[lbo-talk] Theory in chaos

Arash arash at riseup.net
Fri Jan 30 20:51:48 PST 2004



>Skip Gates, to the rescue! Most of the really interesting theoretical work
today
>is at the intersection of postmodernism/First World culture studies and
>postcolonialism/Third World culture studies. This is actually an amazing
time to
>be a theorist -- there are multiple cultural revolutions happening in the
EU and
>East Asia, the media and videogame cultures are going like gangbusters,
etc.

Can you cite some examples of the more interesting critical theory/cultural studies work going on? Some of the topics cultural studies deals with I find interesting but usually the postmodernist framework and jargon the field employs ends up squeezing all the life out of what made the topic interesting in the first place. And usually this doesn't provide any deeper "theoretical" insight as a trade-off, just gives you a set of more academics terms for the words you'd otherwise use to discuss the topic. A good example I recently encountered was the cultural studies-oriented book "Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0819565024/qid=1075520464/sr=1 -1/ref=sr_1_1/104-3120860-0761501?v=glance&s=books

an excerpt reads:

"The productive syncretism of diasporic cultures is further demonstrated by the creative use British-Asian musicians have made of hip-hop as the basis of musical-cultural statements about how they are negotiating new ethnic identities. Here again, hip-hop is only one node in a complex web of postcolonial cultural elements."



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