The Memes of Production: A cultural studies weblog

That is the question we’ve been tossing back and forth for some months now. We’ve been involved with this blog since it launched in 2005. When it started, it was intended to be a “Cult-stud group-blog frenzy” enabling “more practical engagement between the wider world and that of cultural studies” and it had fifteen invited staff writers. While not all invitees took up the offer, the number of active writers dwindled fairly quickly and for the last few years John and I have pretty much been the only contributors, while Nick has had continued input into editorial decisions.

Maintaining a blog, as many of you already know, requires a considerable time and energy commitment, which we have had to fit into the small gaps between teaching and writing frenzies, and the moments that we can salvage in the midst of doing other things.

The blog has also drifted considerably from its original remit so that what we post now is often related to things that are on our mind at the time or the things that we find interesting. Consequently, the connection to Cultural Studies as a discipline has been, at times, tangential at best, even though it is still a discipline that we love and in which we continue to work.

Our main reason for persisting so long has been the desire to connect with others over issues that we regard as important and to get conversations going. However the number of conversations, like the number of authors, has also diminished over time.

So we’re really wondering if this is a boat worth keeping afloat. We know that we have a couple of faithful readers who we appreciate greatly and with whom we can connect in other ways. Beyond that, we really don’t know who is reading the blog and whether our posts are of any interest to anyone other than us.

So, if you swing by the blog on even a semi-regular basis, let us know that you’re out there. Otherwise, if we are just talking to ourselves, we can do that just as easily over the kitchen table.