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Genre Anxiety in the Postmodern Public Sphere

This paper examines the roots of contemporary concerns about the influence of poststructuralist theories and aligned disciplines such as cultural studies on media studies, exemplified here by Keith Windschuttle's attack on the latter. Rather than taking detailed issue with Windschuttle's attack on critical theory, I examine the roots of what, I argue, is an anxiety about the shifting boundaries between conventional institutional and discursive arenas. Far from identifying a schism between academic and professional practice in media studies, I argue that recent developments in both fields have fostered a far closer relationship between the two arenas, and that it is precisely this proximity which is engendering anxiety among some commentators.