely assumed in studies of surrealism that Bergson had been entirely rejected by the movement for political reasons, I argue that Bergson’s ideas were in fact central to Caillois’ writings on insects and society. As well as highlighting the Bergsonian core of some of Caillois’ key works as a member of the surrealist group and the College of Sociology, I propose that the presence of Bergson’s ideas within this radical milieu contributes to the ongoing discussion of the philosopher’s influence and legacy.

Text and textile: the variability of “moire” in R. Barthes’s conceptualisations

In this paper we distinguish two approaches to understanding “moire” in the theoretical work of R. Barthes. The dominant, more authoritative approach is based on the model of the text, while the new, emerging approach is based on the metaphor of the textile. We argue that the choice of text or textile as a means of explaining “moire” should be considered inseparable from the research interests and projects of Barthes scholars. For the proponents of the text-based approach, the textile is rather a secondary, auxiliary tool that helps to explain the principles of writing, the peculiarities of reading practices, and the ways of interacting with the text. We show how the proponents of this approach follow Barthes’s works as a kind of glossary or index, looking for equivalents and examples of “moire”, working extremely closely and intensively with his methodology. On the other hand, the textile-based approach seeks the most specific material equivalent of “moire”. Moreover, this approach demonstrates that textile, as a precise and easily understood metaphor, illuminates not only Barthes’s conceptualisation of “moire” but also his processual thinking in general. This text outlines some of the operations of both approaches, which we consider valuable for the development of contemporary cultural studies. Finally, while clarifying and complementing the interpretations of the “moire” we point to its importance for understanding the other significant concepts in Barthes’s theory, especially his concept of the Neutral.

Application of traditional cultural elements in landscape design

Abstract Traditional Chinese cultural elements have diversified the framework of contemporary cultural studies and given new life to modern landscape design. Therefore, the use of traditional Chinese cultural elements in modern landscape design is the main task faced by landscape design designers. This paper establishes the SVM-design model. An in-depth study on the use of traditional cultural elements in landscape design is launched. The calculation analysis shows that the color application of traditional cultural elements is the most widely used in the creation of landscape space, and its percentage is as high as 60.22%. The use of regional characteristics of traditional cultural elements accounted for the second highest percentage, at 24.73%. The lowest percentage of pattern features of traditional cultural elements is used in the creation of landscape space, only 15.05%. The percentage of the use of traditional cultural elements of the deformation of the exaggerated clothing method is 43%. The reason for its wide application in landscape design is that it is a deformation and exaggeration treatment of the external form of traditional cultural elements to achieve the aesthetic effect of highlighting and amplifying the traditional cultural elements.

‘We can’t participate like this at football, can we’? Exploring in-person performative prosumer fandom at live PDC darts events

The nature of prosumption is one of the most important areas of debate within the study of contemporary consumer culture. David L. Andrews and George Ritzer highlighted how the majority of literature in the 21st century has focused on the sociology of sport as a form of consumer culture, and that there is a distinct lack of research into the exploration of fan atmospheres in regard to physical prosumption at live sports events as opposed to virtual spaces. We seek to address this through utilising findings from a 3-year ethnographic study at a range of live Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) events across the globe. Our findings extend existing knowledge on prosumer fandom, providing valuable insights for researchers on how sports organisations, when promoting their sporting event, utilise the fans as both producers and consumers to help create fervent atmospheres and market their sport to associated media outlets.

Thinking with Robots

Book Review| March 17 2023 Thinking with Robots Anatomy of a Robot: Literature, Cinema, and the Cultural Work of Artificial People. By Despina Kakoudaki. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press. 2014. 272 pp. Paper, $35.95; epub or pdf, $31.95.The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics. By Louis Chude-Sokei. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univ. Press. 2015. 280 pp. Paper, $27.95; e-book, $21.99.The Robotic Imaginary: The Human and the Price of Dehumanized Labor. By Jennifer Rhee. Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press. 2018. 240 pp. Cloth, $108.00; paper, $27.00; e-book, $25.65.Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures. By Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press. 2019. 256 pp. Cloth, $99.95; paper, $25.95; e-book, $15.31. Lindsay Thomas Lindsay Thomas Lindsay Thomas is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Miami, specializing in contemporary literary and cultural studies and the digital humanities. She is the author of Training for Catastrophe: Fictions of National Security after 9/11 (2021), published by the University of Minnesota Press. From 2017-21, she co-directed the digital humanities project “WhatEvery1Says: The Humanities in Public Discourse.” Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature 10575162. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575162 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Lindsay Thomas; Thinking with Robots. American Literature 2023; 10575162. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575162 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2023 by Duke University Press2023 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Book Reviews and Review Essays You do not currently have access to this content.

