The Future is an open future: Cultural Studies at the end of the 'Long Twentieth Century' and the beginning of the 'Chinese Century'

摘要

A Short History of Cultural Studies (Hartley 2003) made the claim that cultural studies is a ‘philosophy of plenty’; a way of understanding the creation of cultural values among large populations, in times of economic growth, democratisation and consumerism. However these same times – the ‘long twentieth century’ (Arrighi 1994; Brewer 2004) – were marked by unprecedented social and ideological upheaval, with imperialism, total war, totalitarianism, and ‘mutually assured destruction’ (Cold War) as the dark side of progressive secular scientific modernity. Over that long century from the 1880s, world economic and political leadership shifted from European hegemony and British free-trade imperialism to US entrepreneurial-managerial capitalism. The end of the ‘long’ century was marked by further change, often gathered under the term ‘globalisation.’ For their part, the human, political and economic sciences underwent what has been called the ‘cultural turn,’ associated with post-industrial or network society, the ‘new’ or knowledge economy, postmodernism … and cultural studies.