the crowd sourced presidential plenary for cultural studies association may 24th, 2013

participants were given three minutes to respond to the prompt

cultural studies should… cultural studies could… cultural studies will…
____________________

cultural studies should be a political act against the institutionalizing processes of becoming disciplined

disciplining disciplines are what have produced the need for cultural studies

as a response to the limiting of disciplines and their necessary exclusions, cultural studies emerges to respond, undisciplined, to the problems of what has been left out

cultural studies must remain undisciplined, or it ironically reproduces the circumstances that led to its creation and produces its own redundancy

ways to remain undisciplined are to
resist canonization and to
resist asserting certain methods as our own
we must be flexible
we must also practice our theories, not just apply them through methods

understanding both cultural theory and cultural method as a practice makes them necessarily unable to be disciplined

because practice is never fixed or final

 to facilitate this undisciplined becoming of cultural studies we can understand it, and practice it as a
field

not a discipline, but a field above and below and unbounded by the disciplining of disciplines

cultural studies
could become a field
is a field
was always already a field

this field is like a plane of immanence

smooth unstructured space

 as deleuze and guattari* describe the field of immanence,

“
there are only
complex networks of forces,
particles,
connections,
relations,
affects and
becomings…

there are only
relations of
movement and rest,
speed and slowness
between unformed elements….

there are only
haecceities,
affects,
subjectless individuations that
constitute collective assemblages
”

of course, this is not how everyone understands cultural studies

cultural studies
could become disciplined
is disciplined
was always already disciplined

but i see the undisciplined potential in cultural studies like a body without organs

 in understanding cultural studies like a body without organs we see that we are productive
that our measures are productive
that we are in a quantum entanglement with culture
and like desire we produce it
we are not removed from it, lacking it, and looking in on it.

as foucault* has said the intellectual’s role is not to report on the truth of the masses but it “is to struggle against the forms of power that transform us into its object and instrument in the sphere of “knowledge,” “truth,” “consciousness,” and “discourse””

we must resist the forms of power that seek to discipline cultural studies

and that includes us as we will be the ones to do this especially when
we privilege certain requirements for
publications
funding
tenure
the academy itself

if we do resist the putting up of fences we will have the space to

work and play
desire and produce
theorize and practice
on and of

this immanent field of cultural studies

____________________

*a thousand plateaus
*intellectuals and power