CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
Intellectual Practices in Culture and Power:
Transnational Dialogues
Session organiser: Daniel Mato
Intellectual Practices in Culture and Power:
Transnational Dialogues 1/2
Piña, Álvaro (Universidade de Lisboa,
Portugal) INTELLECTUAL SPACES OF PRACTICE AND HOPE: POWER AND CULTURE IN
PORTUGAL FROM THE 1940S TO THE PRESENT
The divisions between society and culture, the everyday and the spheres of
specialised knowledges, the masses and the elites, the non-academic and the
academic, have been theorised in cultural studies in a number of ways. I propose
to contribute to the transnational dialogues in this session with a brief review
of such theorisings as a starting point for the analysis of intellectual
practices in power and culture in Portugal in three different periods: the late
1930s and early 40s, the late 1960s and the early 70s, and the 1990s to the
present. By focusing on key democratic themes and struggles in each of these
three periods, I shall argue for a cultural studies project as a theory of
intellectual spaces of practice and hope.
Tomaselli, Keyan G. (University of
Natal, Durban, South Africa) REVERSE CULTURAL STUDIES, AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHY AND
FIELDWORK METHODOLOGY: A NEW APPROACH FOR AFRICA
A reflexive argument for reverse cultural studies in discussing problems in
fieldwork, academic access and research accountability is developed. I
reflexively analyze tensions and contradictions set in motion by the writing of
articles on observer-observed relations within both San Bushmen communities
themselves and between myself and development and other agencies working in one
of these areas. Questions addressed relate to ownership of information; the
relationship between the local/particular and the national/policy, and on how to
ensure campfire dissemination/involvement of, and popular access to, the written
product by a-literate and non-English-speaking communities.
Gray, Ann (University of Birmingham,
United Kingdom) INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE 'TEACHING MACHINE'
This paper will question the perceived division between the academy(non
political) and what goes on outside (political). It will argue that our
activities as academics are intensely political, most especially in the
micro-practices of engagement with students. 'Our' discourse often excludes this
very important group - our students and their potential as cultural workers. The
paper will therefore explore the politics of teaching and the potential for
graduates of cultural studies programmes to enter the cultural industries and
other practices.
Intellectual Practices in Culture and
Power: Transnational Dialogues 2/2
Wright, Handel Kashope (University of
Tennessee, USA) BITING THE HAND THAT (FORCE-)FEEDS YOU: RESISTING THEORETICISM
IN PROMOTING CULTURAL STUDIES AS PRAXIS
This paper seeks to promote the articulation of cultural studies as praxis.
Starting from two related premises, cultural studies is (or ought to be) praxis,
and cultural studies as praxis is endangered by theoreticism. The paper points
to both the proper place and role of theory in cultural studies, and various
projects representative of cultural studies praxis (from Manthia Diawara's
performative American black studies to the "dismantle Fremantle"
project, and Ien Ang's advocacy of empirical research in Australia, from the
protest theatre of Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena in Latin America and the
US, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Kenya to empirical research on subcultures at the
CCCS in England). The paper focuses on a cultural studies model being developed
at the University of Tennessee (a blend of theory, empirical research, and
service learning) as an example of a model that constructs and promotes cultural
studies as praxis.
Graham, Janna (Art Gallery of Ontario,
Canada) MUSEUM ACROBATICS: ARTISTIC INTERVENTIONS AND THE WORK OF CULTURAL
STUDIES
This paper will articulate the influence of Cultural Studies on artistic
practice in museums in Canada and internationally, relaying the trend towards
community collaboration and artistic intervention. Drawing from current debates
in Cultural Studies and Education, Museology, Art Theory, and Cultural Geography
the paper will focus on artistic interventions into historical collections and
their ability to re-route museums, navigating between disciplines, practices and
cannons. It will argue that these practices, while unable to fulfill utopian
goals (or Public Relations slogans) of social inclusion, provide a model for a
multi-disciplinary critical approach to museum education. The focus will be on a
project entitled Private Thought/Public Moments, an intervention project through
which Toronto's South Asian Visual Arts Collective responded to ehancement and
didactic materials in the Art Gallery of Ontario's Canadian Wing, interrogating
its role as propogator of historical narratives about Canadian culture and
identity. The paper will articulate both the opportunities provided by
interventions for opening public debates in musuems and the challenges that
exist in the implementation of interdisciplinary work in the often ferociously
guarded cannons of art history.
Niaah, Jalani (University of the West
Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica) POVERTY LAB(ORATORY)
Requirements for future leaders in British colonies were anticipated by
administrators in the West Indies as early as the 18th Century, however it was
not until after WWII that hurried decisive actions were taken to establish a
University in the Caribbean region. In 1948 the University College of the West
Indies, a department of London University was put in place with 33 students
enrolled to study medicine. Today this now independent institution is a regional
giant shaping the societies of the region and the world. It is the
"shape" of the region and the world that this paper ultimately
explores through a focus on the ethos of the University as a training ground for
visions, architects and builders of society. Through an examination of Planno's
thesis "a new faculty of interpretation", this paper explores the
present shape of the University as a concept which seemingly could / might be
summarised as a poverty lab(oratory).
Chen, Kuan Hsing (National Tsing Hua
University, Taiwan) CULTURE AND POWER OF 'CONSUMPTION': NOTES ON THE FORMATION
OF CULTURAL STUDIES IN TAIWAN
The essay attempts to place the formation of cultural studies in Taiwan in the
culture and power of consumption. Critical intellectual practices have been
conditioned by the historical shaping of a society of consumption in interaction
with social and democratic movements from the 1980's onward. To be able to
intervene politically, the earlier wave of cultural studies was operating
through daily newspaper, magazines and journals in the form of cultural
criticism. These sites of cultural consumption have mediated intellectual
practices and the social power. In the 1990's, the 'retreat' of cultural studies
into the academic institutions, however, has not lost its contacts with the
social, in that forums for debating cultural and political issues have been set
up in the social space, and commercial publication mechanism has continued to
exist to mediate intellecual practices and the culture and power dynamics.
Whether cultural studies could maintain a balance between academic
institutionalisaiton and intervention in the social space will be challenge in
the future.
|