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September 24, 2004

i just read a paper called 'the anti-political populism of cultural studies'

Posted by dogpossum on September 24, 2004 7:45 PM in the category academia

by todd gitlin (in cultural studies in question, edited by marjorie ferguson and peter golding, 1997). i'm not really sure how i feel about it.
i mean, i've had troubles with the work done by quite a few people in cultural studies programs in the unis i've been at - they just seemed depoliticised in a worrying way. especially to me, whose always done feminist work where i've really tried to make my research practical, have some sort of political use-value.

and gitlin is echoing all that, but he seems fairly tough. and he's really getting into the cultural studies people of today. his key point is that they shouldn't pretend that they're doing 'politics' just because they're doing popular/populist stuff. that doing 'politics' is actually a bit more complicated (and he places 'politics' right over there in the activist camp, doing things like rallying and protesting and writing pamphlets and so on).

i'm a bit torn...

he's very critical of things like radway and modleski's work on women's romance novel reading, and pretty much says that we shouldn't treat that as political activism.

... i don't know. on the one hand i agree with a lot of the things he has to say. and on the other, i wonder if he's being too harsh.

either way, his concerns are very similar to the ones i have when i read the horrid wench's blog, and when i heard her speak about her work on bogans.

i'm not in that gang. i'm with the people who still want to politicise stuff (which she doesn't - she confesses that she has no interest in politics - stink of 'politics' much?). i also want to get feminist in this sort of work...

hm. dilemma. i need to find a response to this article.

Posted by dogpossum on September 24, 2004 7:45 PM in the category academia