Introduction

Abstract

s (a sizeable object) after he arrived at the conference, was heard to ask, sadly: 'Is this what we have become?' (2012, 1) As Turner's anecdote makes evident, the "warning bells for cultural studies" (2012, 37) are not exclusively activated by the choice of material. They also address substantial questions of methodology and agenda in a cultural studies project. More precisely, Turner takes issue with the prevalent practice in cultural studies of "mistaking any analytical method for a political purpose" (2012, 173) and thereby reducing it to "a genre of academic performance" that is "merely self-serving" (2012, 158). Angela McRobbie, whose feminist repurposing of cultural studies effectively challenges the above assumptions that interdisciplinarity inevitably compromises the field's political potential, arrives at more ambiguous conclusions. Reflecting on the trajectory of "British Cultural Marxism," her talk at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in October 2017 poses a research question that remains unanswered. The subtitle of her lecture – "From 'Working-Class Culture' to 'Common-Sense Neoliberalism'?" – may be read as a cautious comment on the development of cultural studies which reiterates Turner's findings about the field's subordination to a market-oriented logic of cultural exploitation. On the other hand, it may reference a broader shift in scholarly focus to the influence of neoliberalism on gender hierarchies (see e.g. McRobbie's The Aftermath of Feminism, 2008). While the question mark in the subtitle allows for both readings, McRobbie's ambiguity deliberately unsettles the above allegations and thereby raises more general questions about the functions and effects of meta-critical debates. Providing ample evidence that the institutionalization and resulting interdisciplinarity of research areas does not constitute a problem per se, McRobbie's talk insinuates that, in the words of Gesa Stedman, "[t]he hottest phase" of cultural studies "is followed by a cooler one," which is usually the case when "institutions are set up and become part of everyday scholarly practice" (2013, 4). In addition, the 'cooler' phases in the evolution of various disciplines commonly provoke competitions for the most political or most radical positions among different generations of scholars. Are the reproaches of Taylor, Turner and others justified or ascribable to this dynamic? In order to prepare this special issue, the editors surveyed approximately 60 pertinent international journals specializing in postcolonial and cultural studies. 1 Finding about 100 immediately relevant articles, we decided to approach them with Franco Moretti's method of 'distant reading' (2013a)2 and arrived at the following observations: The majority of articles prove that the disciplines are increasingly concerned with their own stocktaking, mainly occasioned by journal anniversaries or the publication of controversial interventions into the fields, which necessarily accompanies the establishment of a discipline in the academy and beyond. 1 We are grateful to our colleague Janna-Lena Neumann who looked at more than 30 cultural studies journals and thus contributed considerably to our findings. 2 Moretti's method mostly accounts for the reorientation of the humanities in an increasingly digitized research landscape. See Moretti (2013b) for an illustration of how the quantitative procedures of the digital humanities can inspire literary analysis. Anglistik, Volume 31 (2020), Issue 3 © 2020 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) INTRODUCTION: POSTCOLONIAL CULTURAL STUDIES 9 Concerning the overlaps of the disciplines, there are distinctly more postcolonial contributions to cultural studies journals than vice versa. This finding may attest to postcolonial studies' continued interest in and focus on cultural practices that value resistance and the concomitant reluctance to grapple with "the empirical question of popularity and the ideological stakes that question raises" (Bongie 2008, 283). Accordingly, we found a considerable number of cultural studies articles that contribute to postcolonial studies' engagement with race and ethnicity. In postcolonial studies journals, on the other hand, literary analyses (mostly of canonized postcolonial male authors like J.M. Coetzee, Amitav Ghosh and Salman Rushdie) dominate over cultural studies explorations, indicating that the cultural turn is less significant than Huggan suggests. The prevalent thematic clusters to be found in both postcolonial and cultural studies journals are: hybrid and/or queer identity and belonging; memory and trauma; world literature and globalization, including digitization. Excessively 'foregrounding' (Nørgaard et al. 2010, 94-96) these fashionable but fuzzy terms and concepts, the postcolonial cultural studies articles do not create a coherent political scale of reference. Echoing the position of Vivek Chibber, according to