Theory stranded at the borders, or, Cultural Studies from the southern fringes

Abstract

Isolating certain critical blind spots that one encounters in studying lifeworlds of the global South, this essay calls for: (1) a grasp of the irreducible singularity of each historical formation as an essential aspect of southern Cultural Studies, so that its lessons are not readily erased, dismissed as signs of failure, or bracketed as idiosyncratic exceptions to universalized standards; and (2) the recognition of volatile and illicit forms of popular agency—emerging in friction with the security-obsessed governmentality of the borderlands, the exclusionary institutions of civil society, and the normativities of citizenship—as legitimate heralds of a global political futurity.