Cultural Studies - Cause and Effect

Reading ahead is always a great way to gain further understanding of a previous text. I just finished reading Michael Holquist’s essay, “Comparative Literature” which is interesting in retrospect. Jean Franco’s essay “Cultural Studies” posits that “it is quite possible that in the future; certain projects and interests of cultural studies will scatter to be absorbed into ancillary fields” (222). That is to say, the borders of this discipline is rather broad leading to the “dumping” or “wind tunnel” effect as that of comparative literature. While cultural studies is certainly a singular discipline whereby students engage in portions of differing cultural and social interests, it is important to understand its origin. Comparative literature offers a germane foundation point. At its inception cultural studies, fundamentally formulated as a subaltern discipline from world literature or comparative literature. The ever changing focuses in which to study literature is producing variants such as “transculturation and hybridity” (239) which aids students to create meaning of individual texts where it may have been otherwise difficult. Instead of maintaining the status quo, the idea is to challenge the standard curriculum by incorporating the various disciplines such as Queer studies, Feminist, Cognitive Poetics, Marxist Criticism, Literary Pragmatics, etc. enabling the engagement of thought toward perspectives and understanding of others. Moreover, cultural studies is the branch within the field of English that provides a fundamental basis whereby systems of literature began to take shape. In other words, cultural studies provides an avenue by which to explore other worlds by sinking ones teeth into the meat of the book.