Cultural Studies and Political Theory
Jodi Dean (Ed.)
This ambitious collection of work at the intersection of cultural studies and contemporary political theory brings together leading thinkers from both traditions. Challenging the terms that have shaped the last 20 years of culture wars, the essays in Cultural Studies and Political Theory reject the accusations of the right that everything is political and of the left that politics is everything. They respond with an alternative, with an exploration of processes of politicization and culturalization that asks, "what does it mean for something to be political?"
In affirming that there are different answers to this question, the contributors to Cultural Studies and Political Theory expand definitions of politics in light of transformations in globally networked, consumer-driven, mediated technoculture. Comprehending the production of the political is crucial at a time when the political and the cultural can no longer be decoupled and when we cannot know in advance who "we" are. By gathering the work of theorists who are redefining approaches to politics and culture, Jodi Dean establishes a set of directives for theoretical work at a new crossroads.
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About Jodi Dean (Ed.)
Reviews for Cultural Studies and Political Theory
Robert Owens Gardner, University of Colorado–Boulder
Journal of Intercultural Studies
Cultural Studies and Political Theory is profoundly interdisciplinary, pursuing as it does the dialectic of theoretical, cultural, and political inquiry in a whole array of areas and discourse.
Christian Moraru, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
The Comparatist
This book challenges political theorists to be more capacious in their treatment of the political, more attuned to cultural work that untidies their precious categories. It calls on cultural studies scholars to be more deliberate about the political potential of their insights into the subtle cultural feedback that they so convincingly deconstruct.... As individual essays and as a collection, however, this book will reach far into the bookshelves and classrooms of critical legal theory, democratic theory, American studies, feminist theory, critical race theory, and other untapped resources for political/cultural imagination.
Jill Locke, Gustavus Adolphus College
American Political Science Review
This is not a collection for the intellectually timid. It will be of interest to those who are seeking to promote collaborative relations between the fields of cultural studies and political theory.
James L. Danielson, Minnesota State University
Perspectives on Political Science