ABSTRACT
In the following studies, I draw on a multiplicity of traditions to keep the project of cultural studies open, flexible, and critical, refusing to fix any orthodoxies, or to close off the field in any premature way. The excitement of cultural studies is that it is a new and open field in the process of making and remaking, and any interventions should merely attempt to offer some new perspectives or analyses and not to try to effect any theoretical closures. Indeed, cultural studies is a contested terrain open to multiple interventions and developments. As noted, some groups and individuals have been using cultural studies to celebrate the popular and to legitimate the academic study of "popular culture," while others use it to criticize existing inequalities and domination, or to advance specific political and cultural agendas. Conservative groups in turn attack it as subversive of educational orthodoxy (see the documentation in Aronowitz 1993) while education reformers attempt to use it to make contemporary education more relevant and attuned to the nature and vicissitudes of contemporary culture (Giroux 1994; McLaren et al. forthcoming).
