Caring for Cultural Studies

Yıl 2023, Sayı: 23, 229 - 246, 09.11.2023

Gülden Demir Çevirmen: Gülden Demir

Öz

This essay both inaugurates the new editorship of Ted Striphas and reflects on the contributions of Cultural Studies ’ longtime editor, Lawrence Grossberg. It opens by reflecting briefly on the journal’s transformations over the last 28 years before taking stock of the wellbeing of cultural studies as a field. The claim here is that cultural studies have devoted less time and attention than they used to with regard to thinking through its first principles; thus, the future of the field partially hinges on asking whether the field’s core concepts are up to the task of answering the urgent political questions of the present. The essay then recontextualizes the concept of culture, specifically with respect to the much maligned and indeed deservedly so tradition of high culture. The author identifies a fugitive theoretical line in the recesses of cultural studies, one in which culture signifies care rather than a subordination to patrician interests and aesthetic styles. This conceptual move sets the stage for the central argument of the essay, which states that for the field of cultural studies to live up to both its name and intellectual political ambitions, it must devote significant time to caring for the infrastructure that sustains its body of ideas. The piece concludes by highlighting some of Lawrence Grossberg’s efforts as an infrastructuralist, his care for cultural studies, and observations on how neither the field nor this journal will be able to sustain itself without moving forward .

Anahtar Kelimeler

Lawrence Grossberg, cultural studies, culture, high culture, care, infrastructure

Kültürel Çalışmaları Önemsemek

Öz

Bu makale hem Ted Striphas’ın editörlüğünü başlatmakta hem de Cultural Studies’in kıdemli editörü Lawrence Grossberg’in katkılarını yansıtmaktadır. Kültürel Çalışmalar1 alanının refahını değerlendirmeden önce derginin son 28 yılda yaşadığı dönüşümlere kısaca değinerek konuya giriş yapılmaktadır. Buradaki iddia, Cultural Studies’in başta gelen ilkeleriyle derinlemesine düşünmeye daha az zaman ve dikkat ayırdığı ve bu nedenle alanın geleceğinin temel kavramların zamanımızın acil politik sorularına yanıt verme görevine uygun olup olmadığını sorgulamaya kısmen bağlı olduğudur. Makale daha sonra kültür kavramını, özellikle çok kötülenmiş (aslında haklı olarak kötülenmiş) ‘yüksek kültür’ geleneği bakımından yeni bir bağlamda ele almaktadır. Yazar, soylu çıkarlara ve estetik tarzlara boyun eğmekten ziyade makalenin aralarında kültürün önemsemek anlamına geldiği şeklinde kaçak bir teorik çizgi tanımlamaktadır. Bu kavramsal hareket, makalenin ana argümanı için zemin hazırlamakta, yani Cultural Studies’in hem adına hem de entelektüel politik emellerini karşılaması için, dergi, görüşlerini ayakta tutan altyapıyı önemsemeye önemli ölçüde zaman ayırmalıdır. Makale, bir altyapı uzmanı olarak Lawrence Grossberg’in Cultural Studies’i önemsemek için gösterdiği bazı çabaların altını çizerek ve ileride ne alanın ne de bu derginin kendi başının çaresine bakamayacağını gözlemleyerek sona ermektedir.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Lawrence Grossberg, Kültürel Çalışmalar, kültür, yüksek kültür, önemsemek, altyapı

