The Future of Cultural Analysis

Overview & Synopsis

Across the humanities and the social sciences, “cultural analysis” is a vibrant research practice. Since its introduction in the 1990s, its main principles have remained largely the same: interdisciplinarity, political urgency, a heuristic use of concepts, the detailed analysis of objects of culture, and an awareness of the scholar’s situatedness in the present. But is the practice still suited to the spiraling of social, political, and environmental crises that mark our time? Drawing on experiences in research, teaching, activism, and the creative arts, contributors explore what cultural analysis was back then, what it is now, and what it may be by 2034. In a shifting conjuncture, contributors strike notes of discomfort, defiance, and irony—as well as a renewed sense of urgency and care.