Chapter Two: Multiculturalism into Cultural Studies

Critiques of multiculturalism:
Among the earliest are "cultural deprivation"--cultures or cultural forms that are deprived of what is most valuable for quality of life. The "dominant culture" determines what is most valuable.
"Pluralism" and tolerance" education are similar in that they imply a norm against what is "different." Usually this is shallow and makes perfectably obvious what the centrist culture entails. Again, meant to avoid politicizing and rage.

Cultural studies insists that any aspect of history be examined from multiple perspectives, most particularly from the perspectives of those most affected or most victimized by events, policies and phenomena. Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural studies can take "Western" content, add "minority" content that relates, and for ma conversation.

Cultural studies provide a frame better theorized and more sensitive to particularities of context than multiculturalism.

Cultural studies can be said to have originated in Britian in the '50s among "marginalized" instructors. It has gained legitimacy since. Literary criticism is a leading part or point of origin for cultural studies. Early writings on the topic shifted from a literary-moral to an anthropological definition of culture...cultures, not Culture.

English cultural studies orgins focused on neglected materials from popular culture and mass media, as well as deployment of literary critical methods to study these materials. Long debate between structuralists and culturalists.

Sexual differences precede social class differences. Social class is more complicated by its interactions with gender issues. Same with race. Rather than defining cultural studies, which codifies and therefore constrains it, "Strategies of definitions" were proposed. Cultural studies must resist being departmentalized i.e. incorporated into other departments, such as English or sociology. Another danger is isolating cultural studies in universities, making it non-activist. Important to maintain the tension between intellectual work and political work of cultural studies.

The public discourse around current controversies over the humanities ans school curricula in the US was framed by conservative and neoconservative academics. Humanities what teach "the good" as defined as aesthetically pleasurable, or true and eternal orcommon, Western culture. The major split between two rough categories of views: those who view Western cultural studies as having a discernable "essence" and is primary, and those who question such essentialism and/or primacy of Western culture in the study of Humanities.

Defining Humanities another issue. Does it include social sciences? And since these are textual, they can also be interpreted through literary criticism. Determining whether there should be a core curriculum of cultural studies or afrocentric history, which would make it more of a "discipline" is another debate in the field.
One contingent can be called the "Western Essentialists," who argue that "the good" is knowable and objective. Critics of this essentialism say that reinterpretation of the so-called "best thoughts and finest utterances" is the only way that social or individual change can take place. The possibilities for multiple interpretations suggest an impossibility for certainty that shatters an essentialist structure.

The essentialist view treats culture (Western, African or Native-American) as existing in isolation from other cultures. A liberal education provides a passage to transformation of ideologies rather than mere transmission. Translating textual tradition involves the reading of "old" and "new" texts together in an intertext that is simultaneously faithful to the old and available to the new.

Moving multiculturalism into cultural studies means to move through theory as a necessary detour on the way to something more important. Link theory to political goals, to larger worlds of texts and bodies and back again.

Introduction

Brad's first comment:
I just began reading Translating the Curriculum by Susan Huddleston Edgerton. I want to get the blog ball rolling, so a quick thought or two follow.

Cultural studies is antidisciplinary and better measured by autobiographical writing than by any test. Most autobiographical writing, like most histories, relates trauma and grief.

The history of violence is the lack of acceptance of Difference or Otherness. If accepted and cherished, these differences can lead to profound learning (and peace and love and all that groovy stuff). Seems beyond the predilections of most humans.

Introduction:
Cultural studies involves translation across academic and non-academic discourses and across academic disciplines. Translation not only of language, but of nuance. Cultural studies must be incorporated into educational reform. Cultural studies in education needs more diverse representation. Poor translations abound. Her project is to bring cultural studies to bear upon curriculum. We have to force a multiculturalism into the curriculum in order for educators to really appreciate how minorities often are not given a voice. Too tfne multicultural education is weakened in order to silence rage.

Canon debates are crucial, because they are debates about culture. Most social theory about non-Western literature is written by Western critics about marginalized people, rather than including them. Autobiography provides a conjuncture with literature for exploring local context.

Primary themes: marginality, essentialism translation, love...reformulating the curriculum question "What knowledge is of most worth?" to "What knowledge best enables us to care for ourselves, one another and the nonhuman world?" What knowledge best enables us to minimize violence? A curriculum of rage, love and hope.