ABSTRACT
In literary studies, the reconceptualisation of history and its relationship to literature had its roots in the work of such theorists and critics as Michel Foucault, Raymond Williams, Edward Said and Frank Lentricchia. The growth of radical alternative histories, such as women’s history, oral history and postcolonial rewriting of Eurocentric and other imperialist viewpoints, together with the more general blurring of disciplinary boundaries between historiography, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, have all cast doubt on the validity, relevance or accessibility of historical ‘facts’. ‘Cultural studies’ is an equally ambiguous term, but most commentators would agree that cultural studies is ‘concerned with the generation and circulation of meanings in industrial societies’. The ‘cultural’ has become a ‘master-trope’ in the humanities, blending and blurring textual analysis of popular culture with social theory, and focusing on the margins of power rather than reproducing established lines of force and authority.
