Critique for What?: Cultural Studies, American Studies, Left Studies

by Pfister,Joel

• ISBN13: 9781594512254
• ISBN10: 1594512256
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Critique for what? Fortunately, some of the most provocative self-critical intellectuals, from the postwar period to the postmodern present, have wrestled with this question. Joel Pfister criss-crosses the Atlantic to take stock of exciting British cultural studies, American studies, and Left studies that challenge the academic critique-for-critique's-sake and career's-sake business and ask: critique for what and for whom? historicizing for what and for whom? politicizing for what and for whom? America for what and for whom? Pfister's historical research convenes New Left revisionary socialists, members of the unpartied Left, cultural studies theorists, American studies scholars, radical historians, progressive literary critics, and early proponents of transnational analysis in what amounts to a lively book-length strategy seminar. British political intellectuals, featuring Raymond Williams, E. P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, and Raphael Samuel, and Americans, including F. O. Matthiessen, Robert Lynd, C. Wright Mills, and Richard Ohmann, help readers reconsider what links the critical project to social transformation, activism, and organizing. Eager to prevent cultural studies from lapsing into cynicism studies, this book thinks creatively about the possibilities of using as well as developing critique in our new millennium.

Author Biography

Joel Pfister is Professor of American Studies and English and Chair of the American Studies Program at Wesleyan University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: For What and For Whom?	1	(22)
PART I: American Studies and Cultural Studies
The Americanization of Cultural Studies	23	(26)
British New Left Cultural Studies' Transnational Critiques of the United States	49	(36)
PART II: Historical Studies and Literary Studies
On the History of Radical History and Cultural Studies	85	(36)
Complicity Critiques, the Artful Front, and Political Motivation	121	(24)
PART III: Beyond Critique for Critique's and Career's Sake
Popularism	145	(30)
Critique as Ism	175	(40)
Afterword: On Culture, Charles Lemert	215	(4)
Notes	219	(70)
Index	289	(18)
About the Author	307