From Revolution to Revelation: Generation X, Popular Memory and Cultural Studies

by Brabazon,Tara

• ISBN13: 9780754643975
• ISBN10: 0754643972
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2005-05-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

From Revolution to Revelation offers a new paradigm for Cultural Studies. Tara Brabazon explores our understanding of our own past and the collective past we share with others through popular culture.She investigates Generation X, the 'post-youth' generation born between 1961 and 1981, and the popular cultural literacies that are the basis of this imagining community. She looks at the ways in which popular culture offers a vehicle for memory, providing the building blocks of identity - the politics and passion of life captured in an unforgettable song, an amazing nightclub, or an unexpected goal in extra time. For a fan, the joy and exhilaration is enough, but it is the task of cultural studies to understand why particular cultural forms survive the passage of time and space.Brabazon argues, with Lawrence Grossberg, that Cultural Studies is 'the Generation X of the academic world'. She tracks its journey away from Marxism and subcultural theory and looks at its future. In particular she explores the possibilities of popular memory studies in reclaiming and repairing the discipline of Cultural Studies - making it as relevant and as revelatory as in its revolutionary past.

Author Biography

Tara Brabazon is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the School of Media, Communication and Culture, Murdoch University, Western Australia.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Changing the dedication	1	(8)
Section One Building the Hacienda
1 The archaeology of X: making a (post) youth culture	9	(22)
2 Settling accounts with Birmingham	31	(14)
3 Thank you for the history lesson	45	(20)
4 Always on my mind: building Popular Memory Studies	65	(16)
Section Two Sound and Vision
5 Reading on your feet and dancing through the revolution	81	(34)
6 Dancing with the chairman of the board	115	(24)
7 Here to stay? 24 hour (post) party people	139	(24)
8 Looking through rouge coloured glasses	163	(20)
Conclusion: Save Ferris	183	(4)
Select Bibliography	187	(2)
Index	189