[csaa-forum] Cultural studies in Australia

[Melissa Gregg]

Both Anna's and Josh's posts draw out something I find interesting: how one
comes to identify with cultural studies as either a project or a research
'badge'. I didn't graduate from a cultural studies program either, and so I
wonder whether it is possible to distinguish between learning the
methodologies of cultural studies on the one hand and perhaps the project of
cultural studies; a cultural studies subjectivity (a graduate with certain
attributes) as opposed to a cultural studies sensibility. This latter is
what I think about when considering the ethical dimension to research
practice which we raised for discussion earlier. It is how I understand that
certain work in different fields or paradigms can be in sympathy with
cultural studies as a project (CI perhaps, but also feminism and
post-colonialism, for instance).  
 

Anyway, why I find all of this interesting is because surely the key thing
to learn from the concept of hegemony (whether or not people agree with
Simon's use of it, and to the following extent I do) is that it is an
*ongoing* process of securing and maintaining a position of power. And it
strikes me that if we do not do the work to create investment in, or a
capacity to recognise the field of cultural studies at the level of younger
researchers' individual calling and identification then we risk losing very
quickly what our senior colleagues have gained for us. That is the
future-oriented work I have been hoping this list, and at a local level MACS
can do, but which at another level again the CRN is also set up to achieve.
So I for one am keen to hear more people's perceptions of their own
relationship to whatever they understand cultural studies to be. By debating
the terms amongst ourselves, we only ensure the field's dynamism and rigour
- or so history would suggest. 

 

Best

Melissa

 

Dr. Melissa Gregg
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies
and
Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies 
School of English, Media Studies and Art History
University of Queensland Australia 4072
CRICOS provider number: 00025B