Call for essays: Culture Theory and Critique special themed issue on Marxism and Cultural Studies (special thanks to Indiana University’s Cultural Studies Program)
Many accounts of the emergence and development of Cultural Studies
accord a central place to Marxism, both as a body of knowledge and as
an important ideological component of the New Left. The rediscovery of
the writings of Antonio Gramsci, George Luckacs, Walter Benjamin, and
Theodor Adorno, among others, along with the formation of the
Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies, led to a general renaissance of
Marxist theory and cultural analysis, which in turn resulted in
ground-breaking studies of working class culture, the political role of
new social movements that were not class based, the power of ideology
and mass culture in sustaining existing social relations, and critical
analyses of state-authoritarianism. As Cultural Studies crossed the
Atlantic and gained an institutional foothold in the United States,
some have feared that its engagement with Marxism has been diluted
through an over emphasis on the subversive potentialities of mass media
and consumer capitalism.
Some possible questions to consider:
How do we understand the relationship between the base
and superstructure today? Does ideology critique still have an ongoing
usefulness? Do globalization and the world recession require new
objects of study? To what extent does Marxism provide a utopian impulse
for existing social movements? Do iterations of Cultural Studies in
South Asia, Africa, Central and Latin America, the Middle East, and
Eastern Europe retain a commitment to Marxism and how is this work
revitalizing the field more broadly? Does the Marxist imperative to
historicize challenge current paradigms of cultural analysis such as
the “New Formalism”? What exactly does a historical materialist
methodology enable? How do we articulate media analyses with questions
of political economy, geo-politics, and activism? What is the role of
the intellectual and Cultural Studies more generally?
We welcome essays that address any of these issues. The questions are not meant to
be proscriptive, however, and we welcome queries about possible article content.
Abstracts (250-500 words) due Sept 15, 2011; final essays need to be submitted for peer review by Oct 31, 2011. length 5,000-7,000 words including notes
Send proposals and essays to Joan Hawkins, editor and Jen Heusel, editorial assistant
Culture, Theory and Critique is a refereed, interdisciplinary journal for the transformation and development of critical theories in the humanities and social sciences. It aims to critique and reconstruct theories by interfacing them with one another and by relocating them in new sites and conjunctures. Culture, Theory and Critique' approach to theoretical refinement and innovation is one of interaction and hybridisation via recontextualisation and transculturation.
