The Uncertainties of Cultural Studies

I do realize that this is a problematic term given the current fluidity and ongoing reconfigurations of the political field.

I have no easy solutions, especially for younger scholars, except to say that the university is a constantly changing institution, a field of struggle in which political intellectuals have been fighting, for a long time, for the conditions necessary to do their work. Many of the risks entailed are not new, and if there are no guarantees that one can win, there are also no guarantees that one will lose. We cannot afford to give up the attempt to gain better knowledge and better understandings of what’s going on, to not assume that we already know the answers or even the questions. Nor cannot we afford to give up the space of the academy. While it is not the only place for intellectual labor, it is, I am convinced, a rare space which demands of us that we constantly assume that we might be wrong, so that we go on thinking.