"The Need for Cultural Studies: Resisting Intellectuals and Oppositional Public Spheres," by Henry Giroux, David Shumway, Paul Smith, and James Sosnoski.
I really enjoyed reading this piece. In this essay, Giroux et al. make an argument for "the necessity of a counter-disciplinary praxis," with regard to Cultural Studies (2). By this they mean that Cultural Studies does not neatly (or ideally) fit into the typical parameters and silos (in some cases) of an academic discipline. They acknowledge and state that the main problem with this praxis is that Cultural Studies is unable to exist in this ideal (i.e., counter-disciplinary) conception within the context of the corporate, neoliberal university. I enjoyed this piece so much because I have often felt the tension of wanting to be a "resisting intellectual" (as they propose), while also knowing I must function within the constraints of the university-as-is in order to finish my program and produce scholarship. While the authors speak to this tension, they did not seem to provide a concrete solution.
Question: How do we become resisting intellectuals and help create the conditions for a counter-institution to exist in place of the corporate, neoliberal university? I hope to eventually find an answer that adequately addresses the dissonance I feel. I'm particularly interested in an answer that provides a foundation for a concrete shift in my own praxis as a budding scholar. I also wonder if it is helpful for us to think about Hall's assertion in "The Meaning of New Times" that "cultural time is…glacial" (230). That is, I wonder if we can use this idea of glacial time to put this kind of transformation into perspective and explore whether the tensions I mentioned are merely a result of being in a moment where changes are occurring very slowly or something else.
From Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, "The meaning of New Times" by Stuart Hall.
This piece was so rich and I imagine it would be possible to revisit it weekly as a class and still take something new away from it each time. Throughout my academic career, I have encountered (seemingly) countless discussions about all the various "posts" (e.g., post-industrialism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, etc.). Something I really loved about this piece was Hall's statement that each of these "expresses a clearer sense of what we are leaving behind…than of where we are heading" (223). In the rest of the essay, Hall describes how some of these "posts," such as post-industrialism, post-Fordism, and post-modernism (to name a few) are each related to the concept of "New Times." I am interested in slowing down and thinking through his statement that what we leave behind is clearer than what these mean for the future.
Question: What do we lose or leave behind when we shift to a post-something society? I am just as interested to discuss how we determine what it is we leave behind even as we are trying to be optimistic about where we are heading. As a budding scholar, I feel this is important, especially given that the larger intellectual community seems to always be ready for the next post-something.
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