Cultural Studies and the New Humanities: Concepts and Controversies by Patrick Fuery and Nick Mansfield (review)

Patrick Fuery and Nick Mansfield. Cultural Studies and the New Humanities : Concepts and Controversies. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997. 223p. Shawn Alfrey University of Colorado at Denver In a gesture of seemingly postmodern skepticism, Gertrude Stein's 1934 lecture on her massive tome, The Making ofAmericans, addressed her earlier attempt to transmit what she knew: "When I was up against the difficulty ofputting down the complete conception that I had ... gradually acquired, ... I was faced by the trouble that I had acquired all this knowledge gradually but when I had it I had it completely at one time" (147). Stein's statement came back to me while I was reading Fuery and Mansfield's book. A lot ofknowledge is presented in this text. The writers' collaboration treats most ofthe big names ofcritical theory, and many of the most influential contemporary critical practices, from feminist theory to "deconstruction" to queer theory. Presenting such completed knowledge, however, does not necessarily open a space for the gradual development ofthe reader's own, as Stein knew. This is the problem Cultural Studies and the New Humanities grapples with. Ironically, its many strategies ofopening often close offthis possibility for the newcomer to this sometimes daunting mass ofknowledge. As the introduction and conclusion make clear, Fuery and Mansfield are themselves committed to the value ofcritical theory and, as the preface indicates, their approach is a response to their own experience teaching it. They find their structuring logic in the category they call the "new humanities" and its divergence from the established assumptions and methods ofthe humanities as they are traditionally defined. This focus is useful both because it gives a historical and cultural context to the rise of"cultural studies," and because it makes the new critical theories meaningful, answering the "so what" that both uninitiated students and resistant academics often ask when faced with the convolutions ofcontemporary critical debate. At its best, the book gives the reader a useful overview of the current state of theory. Especially in its more historically-inflected moments — those concerning the relation between the genres ofrealism and modernism (chapter 7) and the "genealogy" ofthe subject as conceived by Foucault (chapter 11) — the text offers useful illustrations of the relation between the amorphous category called culture and its social, political, and artistic products. As part of its own self-conscious desire to avoid authoritarian control and canon-enforcing formulations, the text is organized, as the writers describe it, "around a set of controversies" (vii). It focuses on four key issues: what is "culture ," what is "textualiry," what are the "contexts" oftextual expressions and conFALL 1999 H- ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 121 struction, and what are the issues concerning "subjectivity." This grouping seems meaningful to me — certainly it foregrounds important sites of theoretical debate . Unfortunately, however, its effect is often to splinter the material and concepts discussed and to miss the opportunity to build on a discussion already set in motion. The text's open-ended arrangement sometimes works against its writers' purpose, limiting the reader's engagement with and obscuring the contexts and relevance of the theoretical practices discussed. In many ways, I think it is the question ofwhich reader the text actually intends that presents much ofthe trouble. The introduction claims the book found its purpose in the enthusiastic undergraduates the writers have taught. The conclusion focuses on the academics "in mid-career" who seem predictably and unrelentingly hostile to the value ofcritical theory. In the pages between, I struggled to find a reading position appropriate to the open but ignorant reader for whom this book was written. I kept wonderingjust how die student new to theorywould navigate the gaps, the brief passages briefly explained, and the division of concepts and writers into capsulized thematic camps. There is little sustained discussion ofthe documents chosen; complex passages are often treated as self-evident. Frequently, the text relies on a shorthand ofjargon and complex clauses. The discursive style itselfcould rebuff the very audience die text invites. The book does deploy some strategies thatwould help a new learner in the field. In keeping with the gesture ofcultural studies, it usually enlists two texts to illustrate the theoretical issues it discusses, one ofwhich is mainstream...