Introduction

This chapter provides a current example of thinking about cultural studies through the writings of one of its leading figures. It examines and engages a few recent polemical texts to bring to light the (extremely narrow) limits of postmodern cultural studies and to begin to pressure those limits. The chapter explains the structure and aims of the book as a whole, in particular in relation to the problem of opening up some closed spaces within postmodern cultural studies and Left discourses within the academy and elsewhere. The book focuses on the history of the displacement of categories such as class, totality, and theory in cultural studies. It addresses developments within feminism, in particular its responses to postmodern theory. The book deals with some of the major trends in theories of postmodernity. It looks at how the issue of globalization is intersecting with efforts to found an international cultural studies.