본문 바로가기
  • Home

Transgredient Problematics of ‘Cultural Studies’ and Their Actuality

CHOI Jin Seok 1

1이화여자대학교 이화인문과학원

Candidate

ABSTRACT

This article aims to trace a history of the “cultural studies” from their emergence to the present in both Korea and the UK. There have been some fundamental problems concerning the institutionalization of cultural studies in the modern academicism, because the autonomy of the science, independent of official institutions (statism and capitalism) was counted as the most important issue in the foundation of modern science. As a result, the individual scientific fields and their cultural areas were established in academic systems as institutions. However, the scientific-cultural boundaries paradoxically made mutual communication between them impossible and caused a serious subordination of sciences/culture to the institutions controlled by market-based capitalism and bureaucratic statism. This is the sociocultural background for the emergence of cultural studies in the 1960s. From their beginning, they have aspired toward transgredient problemetics for practical solutions in modern society. In this regard, firstly, I tried to survey historical trajectories of the cultural studies from a transgredient point of view and pose several questions about their realistic strategies and so on. Under present conditions, strategic actualities of cultural studies consist in occupying the position of “exteriority within interiority.” I think we had better adopt the strategy of “implosion” by Jean Baudrillard for breaking through the boundaries between restricted cultural areas. Transgredience in cultural studies must be regarded as some sort of “de-territorialization” as with Deleuze and Guattari, because this concept-movement is not a temporary measure for the crises in modern academism. That’s why we have surveyed the historical trajectories of cultural studies from their subversive point of view.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.