The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities

If I address crisis of humanities in face of problem of social technology, I want to do so first of all from point of view of United Kingdom, and more particularly from perspective of growth and development of cultural studies such as it is in Britain. Specifically, this will be from my own experience at Centre for Cultural Studies, where, if one believes in origins, term cultural studies first appeared in its modern manifestation. But this is neither a search for origins nor a suggestion that Birmingham was only way to do cultural studies. Cultural studies was then, and has been ever since, an adaptation to its terrain; it has been a conjunctural practice. It has always developed from a different matrix of interdisciplinary studies and disciplines. Even in Britain, three or four places bold enough to say they are offering courses in cultural studies have different disciplinary roots, both in humanities and social sciences. There should be no implication in my remarks that Birmingham did it right way or even that there was any one Birmingham position; indeed, there is no such thing as Birmingham School. (To hear the Birmingham School evoked is, for me, to confront a model of alienation in which something one took part in producing returns to greet one as thing, in all its inevitable facticity.) My own memories of Birmingham are mainly of rows, debates, arguments, of people walking out of rooms. It was always in a critical relation to very theoretical paradigms out of which it grew and to concrete studies and practices it was attempting to transform. So, in that sense, cultural studies is not one thing; it has never been one thing. In trying to sight problem of humanities and social technology from standpoint of cultural studies a particular sense of irony takes over insofar as cultural studies in Britain emerged precisely from a crisis in humanities. Many of us were formed in humanities; my own degrees are in literature rather than in sociology. When I was offered a chair in sociology, I said, Now that sociology does not exist as a discipline, I am happy to profess it. But truth is that most of us had to leave humanities in order to do serious work in