On Public Seminar this week, McKenzie Wark reflects on the creative industries.
The fate of cultural studies in the United States appears to be twofold. On the one hand, it still generates moral panic. Right-wing nut-jobbers think that “cultural Marxism” is some insidious, decadent creed, probably created by Jews and Blacks to destroy America. On the other hand, it has finally become seamlessly commodified. Dick Hebdige, once known as the author of a famous book about subcultures, is now a character in a novel by Chris Kraus that has been optioned for a TV pilot by the makers of the popular show Transparent. These two modes of recuperation were, incidentally, what Hebdige thought was the fate of all subcultures.