ABSTRACT
The articles appearing in this issue of Cultural Studies have certain themes and perspectives in common. Although they examine a variety of examples, they are all concerned, in one way or another, with cultural ‘visibility’; that is to say, with the ways in which certain populations, practices and artefacts have been constituted as objects for specifically ‘cultural’ accounts. In part, the aim is to show that contemporary cultural studies has a discursive pre-history which is worthy of much more detailed research and analysis. It is a pre-history which raises questions about the institutional and political contexts within which cultural accounts are produced, and where ‘culture’ is identified as an object of both fascination and analysis.
