A Puzzle Constantly Changing Itself: Cultural Studies in the 21st Century A review of (original) (raw)

Cultural studies is a field constantly questioning itself, with its practitioners reflecting on its objects of study, methods and the politics of the knowledge it produces. For some, this reflexivity represents a problem with the field. It is seen as a relic of cultural studies' struggle to constitute itself as a particular form of scholarly practice that is no longer necessary because of its increasing institutionalization within the university. For others, this inquisitiveness and commitment to consider its own assumptions are cultural studies' greatest strengths and a reason why the field has the potential to improve our knowledge of a constantly changing world. These positions (and various points between them) have been taken up in a number of recent works on cultural studies, of which I will here discuss Lawrence Grossberg's Cultural Studies in the Future Tense (CSFT), Paul Smith's edited collection e Renewal of Cultural Studies (RCS), and Canadian Cultural Studies: A Reader (CCS), edited by Sourayan Mookerjea, Imre Szeman and Gail Faurschou. With cultural studies itself as their subject, these works help to provide different perspectives of the field as they map its key themes, issues, and debates. However, they may also be seen as working to take cultural studies into the future, with each book suggesting ways to ensure the discipline's value as an interdisciplinary intellectual and institutional practice.