A CULTURAL-STUDIES WITHOUT GUARANTEES - RESPONSE TO CHEN,KUAN,HSING

This article is a short response to Chen's critique of our article 'As ianing Australia: notes toward a critical transnationalism in cultural studies'. It is argued that Chen's attack on our article is misdirect ed. Furthermore, we are in substantial agreement with Chen on many iss ues, most importantly that the nation-state should not be the uninterr ogated site for the development of a 'local' cultural studies. However , we find Chen's politics, and his use of a reductionist Marxist theor y, overly simplistic. Moreover, the core/periphery binary which he use s is not adequate to express the complexities of a global capitalist w orld order in which the sites of power are becoming increasingly decen tred. Similarly, the politics of resistance are also more complex than Chen suggests; resistance must be understood in relation to local sit uations and local tactics, as well as the imperatives of global capita lism. Finally, a properly localized and left-politicized cultural stud ies must reflexively interrogate the politics of theory, including Mar xism, considering its specific 'western' history and recognizing the n ecessary partiality of theory in a postcolonial world of differentiate d modernities.