UC Irvine FlashPoints Title The Cultural Return Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0tr847n9 Author Hegeman, Susan Publication Date 2011-11-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The Cultural Return flashpoints The series solicits books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplinary frameworks, distinguished both by their historical grounding and their theoretical and conceptual strength. We seek studies that engage theory without losing touch with history and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints aims for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with moments of cultural emergence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, FlashPoints is interested in how literature con- tributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Available online at http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucpress. Series Editors Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA) Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor Edward Dimendberg (Film & Media Studies, UC Irvine), Coordinator Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) Susan Gillman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) 1. On Pain of Speech: Fantasies of the First Order and the Literary Rant, by Dina Al-Kassim 2. Moses and Multiculturalism, by Barbara Johnson, with a foreword by Barbara Rietveld 3. The Cosmic Time of Empire: Modern Britain and World Literature, by Adam Barrows 4. Poetry in Pieces: César Vallejo and Lyric Modernity, by Michelle Clayton 5. Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt, by Shaden M. Tageldin 6. Wings for Our Courage: Gender, Erudition, and Republican Thought, by Stephanie H. Jed 7. The Cultural Return, by Susan Hegeman 8. English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India, by Rashmi Sadana 9. The Cylinder: Kinematics of the Nineteenth Century, by Helmut Müller-Sievers 10. Polymorphous Domesticities: Pets, Bodies, and Desire in Four Modern Writers, by Juliana Schiesari The Cultural Return Susan Hegeman university of california press Berkeley • Los Angeles • London University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2012 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hegeman, Susan, 1964- The cultural return / Susan Hegeman. p. cm. – (Flash points ; 7) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-26898-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Culture–Study and teaching. 2. Popular culture–Study and teaching. 3. Mass media and culture. 4. Critical theory. 5. Culture and globalization. I. Title. HM623.H45 2012 306.01–dc23 2011026587 Manufactured in the United States of America 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on 50-pound Enterprise, a 30% post-consumer-waste, recycled, deinked fi ber that is processed chlorine-free. It is acid-free and meets all ansi/niso (z 39.48) requirements. For Phil Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Cultural Discontents 21 2. Haunted by Mass Culture 41 3. A Brief History of the Cultural Turn 58 4. Globalization, Culture, and Crises of Disciplinarity 76 5. The Santa Claus Problem: Culture, Belief, Modernity 93 6. The Cultural Return 112 Notes 127 Index 155 Acknowledgments This book arose out of an attempt to make sense of my local context, as an academic trained in the latter part of one century, and yet living in another. While I witnessed in one century a host of exciting pos- sibilities brought about by the intellectual challenges of theory and interdisciplinarity, I found myself, in another, reckoning with forces that still evade comprehension: globalization, fi nancialization, neolib- eralism, and (perhaps most personally undergirding it all) what often feel like the fi nal days of the American century’s grand experiment in public higher education. As such, it has sometimes been diffi cult to write with much confi dence about either my world or my place in it. Fortunately, I was able to share both my locality and the world of ideas with generous friends, mentors, and colleagues, all of whom I gratefully acknowledge here. My fi rst debts of gratitude go to conference and event organizers: Winfried Fluck and Thomas Claviez (“Theories of American Culture” at the John F. Kennedy Institut, Freie Universität, Berlin), Stanley Corkin (the Ropes Lecture Series at the University of Cincinnati), Fredric Jameson (“Anticipated Utopias: The Ethics and Politics of Collectivity” at Duke University), and Henrika Kuklick (“Histories of the Human Sciences: Different Disciplinary Perspectives” at the University of Penn- sylvania). They kindly offered me the opportunity to elaborate on my earlier work on the concept of culture, which in turn led me to recog- nize an audience, sharpen my ideas, and fi nd my polemic. Additionally, ix x | Acknowledgments the annual Marxist Reading Group conferences at the University of Florida provided friendly, challenging, and inspiring venues throughout the writing process. The following people gave me the invaluable gift of their time, reading drafts, sharing their work, and offering important support, advice, and insights: Alex Alberro, Matti Bunzl, Sarika Chandra, Kim Emery, Brad Evans, Richard G. Fox, Caren Irr, Sam Kimball, Sheryl Kroen, John Leavey, Barbara Mennel, Molly Mullin, Bruce Robbins, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Trish Ventura, and the anonymous readers for the press. Other kind guides, facilitators, and co-conspirators include Rita Barnard, Ed Dimendberg, Pamela Gilbert, Peter Hitchcock, Kenneth Kidd, Carolyn Lesjak, David Leverenz, Peter Logan, Jane Love, Marc Manganaro, Chris Pavsek, Michael Rothberg, Malini Schueller, Rob Seguin, and Yasemin Yildiz. For sweet and savory little bits of local knowledge, I wish to thank Pam Kimball, Hannah Page, and Bob and Grace Thomson. And for providing me with mostly the right kinds of distractions, I thank Nadia and Owen, the Hegemans, the Hansons, the Wegners, and the Summer Institute and beach house families. Finally, and foremost, this book is a conversation with one particular inter- locutor, who shares my world and keeps me thinking about utopian horizons. It is dedicated to Phil Wegner, alongside whom I write. Introduction In Jonathan Franzen’s best-selling novel The Corrections (2001), one of the plot lines involves the “failure” of an untenured cultural studies pro- fessor at a small northeastern college. Chip Lambert’s downfall begins when a bright student sabotages his class-capping exercise in the critical analysis of an advertising campaign by interjecting, “Excuse me, but that is just such bullshit.”1 The student, Melissa, complains that Chip is trying to unload his own hatred of corporate capitalism on the stu- dents, when the ad in fact demonstrates the benefi ts of corporations; in this case, the campaign for the software company centers on its support of breast cancer research and awareness. Because this criticism strikes Chip as somehow unanswerable, the whole semester’s effort now seems to him lost. Chip even feels compelled to ponder the rightness of his former view that “criticizing a sick culture, even if the criticism accomplished nothing, had always felt like useful work.”2 Indeed, he begins to wonder if the culture of corporate and consumer capitalism is really so “sick” after all—especially when bright young things like Melissa seem so comfortable with it. Soon, he embarks on a disastrous affair with Melissa, who involves him in plagiarism and illegal drug use. For this, he gets fi red from his job. To cover his living expenses while he tries to get his life back together, Chip starts to sell off all his academic books, saving for last his “beloved cultural historians and his complete hardcover Arden Shakespeare.”3 Things only begin to look up when he meets a shady Lithuanian entrepreneur who entangles him 1 2 | Introduction in the complex new world of global klepto-capitalism. Together, they begin a scheme to bilk Western investors eager to claim their piece of beleaguered Lithuania’s resources. Of course, one wonders about how this little classroom controversy could have been suffi ciently traumatic to provoke such a precipitous downslide. Melissa’s comment is less trenchant than hostile, and Chip buckles at a confrontation that most experienced instructors would bat away with relative ease. (As to the merit of her point, not even Marx himself argued that capitalism was purely a force of evil in the world.) Indeed, we are given ample opportunity to psychologize Chip’s rather sudden and irrational change of feelings about cultural studies, and also feminist and queer theory, as having something to do with his troubles with women. His embrace and rejection of cultural studies overlap