Writing that matters: positioning cultural studies and criticality in the 'audit age'

Writing that matters: positioning cultural studies and criticality in the 'audit age'

Research in the humanities has variously received criticism for its obtuse and inaccessible language (Reizs 2010), benign claims for action (Lather 2007) and authorial positionality (Jameson 1990, Denzin and Lincoln 2005). Perhaps worst amongst these criticisms is the suggestion that scholarly, academic work is irrelevant to the world outside of academe. Institutional shifts in the way academic work is both produced and recognised have similarly paralleled these wider societal critiques, with institutionally mandated changes in the way academic work is conducted and recorded centred broadly around notions of performance and accountability. What results from this changed terrain is the need for a reconsideration of the way that scholarly work (particularly that in the humanities) is undertaken and what purposes it seeks to serve. In this paper, an approach to cultural studies research that attempts to re-engage the ‘ordinary’ (that original site of investigation for cultural studies scholars) for the ‘ordinary’ by making a case for critical, de-centred accounts of the everyday will be presented. This paper will chart why the emancipatory imperatives so often promised in humanist academic work must be realised and will suggest an ethic for a research mentality that moves both beyond and between institutionalised agendas for producing academic work.

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