School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemCritical habitations: cultural studies and the politics of intellectual location.( 2000-03)Over the past four or so decades, a number of social transformations—including in particular the dramatic expansion of the tertiary education sector—have impacted significantly on the role and status of the intellectual in contemporary life. While the authority of the intellectual was once based on a claim to universality, the openly professionalised nature of contemporary intellectual life has thoroughly problematised such claims. Accordingly, the broadly representative role that so-called “public” intellectuals were once said to have played has increasingly been challenged by more “specific” models of intellectual practice, models that have emerged in particular out of new fields of knowledge such as cultural studies. While cultural conservatives have argued that this challenge marks the declining status of the intellectual in contemporary society, the emergence of a variety of “new” intellectual models linked to specific social and institutional formations suggests that, far from declining, concerns over the status and responsibility of the intellectual are ongoing. This thesis examines the complex relations between contemporary intellectual practices and social and cultural location. Focusing in particular on the field of cultural studies, I examine the careers and biographies of four intellectuals. In my introductory chapter I review the major theories of intellectual practice circulating within cultural studies and conclude that a new, more “located” approach to understanding intellectual practice is required. Putting this new approach to work, the first part of my thesis examines the personal and intellectual biography of the black British intellectual Stuart Hall and—using the trope of “diaspora”—positions him in relation to the field of British cultural studies. In part two I focus on the largely academically-situated intellectual practices of Lawrence Grossberg and Andrew Ross, two prominent American-based cultural studies practitioners. Taking them as exemplars of American cultural studies, a highly academicised and disciplined field, I place into question the common assumption that the institutionally-located intellectual lacks critical autonomy. In part three, I discuss the life and career of the Australian intellectual, Meaghan Morris, focusing on the transnational and trans-institutional genealogy of both Morris and the Sydney-based strand of cultural studies with which she is associated. Finally, I conclude the thesis with a brief postscript reiterating my argument for the increasing importance of a “comparative cosmopolitan” model of intellectualism—that is, an approach to intellectuals that is able to engage with both broad-based and transnational concerns while, at the same time, also acknowledging their responsibilities as a geographically and socially-situated group.