ABSTRACT

From Revolution to Revelation offers a new paradigm for Cultural Studies. Tara Brabazon explores our understanding of our own past and the collective past we share with others through popular culture. She investigates Generation X, the ’post-youth’ generation born between 1961 and 1981, and the popular cultural literacies that are the basis of this imagining community. She looks at the ways in which popular culture offers a vehicle for memory, providing the building blocks of identity - the politics and passion of life captured in an unforgettable song, an amazing nightclub, or an unexpected goal in extra time. For a fan, the joy and exhilaration is enough, but it is the task of cultural studies to understand why particular cultural forms survive the passage of time and space. Brabazon argues, with Lawrence Grossberg, that Cultural Studies is ’the Generation X of the academic world’. She tracks its journey away from Marxism and subcultural theory and looks at its future. In particular she explores the possibilities of popular memory studies in reclaiming and repairing the discipline of Cultural Studies - making it as relevant and as revelatory as in its revolutionary past.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction Changing the dedication

part One|72 pages

Building the Hacienda

chapter two|13 pages

Settling accounts with Birmingham

chapter three|19 pages

Thank you for the history lesson

part Two|103 pages

Sound and Vision

chapter six|23 pages

Dancing with the chairman of the board

chapter seven|23 pages

Here to stay? 24 hour (post) party people

chapter eight|19 pages

Looking through rouge coloured glasses

chapter |4 pages

Conclusion Save Ferris