Overview

Lawrence Grossberg is one of the leading figures in cultural studies internationally. In Cultural Studies in the Future Tense, he offers a powerful critique of the present state of cultural studies and, more broadly, of the intellectual left, especially in the Anglo-American academy. He develops a vision for the future of cultural studies as conjunctural analysis, a radically contingent and contextual study of the articulations of lived, discursive, and material contexts. Proposing a compelling analysis of the contemporary political problem space as a struggle over modernity, he suggests the possibility of multiple ways of being modern as an analytic and imaginative frame. He elaborates an ontology of the modern as the potentialities of multiple configurations of temporalities and spatialities, differences, territorialities, and powers, and argues that euro-modernity is a specific geohistorical realization of this complex diagram. Challenging the euro-modern fragmentation of the social formation, he discusses the rigorous conceptual and empirical work that cultural studies must do-including rethinking fundamental concepts such as economy, culture, and politics as well as modernity-to reinvent itself as an effective political intellectual project. This book offers a vision of a contemporary cultural studies that embraces complexity, rigorous interdisciplinary practice and experimental collaborations in an effort to better explain the present in the service of the imagination of other futures and the struggles for social transformation.

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9780822348306

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Reviews

Lawrence Grossberg, author of numerous profound and highly influential studies, has produced his magnum opus... Going through the manuscript, I realized with growing awe and enthusiasm, that in one book we have been offered by far the most comprehensive and best written history of cultural studies from their inception to its most recent accomplishments and challenges, as well as a program that deserves to be called a definite introduction to all future studies of culture. This book is an obligatory and invaluable reading for the established professionals of the area as much as its aspiring newcomers; and given the clarity of the narrative, also for all those multitude of people who have had thus far only a vague notion of what cultural studies are about, yet are eager to know how the setting in which they are destined to live is shaped and how they could use such knowledge to shape their lives in it. Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds Cultural Studies in the Future Tense is an immensely enjoyable book to read, fizzing with ideas and of real relevance to the current situation. It is also a brave book: defining cultural studies is always going to be a difficult task, even for one of its founders. Yet Lawrence Grossberg does not shrink from the task, and the political emphasis he places on the future and imagination seems to me to be absolutely right. The Left needs to think as never before about what it is doing and why. Nigel Thrift, author of Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect Lawrence Grossberg was one of the first to pioneer cultural studies in the United States. Since then, he has not only meticulously and with rare critical insight tracked its international development but made several original contributions to it in his own distinctive voice. Forty years after the foundation of the Centre for Cultural Studies in the U.K., people constantly ask, 'Cultural studies: where is it going?' Grossberg's latest book is one of the most important, insightful, cogent, wide-ranging, and persuasive attempts to offer an answer to that question. It is required reading for anyone interested not only in the future of cultural studies but in contemporary culture and its political meanings. Cultural Studies in the Future Tense is not to be missed. oStuart Hall Lawrence Grossberg's book does something much more useful than giving us an introduction to cultural studies. It demonstrates what cultural studies can do, giving a broadly interdisciplinary and politically engaged analysis of our contemporary conjuncture. This is an excellent model for future work in the field. oMichael Hardt, co-author of Commonwealth

Lawrence Grossberg, author of numerous profound and highly influential studies, has produced his magnum opus... Going through the manuscript, I realized with growing awe and enthusiasm, that in one book we have been offered by far the most comprehensive and best written history of cultural studies from their inception to its most recent accomplishments and challenges, as well as a program that deserves to be called a definite introduction to all future studies of culture. This book is an obligatory and invaluable reading for the established professionals of the area as much as its aspiring newcomers; and given the clarity of the narrative, also for all those multitude of people who have had thus far only a vague notion of what cultural studies are about, yet are eager to know how the setting in which they are destined to live is shaped and how they could use such knowledge to shape their lives in it. Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds Cultural Studies in the Future Tense is an immensely enjoyable book to read, fizzing with ideas and of real relevance to the current situation. It is also a brave book: defining cultural studies is always going to be a difficult task, even for one of its founders. Yet Lawrence Grossberg does not shrink from the task, and the political emphasis he places on the future and imagination seems to me to be absolutely right. The Left needs to think as never before about what it is doing and why. Nigel Thrift, author of Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect

Author Information

Lawrence Grossberg is the Morris Davis Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies, and Adjunct Distinguished Professor of American Studies, Anthropology, and Geography at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of many books, including Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America’s Future, Bringing it all Back Home: Essays on Cultural Studies, and Dancing in Spite of Myself: Essays on Popular Culture (the last two both also published by Duke University Press). He is a co-editor of collections including About Raymond Williams, New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Without Guarantees: Essays in Honor of Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies, and Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. He is a co-editor of the journal Cultural Studies.

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