Week 13 Questions (Davis)

As I read the piece by Stratton and Ang, I must note that so many reflections on cultural studies feel mournful. I suspect this is undoubtedly informed by the passing of Stuart Hall. This feeling is not so much a broader bearishness towards cultural studies as a field – but a nostalgia for something once had but lost. Both authors caution against this – but it feels nonetheless present in their analysis as well as the included excerpts from Hall. 

This phenomenon is particularly pronounced re: the role of a biting political emphasis in cultural studies work. So frequently in this course we have read scholars either a) warning that cultural studies is no longer appropriately political or b) talking about scholars who say that cultural studies is no longer appropriately political. This is an insightful entry point to something about the nature of cultural studies in contemporary American contexts. Namely, there is a robust sense that cultural studies needs a sharp, polemical edge juxtaposed to increasing anxieties about censorship, retribution, and other dangers relating to pedagogical content in university classes.