‘Seeing red’ : cultural studies, governmentality and utility

Abstract: This paper critically examines “the vague and baggy monster” that much CS has become, how it has travelled, and what utilitarian forms it asumes in totally different contexts and periods. The field, once known for its activist intellectualism, has been everywhere re-articulated into and doing different kinds of work: translation, literary studies, marketing, audience, policy analysis and discourse analysis. Cultural Studies’ hybridized nature is examined in its very different manifestations in different historical contexts, national debates and objectives. One particular Chinese appropriation will be compared to early British, Australian, South American, American and South African experiences. The discourse of Cultural China in understanding a globalized market economy following the end of the Cold War is examined. The implications for global cultural studies are discussed in terms of ideological metaphors of the color ‘red’ (as in revolutions [cultural, political, guerilla] and in fashion)