Kaynakça

• Abbas, A. and Erni, J.N., 2005. General introduction. In: A. Abbas, and J.N. Erni, eds. Internationalizing Cultural Studies: an anthology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1-12. google scholar
• Ahmed, S., 2018. Archaeology of babel: The colonial foundation of the humanities. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. google scholar
• Ang, I., 1985. Watching Dallas: Soap opera and the melodramatic imagination. London: Routledge. google scholar
• Bennett, T., 2015. Cultural Studies and the culture concept. Cultural studies, 29 (4), 546- 568. google scholar
• Bhaskar, M., 2016. Curation: the power of selection in a world of excess. London: Piatkus Books. google scholar
• Bourdieu, P., 1984. Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. google scholar
• Chakrabarty, D., 2007. Provincializing Europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference. New Edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. google scholar
• Cox, R., 2007. Nature’s crisis disciplines: does environmental communication have an ethical duty? google scholar
• Environmental communication: A journal of nature and culture, 1 (1), 5-20. google scholar
• Denning, M., 2004. Culture in the age of three worlds. London & New York: Verso. google scholar
• Dutt-Ballerstadt, R. 2018. What to do when you are an academic under attack by right wing publications [online]. Inside Higher Ed. Available from: https://www. google scholar
• insidehighered.com/advice/2018/03/02/what-do-when-you-are-academic-under attack-right-wing-publications-opinion [Accessed 3 Sep 2018]. google scholar
• Erni, J.N., 1994. Unstable frontiers: technomedicine and the cultural politics of “curing” AIDS. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press. google scholar
• Fiske, J., 1989. Understanding popular culture. London: Unwin Hyman. google scholar
• Fitzpatrick, K., 2011. Planned obsolescence: Publishing, technology, and the future of the academy. New York: NYU Press. google scholar
• Flusser, V., 2013. Natural: mind. Minneapolis, MN: Univocal Publishing. google scholar
• Flusser, V., 2014. Gestures. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. google scholar
• Frank, T., 1999. New consensus for old. The baffler, (12). [online]. Available from: https:// thebaffler.com/ salvos/new-consensus-for-old [Accessed 19 July 2018]. Frow, google scholar
• J., 1995. Cultural Studies and cultural value. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. google scholar
• Gray, A., 2016. Cultural Studies at Birmingham 1985-2002 - the last decades. In: K. Connell, and M. google scholar
• Hilton, eds. Cultural Studies fifty years on. London: Roman and Littlefield, 49-61. google scholar
• Gripsrud, J., 1989. ‘High culture’ revisited. Cultural studies, 3 (2), 194-207. google scholar
• Grossberg, L., 1988. It’s a sin: essays on postmodernism, politics, and culture. Sydney: Power Publications. google scholar
• Grossberg, L., 1992. We gotta get out of this place: popular conservatism and postmodern culture. New York: Routledge. google scholar
• Grossberg, L., 1997. Bringing it all back home: essays on Cultural Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. google scholar
• Grossberg, L., 2005. Caught in the crossfire: kids, politics, and America’s future. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. google scholar
• Grossberg, L., 2006. Does Cultural Studies have futures? Should it? (Or what’s the matter with New York?). Cultural studies, 20 (1), 1-32. google scholar
• Grossberg, L., 2010. Cultural Studies in the future tense. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. google scholar
• Grossberg, L., 2015. We all want to change the world: the paradox of the U.S. left - a polemic. London: Lawrence & Wishart. google scholar
• Grossberg, L., 2018. Under the cover of chaos: Trump and the battle for the American right. London: Pluto Press. google scholar
• Guillory, J., 1993. Cultural capital: the problem of literary canon formation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. google scholar
• Hale, C.R., 2018. When I hear the word culture ... . Cultural studies, 32 (3), 497-509. google scholar
• Hall, G., 2008. Digitize this book! The politics of new media, or why we need open access now. google scholar
• Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. google scholar
• Hall, G., 2016. The Uberfication of the university. [Online]. Available from: https:// manifold.umn.edu/ project/the-uberfication-of-the-university [Accessed 6 July 2018]. google scholar
• Hall, S., 1988. The hard road to renewal: Thatcherism and the crisis of the left. London: Verso. google scholar
• Hall, S., 1992. Cultural Studies and its theoretical legacies. In: L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, and P. Treichler, eds. Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 277-294. google scholar
• Hall, S., 1993. Encoding/decoding. In: S. During, ed. The Cultural Studies reader. London and New York: Routledge, 507-517. google scholar
• Hall, S., 1998. Notes on deconstructing ‘the popular’. In: J. Storey, ed. Cultural theory and popular culture: A reader. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 442-453. google scholar
• Hall, S., et al., 1978. Policing the crisis: mugging, the state, and law and order. London: Macmillan. google scholar
• Hallinan, B., 2017. The Sokal affair. Presentation: COMM 6200, 16 March. google scholar
• Boulder, CO. Hallinan, B. and Striphas, T., 2016. Recommended for you: the Netflix prize and the pro duction of algorithmic culture. New media & society, 18 (1), 117-137. google scholar
• Harper, D., 2018. computation (n.) [online]. Online Etymology Dictionary. Available from: [Accessed 31 Aug 2018]. google scholar
• Heidegger, M., 1962. Being and time. New York: HarperOne. google scholar
• Hernstein Smith, B., 1991. Contingencies of value: alternative perspectives for critical theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. google scholar
• Hoggart, R., 1957. The uses of literacy: changing patterns in English mass culture. Fair Lawn, NJ: Essential Books. google scholar
• Horowitz, D., 2006. The professors: the 101 most dangerous academics in America. Washington, DC and Lanham, MD: Regnery Publishing. google scholar
• Ismail, Q., 2015. Culture and eurocentrism. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. google scholar
• Jenkins, H., 1992. Textual poachers: television fans and participatory culture. New York: Routledge. google scholar
• John, N.A., 2016. Sharing. In: B. Peters, ed. Digital keywords: a vocabulary of information society and culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 269-277. google scholar