On resistance and pluriversal voices of subversive archaism

On resistance and pluriversal voices of subversive archaism

Analysis of Translation of Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from Original Epicenter by Michael Berry in a Post-colonialist Perspective

The West always abashes China by public opinion not only in news report and literature, but also in translation including the ones of the Chinese literature and the ones of diaries, news report, documentaries, government announcement, etc. Researchers have worked on several translations of Chinese literary works; however, they have rarely much worked on diaries. Michael Berry is a professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at UCLA and the Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. He has been a translator who translates from Chinese into English for many years as well, his works include Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers, A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Fiction and Film, and Jia Zhangke's Hometown Trilogy. Therefore, this analysis focuses on the translation strategy of translation of Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from Original Epicenter by Michael Berry, and observe if the translator has demonized China by his translation strategy.

Міфологіка в некласичних гуманітарних рефлексіях над міфом: методологічний аспект

Over the past century, a lot of conceptual reflections on myth have been accumulated; however, there has been no attempt to systematically objectify and catalog such investigations. The relevance of research can be divided into two loci: the general and the particular. The general relevance is based on the high level of entwinement of myth and its motifs within contemporary culture; the particular aspect is due to the need to objectify the 20th-century theories of myth and to define their general method (1), and to enrich cultural discourse with new works in the field of myth philosophy (2). The goal of the research is to overview the process of the emergence of myth science within the context of the late 19th-century re-mythologization as an ontological argument for cultural mythological research; to define mytho-logic as a synthetic method of non-classical interpretation of mythological material. Methods: comparative (in the analysis of 20th-century approaches to studying myth and defining the non-classical concept of myth). Objectives: to explore the components of myth science; to define the concept of re-mythologization; to argue for mytho-logic as a non-classical model for interpreting myth. Results: the components of myth science that represent a sum of non-classical approaches to studying "sacred narrative" (ritual, functional, sociological, psychoanalytic, structural, transcendental, and numinous approaches) have been investigated; the concept of re-mythologization as the actualization of myth as the object of scientific, philosophical, and artistic interest has been defined; the mytho-logic as a non-classical model of myth interpretation through its structure and logic has been justified. Conclusions: the study of myth has risen on the cognitive waves of the deep ocean of modern humanities to the heights of a problem-filled space of culture studies. Through this actualization, it has gained an interdisciplinary character and has become a dozens-of-definition concept that roams from realm to realm – just like the concept of "culture" itself. Principles of the mytho-logic can and should be expanded, as myth can be studied through any presented in myth science paths. This paradigm is not self-contained and provides variability and aspectuality in considering myth as a cultural universality, and thus is convenient and justified for use in the context of non-classical philosophy and contemporary cultural studies.

Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan by Jan Bardsley

Reviewed by: Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan by Jan Bardsley Rebecca Corbett (bio) Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan. By Jan Bardsley. University of California Press, 2021. xvi, 283 pages. $85.00, cloth; $29.95, paper; $29.95, E-book. Anyone who has spent time in Kyoto in the 2000s has likely noticed the "maiko boom" which Jan Bardsley masterfully unpacks in Maiko Masquerade. The ubiquity of the maiko figure in souvenir shops, on tourism posters, in-person with domestic and international tourists playing "dress up," and even occasionally a real maiko, permeates the city and its representation. Bardsley takes an interdisciplinary cultural studies approach to examining the media and popular culture representation of the maiko in twenty-first-century Japan, her research inspired by a question posed by her students: "What kinds of geisha stories exist these days in Japan?" In the 2000s, it is not so much the geisha (or geiko, in Kyoto, used in this book) but the teenage apprentice maiko who is the figure of popular imagination. Bardsley is particularly concerned with representation of maiko in media and popular culture. Using an impressively diverse range of sources from movies, manga, light novels, visual art, and biographies to popular guides, [End Page 214] photobooks, and even tenugui (cotton hand towels), Bardsley crafts a lively and richly nuanced narrative about this "millennial maiko." Themes that emerge in Maiko Masquerade are the performance of "maiko-likeness," maiko agency, and maiko as quintessential Japanese good girl. "Maiko-likeness" (pp. 3, 31–35), or maiko rashii maiko, is a compelling through line and where the idea of masquerade, in the title, comes from—maiko-likeness being something performed. Bardsley shows how this performance is linked to the performance of femininity in millennial Japan. This is perhaps a topic that could have been further explored by bringing in historical studies of the performance of different types of femininity in Japan. Maiko agency is found in accounts that foreground becoming a maiko as a path of a girl's own choosing, "largely due to her love of kimono and dance" (p. 3). Interwoven within this narrative is a distancing of the work of maiko from sexual servitude and exploitation which, as Bardsley shows in chapter 4, characterize earlier popular narratives of the maiko in the twentieth century. One question not fully explored is whether this distancing presents a danger of erasing historical realities of exploitation and sexual servitude. The maiko, and particularly the maiko rashii maiko that she strives to be, is "especially mannered and contained" (p. 3). As the quintessential Japanese good girl, who values traditional arts and textiles, she stands in direct contrast to other figures in popular culture such as kogal (delinquent high school girls) (pp. 13–14). Each of these themes is complex and interwoven with the others; as they recur throughout the book, Bardsley draws them out at key moments for the reader. Given the range of sources and disciplinary approaches that Maiko Masquerade employs, it will be of interest to scholars in fields such as literature, cultural studies, media studies, theater and performance studies, and gender and sexuality studies. It builds upon and makes important theoretical contributions in all of these fields and should be read by anyone with an interest in millennial Japanese culture and society, whether the figure of the maiko intrigues you or not. It is particularly nice to see a book that thanks students who inspired it as the first acknowledgment. It is clear that conversations in the classroom shaped this book in ways that make it suitable for use in the classroom itself. Chapter 5 on the "Adventures of a Boy Maiko" provides a great case study for students interested in contemporary Japanese literature, culture, and gender studies, for example. Structurally the flow between chapters is excellent, each building on themes of the preceding chapters, making the book particularly enjoyable to read as the story develops and gathers pace. It begins with a discussion of the spaces the maiko occupies, with descriptions of the five hanamachi (neighborhoods) in Kyoto where maiko live and work, alongside geiko, tea-house and okiya managers, and other workers. While each hanamachi is distinct...

Policing the Borribles: conjunctural crisis and moral panic in children’s literature

ABSTRACT Michael de Larrabeiti’s controversial series of novels for youth (published in 1975, 1981, and 1986) about the Borribles, children who grow feral and live in anarchic communities in London, were influential for the urban fantasy genre. The novels describe a fictional fantasy subculture but nevertheless engage with issues of the rise of a law-and-order society in the U.K. in the 1970s and police harassment of black youth. Drawing from the work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, the paper argues that the trilogy represents an imaginary political solution, grounded in anticapitalist, antiauthority, and antiracist ethics, to the conjunctural crisis of the 1970s and the rise of Thatcherism. The paper reads the structure of feeling of Borrible culture and argues how its narrative functions through a series of displacements to engage with racist police tactics, anarchist squats, and anticapitalist and antiwork ethics.

Swedish-American Borderlands: New Histories of Transatlantic Relations

Swedish-American Borderlands: New Histories of Transatlantic Relations

Historical mystery/detective as a literary form of artistic interpretation of history and culture

The purpose of the article is to determine specifics of historical, detective, and other retro-genres and their functioning in contemporary literature. The methodology of the work is built on interdisciplinary integration of leading methods of the contemporary Cultural studies, philosophy, and study of art. The culturological hermeneutics is a dominant polymethodological approach. The history-cultural method gives an opportunity to trace genetic links and tendencies of transformations of genres. The comparative analysis allows to distinguish typologically similar elements in different genres and to differentiate various forms that can be convergently alike. The scientific novelty of the work lies in clarification of the correlation of historical, detective, and fantastic genres, defining their specifics in artistic interpretation of history; the term "retro-genres " is introduced. Conclusions. The historical detective and other retro-genres enjoy considerable popularity, as they complement the attractions of the detective with its intrigue, with the possibility of escapist immersion in another epoch, and propose the satisfaction of curiosity as to the past of a city, country and world. There is a positive factor of the possibility of deeper and more emotional cognition of human inheritance, personal and national identity in the globalized world. The contemporary historical detective helps to get not just the general impression, but also solid facts about history, topography and "cultural soul" of city and country. For authors one of the most attractive periods is the second half of ХІХ – beginning of ХХ ct. One of the reasons is that the Neoromantics founded the canons of genres that stay popular to this day, and crated the mythologized image of city. Many of these tendencies are characteristic for the world cultural process, still, there are national trends linked both to the specific historical-cultural context and to the national mentality. For instance, in Ukrainian historical detective there is a noticeable tendency to the in-depth research of momentous historical processes in the times of bifurcation. Sometimes there are ironical rethinking of the past in a post-colonial spirit. Now this genre is flourishing, and its incessant transformations deserve further research. Key words: cultural studies, detective/mystery, historical detective, retro, artistic interpretation.

