Proximity is a political force within cultural studies. It works by means of a commitment to sharing the world of those made distant, deploying methods such as ethnography, close textual readings, and careful questioning of the spatial politics of existence in order to render the distant immediate. The articles in this issue of Cultural Studies Review do this through varied topics and means. They show critical proximity as not just the application and creation of critique but the acknowledgement that a radically new arrangement of the ordering principles of distance and closeness has come to pass. Critical proximity is as much a description of our relations with the world as it is a cultural studies practice coming into being.

Published: 2010-09-20

Editorial

John Frow, Katrina Schlunke

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