• John, N.A., 2017. The age of sharing. Malden, MA: Polity. google scholar
• Kay, J.B., 2017. Arriving late to the party? Histories of Cultural Studies as resources of hope. European journal of Cultural Studies, 20 (6), 763-771. google scholar
• Kittler, F.A., 1999. Gramophone, film, typewriter. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. google scholar
• Kuhn, T.S., 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. google scholar
• Littler, J., 2016. On not being at the CCCS. In: K. Connell, and M. Hilton, eds. Cultural Studies fifty years on. London: Roman and Littlefield, 275-283. google scholar
• Manganaro, M., 2002. Culture, 1922: The emergence of a concept. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. google scholar
• Mbembe, A. and Goldberg, D.T. Conversation: Achille Mbembe and David Theo Goldberg on Critique of black reason, 2018. Theory, culture & society. [online]. Available from: [Accessed 5 July 2018]. google scholar
• Miles, C., 2018. Personal communication, 21 March. google scholar
• Morley, D., 1980. The ‘Nationwide’ audience: structure and decoding. London: BFI. google scholar
• Morris, M., 1990. Banality in Cultural Studies. In: P. Mellencamp, ed. Logics of television: essays in cultural criticism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 14-43. google scholar
• Morris, M., 2006. “Please explain?”: ignorance, poverty, and the past. In: Identity anec dotes: translation and media culture. London: Sage Publications, 227-240. google scholar
• Morris, M. and Muecke, S., 1991. Relations of theory: Meaghan Morris talks with Stephen Muecke. In: D. Carter, ed. Outside the book: contemporary essays on literary periodicals. Sydney: Local Consumption Publications, 57-78. google scholar
• Peters, J.D., 2005. Courting the abyss: free speech and the liberal tradition. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. google scholar
• Peters, J.D., 2015. The marvelous clouds: toward a philosophy of elemental media. Chicago and London: University Of Chicago Press. google scholar
• Pezzullo, P.C. 2017. Environment. Oxford research encyclopedia of communication. [online]. Available from: http://communication.oxfordre.com/abstract/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/ acrefore-9780190228613-e575?rskey=w965U8 &result=1 [Accessed 8 July 2018]. google scholar
• Pluckrose, H., Lindsay, J., and Boghossian, P. 2018. Academic grievance studies and the corruption of scholarship [online]. Areo. Available from: https://areomagazine.com/ google scholar
• 2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/ [Accessed 19 Oct 2018]. google scholar
• Professor Watchlist (Home) [online], 2018. Professor Watchlist. Available from: https:// www. professorwatchlist.org/ [Accessed 3 Sep 2018]. google scholar
• Radway, J.A., 1984. Reading the romance: women, patriarchy, and popular literature. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. google scholar
• Readings, B., 1996. The university in ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. google scholar
• Said, E.W., 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage. google scholar
• Scannell, P., 1996. Radio, television, and modern life. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. google scholar
• Sharma, S., 2014. In the meantime: temporality and cultural politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. google scholar
• Sokal, A., 1996a. A physicist experiments with Cultural Studies. Lingua franca, (May/ June), 62-64. google scholar
• Sokal, A., 1996b. Transgressing the boundaries: Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity. Social text, 46-47, 217-252. google scholar
• Statement concerning fraudulent submissions [online], 2018. Hypatia. Available from: http:// hypatiaphilosophy.org/statements/statement-concerning-fraudulent submissions/ [Accessed 19 Oct 2018]. google scholar
• Striphas, T., 2010. Acknowledged goods: Cultural Studies and the politics of academic journal publishing. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 7 (1), 3-25. google scholar
• Striphas, T., 2011. The visible college. International journal of communication, 5, 1744- 1751. google scholar
• Striphas, T., 2015. Algorithmic culture. European journal of Cultural Studies, 18 (4-5), 395-412. google scholar
• Striphas, T., 2016. Culture. In: B. Peters, ed. Digital keywords: a vocabulary of information society and culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 70-80. google scholar
• Striphas, T., 2017. Known-unknowns: Matthew Arnold, F. R. Leavis, and the government of culture. Cultural Studies, 31 (1), 143-163. google scholar
• Striphas, T. and Hayward, M., 2013. Working papers in Cultural Studies, or, the virtues of grey literature. New formations, 78, 102-116. google scholar
• Thompson, E.P., 1966. The making of the English working class. New York: Vintage. google scholar
• Trilling, L., 2008. The liberal imagination. New York: NYRB Classics. google scholar
• Viswanathan, G., 2014. Masks of conquest: literary study and British rule in India. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Columbia University Press. google scholar
• Whyte, K.P. and Cuomo, C., 2016. Ethics of caring in environmental ethics: indigenous and feminist philosophies [online]. In: S. M. Gardiner, and A. Thompson, eds. The Oxford handbook of environmental ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available from: http://www. oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/ 9780199941339.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199941339-e-2 [Accessed 19 October 2018]. google scholar
• Williams, R., 1958. Culture and society, 1780-1950. New York: Columbia University Press. google scholar
• Williams, R., 1973. The country and the city. New York: Oxford University Press. google scholar
• Williams, R., 1977. Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. google scholar
• Williams, R., 1981. The sociology of culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. google scholar
• Williams, R., 1983. Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society. Rev. Ed. New York: Oxford University Press. google scholar
• Williams, R., 1989. Culture is ordinary. In: Resources of hope: culture, democracy, social ism. London: Verso, 3-18. google scholar
• Williams, R., 2001. The long revolution. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press. google scholar
• Wood, J.T., 1994. Who cares? Women, care, and culture. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. google scholar