ABSTRACT
There is a sense in which the contemporary field of ‘cultural studies’ could be said to be synonymous with interdisciplinarity itself, given that it draws variously on sociology, anthropology, history, linguistics, philosophy, textual criticism, visual culture, the philosophy of science, geography, politics, economics and psychology, among other areas. In this chapter, though, I am going to be more specifically concerned with the positioning of cultural studies at the intersection between the social sciences, particularly sociology and anthropology, and the humanities. One of the effects of this has been to challenge the disciplinary identity of literary studies by dissolving the category of ‘literature’ into the more inclusive notion of ‘culture’. More broadly, it has meant that cultural studies has been characterized by its critical reflection on the confining nature of disciplines and the possibilities for interdisciplinary knowledge. It is worth pointing out, first of all, that cultural studies is
about far more than challenging the divisions between individual disciplines. Rooted in socialist politics and new social movements such as feminism, anti-racism and gay activism, its commitment to integrative study and to expanding the definition of ‘culture’
has been linked to questions about the cultural construction of identity and meaning, particularly in relation to the broader operations of power in society. Cultural studies therefore tends to be suspicious of those interdisciplinary programmes that merely adopt an inclusive approach to the study of culture without engaging with these concerns about the politics of knowledge and representation. In this context, Patrick Brantlinger criticizes American studies, which emerged as an interdisciplinary collaboration between literature and history departments after the Second World War, in reaction to what was perceived as the narrowly textual approach of academic literary criticism. Brantlinger argues that the apolitical interdisciplinarity of American studies meant that it ended up propounding ‘an academic cultural chauvinism’ in which American exceptionalism was crudely celebrated (Brantlinger 1990: 27). While many contemporary American studies scholars would
baulk at this description of their work, it is certainly true that American studies departments rose rapidly to institutional consolidation and respectability in America, Europe and elsewhere in the post-war period, often supported by funding from the US government and government-sponsored bodies like the Fulbright Commission. This contrasted sharply with the early existence of cultural studies at the very margins of the university. It is this institutional marginality, along with the explicitly political agenda of cultural studies, that has made it so sceptical of the traditional disciplines, and the way that they enclose scholars within academic enclaves, separate from the concerns of the outside world. Richard Johnson argues that cultural studies has been perennially anxious about the possibility that it might be institutionalized and disciplined and so lose its ability to plunder the more established disciplines while remaining separate from them:
As cultural studies has developed as a fashionable area of study, the future of this critical relationship to the more traditional disciplines has become a fierce point of contention, which I will discuss towards the end of this chapter. Since cultural studies is a much-contested and heterogeneous field, I will not attempt to provide a comprehensive survey of its interdisciplinary possibilities. Instead, I want to discuss the work of six key figures: Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Michel de Certeau, Pierre Bourdieu and John Frow. In their diverse ways, these critics have particularly explored questions about the nature of disciplines and interdisciplinarity, and their work provides a useful means of opening up a more general discussion of these issues within cultural studies.
