Between centres and peripheries in transnational cultural studies

• The result is that we tend to remain marginalised internationally. In conferences as well as in publications, our voices count less than those from the US-UK axis. What we say feels less central to the concerns of the cultural studies field at large, since we cannot express ourselves quite as fluently as others, and our frames of reference are slightly out of tune with what counts as important in London or Chicago. We might be added as an exotic spice now and then, illustrating some less relevant point, before we are again put aside, safely placed outside the doxa of what really matters. Only some chosen few of us are allowed to remain in the centre of the field. Almost without exception, that only goes for those of us who either have Anglo-American roots, have studied or worked in Birmingham or Duke, or have done extensive work about Anglo-American culture. This is also some of the strategies we do use in order to step out of our domestic isolation. It may work, but it costs time and money, and deprives the transnational field of certain voices and insights that might have been contributed by those who refuse or are unable to make those concessions. There is no way for us to write from our home countries, using domestic empirical sources and still become internationally acknowledged. This can happen to a Brit or American, whose work can always suddenly be taken up and be made relevant to the field at large.

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cultural studies

globalisation

power

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