The Anti-Political Populism of Cultural Studies

The academic tendency called cultural studies fiercely disbelieves that there are any unmoved movers at work in history. So proponents of cultural studies should not be taken aback by the view that cultural studies itself can be analyzed as an object of cultural study.

Stanley Aronowitz has observed, more or less accurately (leave aside the question of scale), that “cultural studies is a social movement.” There is something more going on in cultural studies than the pursuit...