The Temporality of Cultural Analysis

The traveling of concepts in new approaches usually concerns the transfer of a concept from one discipline to another—e.g., from the humanities to the social sciences, or from philosophy to the humanities. However, concepts can also travel in time, from past to present or from present to past. In this study, I would like to focus on the temporal traveling of the approach of cultural analysis—an approach developed and coined by Mieke Bal, which distinguishes itself from cultural studies. The approach of cultural analysis can be used not only for an analysis of objects in practices in whatever media, but also for art objects, as well as objects and practices that belong to popular culture; and it can be used for an analysis of old, historical objects as well as modern and contemporary objects. Cultural Studies, in contrast, does focus on popular culture and keeps away from elite culture—that is, art and literature. So, when cultural analysis does not distinguish itself from other approaches by its “object choice,” we should look elsewhere for what makes it a specific approach. I will scrutinize the temporality of cultural analysis by contrasting it with historical analysis, as is common in art history and historical studies.