Material Culture Studies in the Age of Big Data: Digital Excavation of Homemade Face-Mask Production during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This manuscript presents a novel approach to the study of contemporary material culture using digital data. Scholars interested in the materiality of past and contemporary societies have been limited to information derived from assemblages of excavated, collected, or physically observed materials; they have yet to take full advantage of large or complex digital datasets afforded by the internet. To demonstrate the power of this approach and its potential to disrupt our understanding of the material world, we present a study of an ongoing global health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we focus on face-mask production during the pandemic across the United States in 2020 and 2021. Scraping information on homemade face-mask characteristics at multimonth intervals—including location and materials—we analyze the production of masks and their change over time. We demonstrate that this new methodology, coupled with a sociopolitical examination of mask use according to state policies and politicization, provides an unprecedented avenue to understand the changing distributions and social significances of material culture. Our study of mask making elucidates a clear linkage between partisan politics and decreasing disease mitigation effectiveness. We further reveal how time-averaged asssemblages drown out the political meanings of artifacts otherwise visible with finer temporal resolution.

КУЛТУРА СВАКОДНЕВНИЦЕ: РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИЈЕ ДРУШТВЕНЕ СТВАРНОСТИ У ДУБРОВАЧКОЈ КОМЕДИЈИ ЈЕРКО ШКРИПАЛО

The paper investigates the ways of literary modeling of Dubrovnik cultural patterns in the anonymous play Jerko Škripalo, with the aim of illuminating representations (interpreted in the key of theoretical concepts of contemporary cultural studies) of Dubrovnik social reality, ie elements of intangible and material culture. Analyzing the reflexes of everyday life of Dubrovnik society in the 17th century in the literary world of this play, as well as the oscillation between genre and reality in character formation, points to the spectrum of reality and fiction in the artistic pattern of Dubrovnik anonymous comedies, and their cultural significance in the broader context of Dubrovnik Baroque literature.

Jonas Otterbeck: The Awakening of Islamic Pop Music. In the series Music and Performance in Muslim Contexts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. 220 pages.

Something has happened to the Islamic music scene since the turn of the twenty-first century. A gradual change towards increased diversity seems to be underway: new forms of musical expressions, including instruments and popular musical tropes, and new kinds of musicians who are stylish and savvy perform their music to enthusiastic audiences, who dig their idols and share their concert experiences in social media as fans all over the world do, but with an added, faith-based flavour. This music is not merely intended to entertain and sell, even if it is orchestrated by the commercial laws of the global music industry – it also has “the goal of being perceived and accepted as Islamic” (p. 4). By experimenting with sounds, formats and styles of performance, the agents of Islamic pop or pop-nashid (nashid being an old, Arabic term for Islamic song) challenge conceptions of legitimate Islamic art, pushing the limits of what can be regarded as purposeful, ethical and authentic ways of expressing Islam in music. In his recent book, Jonas Otterbeck explores this dynamic musical context based on rich ethnographic data (interviews, participant fieldwork) and multi-media analyses, placed in dialogue with central concepts and analytical frameworks from classical Islamic theology and philosophy, ethnomusicology and various strands of the study of contemporary religion and culture.

Ethnic Minority Women’s Writing in France: Publishing Practices and Identity Formation, 1998–2005. By Claire Mouflard

