Makula-kul'torologiia: The Afterlife of Cultural Studies

• In Event: Afterlives: Trash as a Form of Memory

Abstract

The re-ascendency of культурология in the late 1980s (from its original appearance in the Soviet 1960s) was accelerated by the term’s broader misrecognition as “our” cultural studies (with its Birmingham legacies). The conflation of these two knowledge systems was—on the one hand—necessary, inevitable, and strategically useful. On the other hand, the conflation left us with a conceptual mess that has never been adequately sorted out. I propose we consider that the term has come to mean nothing and is analytically useless. What is now lost if we take this position?

Author

• Nancy Condee, U of Pittsburgh