Doing cultural studies at the crossroads

Abstract

This article reflects on the difficulties of practising cultural studies in a transnational, cross-cultural context by interrogating the popular metaphors of the 'crossroads' and the 'borderlands' as the spaces for trangression, heteroglossia and radical openness. The article argues that despite the increased intensity of communication and exchange of ideas across national, cultural, and geographical borders (both within cultural studies and in the social world at large), distinctions between the 'local' and the 'non-local' remain crucial in determining the specific and variegated meanings accrued to general or 'global' concepts such as 'race', 'nation' and 'identity'. The article concludes that our crossroads encounters would be more productive if we recognize the moments of actual disconnection rather than hold on to the utopian ideal of connectedness so bound up with celebrations of the 'borderlands'.