In this book Claire Mouflard analyses the interplay between texts, paratexts, and epitexts to investigate how minority women’s identity construction was negotiated alongside the ‘utopic notion of French multiculturalism’ (p. 17). The book’s tightly focused chronological scope and narrow consideration of autobiographical and autofictional works enables Mouflard’s comparative approach, which draws together works published in France by female authors of North African, sub-Saharan African, and Vietnamese descent. Pairing original research into publishers’ archival materials with more traditional literary and (para)textual analyses, the book illustrates how many of the authors it considers ‘were fashioned according to gendered and colonial marketing practices’ (p. 8). Above all, Mouflard’s female-centric comparative focus on both those positionalities explicitly cognized under the banner of French multiculturalism (especially the ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’ refrain) and those who sat ‘outside of the millennium’s reductive multicultural utopia’ (notably, Franco-Vietnamese authors; p. 17), adds much to French cultural studies, race and ethnicity studies, and discussions around twentieth- and twenty-first-century French publishing politics. After an Introduction and contextualizing first chapter, each chapter then focuses on works by several female authors belonging to — or categorized as — one minority positionality. In Chapter 2, Mouflard shows how the paratexts of works by three authors officially branded as ‘Beur’ (Samira Bellil, Nina Bouraoui, and Nora Hamdi) also implicitly think of the authors along a secondary axis: banlieue or intégrée. In Chapter 3, Mouflard focuses on the paratextual construction of ‘Black’ and ‘Afro-French’ identities through works by Calixthe Beyala, Bessora, and Fatou Diome. As in Chapter 2, Mouflard traces a range of identity constructions: from Beyala’s ‘tokenization’ to Bessora’s ‘global and multifaceted black identity’ and Diome’s strategic use of the ‘epitext’ (p. 9). Finally, in Chapter 4, the focus turns to a group conspicuously absent from the ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’ formulation: Franco-Vietnamese authors. Here, Mouflard shows how publishers’ paratextual strategies branded Anna Moï and Linda Lê as ‘near-French’ literature though not without Orientalist echoes (p. 117; my emphasis). Beyond analysing how (para)texts construct gendered minority identities, Mouflard also adds depth to existing studies of the politics of metropolitan publishers and their lists, such as Gallimard’s ‘Collection blanche’ or Éditions de l’Aube’s ‘Regards croisés’. Mouflard’s original research into publishing houses’ archival records, notably those of Albin Michel (publisher of Beyala) and Christian Bourgois (publisher for Lê) in Chapter 1, unquestionably furthers existing conversations about some of the better-known authors she studies and her close readings of individual paratexts — especially those examining works’ multiple editions — are engaging and persuasive. While more time might have been spent discussing whether and how this period marks a radical break from prior or later publishing trends and unpacking whether the conclusions drawn in each case are most attributable to individual publishers, editors, or to broader, even universal publishing practices, Mouflard’s book nevertheless constitutes an important contribution to contemporary French cultural and literary studies. Above all, readers curious about the literary construction and the packaging of female minority positionalities in France will discover much to interest them.

<i>Cultural Studies</i> as a Political Practice

The phenomenon of politicization of humanitarian scientific thought is becoming increasingly noticeable in the modern philosophical, cultural and political science. Scientists and philosophers belonging to political parties are nothing new in the history of science. Today, however, this kind of division into separate groups reveals not only ideological, but also a pronounced political character. The example of the Western European, English-speaking humanitarian academic community appears to be particularly indicative in this regard. Apparently, the conflict between the increasingly radicalized left and right discourses within the English-speaking academic community is entering an active phase. To understand the nature of this confrontation, it is necessary both to consider these discourses as separate phenomena, and to delve into their historical roots. The political discourse of the New Left is most clearly revealed in the program of the so-called cultural studies that appeared among post-war English Marxist intellectuals and later took root in the USA. The term was popularized by Herbert Richard Hoggart a British academic who specialized in sociology, English literature, and British popular culture. In 1964 he founded the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham (CCCS). The history of CCCS is strongly associated with the name of Stuart Henry Hall, who was Hoggart's assistant and headed the Center since 1971. The connection between political action and cultural studies permeates the entire history of this field of knowledge. The very formation of the discipline and its institutionalization in the UK were influenced by such political and cultural events as the post-war Americanization of English popular culture, the spread of telecommunications, the new era of multiculturalism in Britain, and new critical theories. At the same time, many post-war European countries, such as Germany and France, showed interest in research, which ultimately shaped the apparatus of cultural studies. Within the framework of this program, we can see an increasingly nature perspective on culture that combines the Marxist view on the problem of culture and the sociological one but is not reduced to either of them. In this kind of paradigm, culture is understood as a consequence of people's social actions, and at the same time, as a certain system that fixes the ways of implementing these relations. This approach differs from both classical Marxism facosed on economic relations between people and from structural functionalism, in which the concepts of society and culture are almost synonymous. The author states that the discourse of the New Left and the program of cultural studies are different manifestations of a single methodological approach or worldview. At present, this is the dominant worldview in the Western academic community. The article examines the history and main methodological guidelines of this type of cultural studies, as well as today's criticism of this approach.

European cultural heritage and the politics of decolonisation

Lectio praecursoria: Johanna Turunen's contemporary cultural studies dissertation “Unlearning narratives of privilege: A decolonial reading of the European Heritage Label” was examined at the University of Jyväskylä on the 24th September 2021. The opponent was Dr. Jasper Chalcraft (European University Institute) and the custos was Associate Professor Tuuli Lähdesmäki (University of Jyväskylä).