Cultural Studies and Political Theory. Edited by Jodi Dean. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. 362p. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Extract

Film, painting, disease, nationalism, mass media, literature, family values, capital punishment, music lyrics, theater, UFOs, the Statue of Liberty, and Appalachian hollers are some of the cultural texts subject to political analysis in this impressive volume of sixteen essays. Neither are these cultural sites presumed to be transparent nor are their investments fully known. They are problematized, pluralized, specified, and contextualized in terms of such political categories as liberalism, communitarianism, privacy, civility, nationhood, citizenship, community, the will, responsibility, the common, revolution, public sphere(s), and the political itself (p. 19). This approach, which Jodi Dean terms an “interface” between cultural studies and political theory, captures how cultural forms such as film and literature cannot be decoupled from their political moorings, just as a political concept like citizenship is always embedded with cultural meanings.