Aesthetics and Cultural Studies

The cultural studies movement conceives of itself as a critique of aesthetics. It construes its history in terms of the need to transcend the limited conception of culture handed down by nineteenth-century aesthetics. And it formulates its project in terms of the expansion of this conception to include other departments of existence—the political, the economic, the popular—perhaps even “the way of life as a whole.” ¹ The slogan of this project is the proposal to “politicize aesthetics.”