Cultural studies: A reluctant discipline

This article reviews recent debates regarding the disciplinary status of cultural studies. In doing so, it takes issue with the tendency for cultural studies to fight shy of characterizing itself as a discipline. This involves an examination of the respects in which, especially in Australia, cultural studies has now acquired all the institutional trappings of a discipline. It is suggested that those perspectives which view the institutionalization of cultural studies as tantamount to its co‐option rest on a misreading of its earlier history and of its relations to the education system. In terms of its intellectual characteristics, it is suggested that cultural studies is distinguished by a number of traits regarding its approaches to the analysis of the role of culture in relations of power and subjectivity. It is these qualities, it is argued, that have allowed cultural studies to play a more general role as an interdisciplinary ‘clearing‐house’ within the humanities. The article concludes by considering the qualities that have most distinguished Australian cultural studies, placing the stress on its strong feminist orientations, its contributions to our understanding of the relations between culture and nation, and its role in connecting cultural studies to the concerns of cultural policy.