Articles written by John Grech

Valerie Walkerdine's “Using the Work of Felix Guattari to Understand Space, Place, Social Justice, and Education” examines a number of theoretical ideas derived principally from Felix Guattari's work with psychiatric patients. Walkerdine applies these approaches to educational settings where personal subjective change and transformation is desired. The central approach utilises imaginative work and a rethinking of subjecthood in an attempt to equip the individual to deal with what is perceived as a potential destabilisation, alienation, and perhaps disintegration of the self's sense of identity as a result of life changing educational inputs. This “Conversation” engages Walkerdine's and Guattari's work and reconsiders some basic tenets in their approaches and challenging the continuing reliance on orthodox theory concerning early childhood development, attachment, and the threat that change is thought to pose to ideas of self. While supporting Walkerdine's and Guattari's overall approach, particularly in relation to adults, I argue that there are significant flaws in conventional childhood development and attachment theories underpinning their method. Drawing on more recent findings in biological and brain science, I propose that it is today possible to abandon moribund psychoanalytic theoretical premises of childhood development and arrive at a more empirically founded, non-pathological understanding of both change and human development.

This paper makes a case for the introduction of cultural studies at the University of Malta as part of a concerted effort towards the foundation of a specialised creative cultural pedagogical programme aimed at producing a rigorous range of taught and research objectives including a sharp focus on practice-led critical cultural research. The argument is based on a dual impulse embedded in cultural studies which produces intellectual work that is both a research practice in itself as well as an imperative to situate that work in practical everyday culture. Alongside creative and artistic practice, cultural studies, it is shown, has legitimate dealings in both the academy where it participates in scholarly discourses concerning the production of culture as well as dealing in the world beyond the University where, in everyday life, cultural studies researchers participate directly in the production and transformation of culture. Thus as a practice, cultural studies participates in both the spheres of everyday life through the production of culture as well as in the academy through the production of knowledge. It is this dual imperative which gives cultural studies its peculiarly critical edge, for this demands that knowledge engages directly with daily cultural practice to reveal the interconnection between politics, culture and knowledge production. Thus cultural studies may be regarded as both a form of production in the formation of daily life, albeit with a heightened sense of intellectual rigour, as much as it is a discursive scholarly activity conducted in the academy. It is this combinative and yet practical approach to research and teaching outputs and outcomes that gives cultural studies a crucial and potentially pivotal role in the formation of a creative contemporary practice-led research curriculum at the University.

John Grech

COMMENTARY: Re-Imagining Self in a World of Change – A Conversation with Valerie Walkerdine

Towards a Practice-Led Research and Teaching & Learning Environment: A Case for Maltese Cultural Studies

Communities, Values and the “New” Museology at MuŻA: A reply to Sandro Debono’s “’MuŻA – Rethinking National Art Museums and the values of community curation’”