"Something is at Stake": Northern European Cultural Studies Where, How, and Why?

Abstract

In this article, I address the current state of cultural studies in Northern Europe and more specifically in the Nordic countries, especially in Denmark. I take my point of departure in offering an answer to the question, what is cultural studies anyhow? and raise some questions about its future directions. From that, I then discuss how we can reason about regional cultural studies since in so doing we are caught in a dilemma: on the one hand, it provides a way to nuance hegemonic his-tories and ways of mapping the international field but, on the other hand, it also inevitably leads to new generalizations and new inclusions and exclusions. I go on to examine first the (im)possibility of scaling (regional, national, etc.) and, next, the challenge it raises at different levels of setting, i.e., Northern Europe, the Nor-dic countries, and Denmark. Finally, I focus on national, i.e., Danish cultural stud-ies and return to the question of the future of the discipline.

Keywords

• Cultural studies
• Scandinavian cultural studies
• regional cultural studies
• cultural forms
• the performative turn
• ciritique and ethics