Roll Over Beethoven

Roll Over Beethoven analyzes topics as diverse as the history of American radicalism, the sociology if science, the impact of the Library of Congress on the organization of knowledge, and the institutionalization of film studies. Aronowitz's account of recent controversies over "political correctness" reveals that the current culture wars reflect profound differences among scholars over the proper role of the university and the character of legitimate intellectual knowledge.

Within this broad reappraisal of the cultural question, which is embedded in the intellectual history of the 20th century, Aronowitz offers an "interpretive genealogy" of cultural studies that describes both the evolution of the field and the political and social contexts in which it developed. He argues that cultural studies exhibit a tendency toward transgression that is rarely explicit but always present and, at its best, not merely interdisciplinary but anti-disciplinary.

Stanley Aronowitz traces the history of the cultural issue - in both British and American manifestations.

Publishers Weekly

In this ``interpretive genealogy of cultural studies,'' sociologist Aronowitz ( The Politics of Identity ) offers a history of this field with an eye toward examining how the nature of intellectual knowledge is defined. Though the book meanders from present-day politics to the historical debate over ``high'' and ``low'' culture to the role of the New Left in popular culture, Aronowitz's style is fairly accessible. Some arguments are undeveloped, as when he urges the Left to vigorously support the First Amendment but then suggests that ``any community has a right to set limits on what it considers acceptable speech.'' In a chapter on the cultural politics of the Popular Front, Aronowitz offers an engaging memoir of his Bronx boyhood, recalling his rich encounters with classical and popular music and his study of political economy at a Communist Party school; he then analyzes novels and plays of the era, defending them against charges of populist oversimplification. After addressing current debates over the idea of an academic ``canon,'' he notes that ``virtually any significant educational innovation already has a history somewhere in the annals of the American academic system.'' (Apr.)

STANLEY ARONOWITZ is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Cultural Studies Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Among his books are The Politics of Identity (1992), Science as Power (1988), The Crisis in Historical Materialism (1981), and, with Henry Giroux, Postmodern Education (1991).