whom "a common set of theoretical parameters" is "increasingly hard to discern" (2013, 3) in postcolonial studies, the last observation serves to emphasize that meta-critical interventions into institutionalized fields of research do not only come from established scholars. Internal debates are equally set in motion by newcomers in search of their own position within demarcated boundaries. The 'Chibber Debate,' which was triggered by the sociologist's publication of Postcolonial Studies and the Specter of Capital (2013), references one of the most controversial interferences into postcolonial cultural studies of the last years. As Neil Lazarus remarks in his pointed review, "Chibber's book has made quite a splash, and has been widely talked about, debated, reviewed, applauded [...] and reviled, not only in specialist 'postcolonial' circles but also by scholars in the fields of history, sociology, development studies, anthropology, and political economy" (2016, 89). Criticizing postcolonial studies' rejection "to bring together and assess its various strands" (2013, 3), Chibber seeks to demonstrate that the field's emphasis on diversity and hybridity hampers the application of Western concepts to post/colonial contexts, discourages postcolonial class analysis and, in effect, reproduces imperialist thought (2013, 17-27). Not least because his key arguments function as an explicit frame of reference in two of the subsequent contributions (see Berg, Pardey), the introduction focuses on the study's critical reception by Lazarus in order to develop a productive perspective on the current phase of postcolonial cultural studies that underscores the significance of this special issue. Remarkably, Lazarus begins his review with a discussion of Chibber's tone to stress that his "sheer relentlessness" and "unabating negativity" (2016, 90) not only prevent a fruitful dialogue between the study's key ideas and the materialist approaches delineated by Benita Parry (see e.g. 2004), Sharae Deckard (see e.g. 2016) or himself (see e.g. 2011). 3 What Lazarus finds more problematic than being relegated to a 3 Considering the work of the Warwick Research Collective, which includes the above and various other postcolonialists, Lazarus rightly asserts that "we have not of course had to wait Anglistik, Volume 31 (2020), Issue 3 © 2020 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) JANA GOHRISCH, ELLEN GRÜNKEMEIER, AND HANNAH PARDEY 10 footnote is Chibber's "unsettling – even distasteful [...] register" (2016, 91) which alienates progressive generations of scholars: One might have anticipated and hoped [...] that a socialist scholar would want to draw out the collective nature of his intellectual activity, to make the point that he is articulating, refining and crystallising ideas shared by a community of other thinkers with whom he is in broad and solidaristic alliance. Instead, Chibber's register is that of heroic masculine individualism. (2016, 92; original emphases) Lazarus leaves it open to what extent Chibber's register results from "the market principles of ceaseless turnover and compulsory novelty" (2016, 89) that he notes in view of the study's excessive marketing. However, the structure of his review suggests that Chibber's neglect of postcolonial studies' materialist branch at least partly results from the pressure to produce original and unique scholarly work. Against this backdrop, the sociologist's foray into the postcolonial field reads like a vivid illustration of Turner and McRobbie's arguments because it demonstrates how capitalism produces an academic landscape of lone fighters who sacrifice scholarly exchange for the neoliberal principle of unbridled competition. Deconstructing the originality (and thus the professed radicality) of Chibber's arguments, Lazarus shows that depoliticization reproaches – whether they are voiced by established or emerging scholars – primarily function as marketing devices. Refusing to enter the competition that Chibber opens up, Lazarus's review serves as a key inspiration for the editors' assessment of postcolonial cultural studies' present state. His dialogic approach allows him to disclose the compatibility of Chibber's study with world-systems theory that, having a long tradition in the social sciences, provides a fruitful framework for the investigation of postcolonial cultures under the conditions of global capitalism. Similar to Lazarus, we do not suggest a return to Marxist ideology but moreover stress the epistemological advantages of looking at contemporary cultural production and consumption in terms of a combined but fundamentally uneven worldsystem. The initial reference to the Corona pandemic illustrates that we do not have to "reinvent the wheel" (Lazarus 2016, 92) but can draw on and appropriate existing models of thought to tackle pressing questions of the 21st century. World-systems theory helps to unearth that, instead of functioning as "some great leveller" (Jon