WELCOME
Dear reader of Popular Inquiry: The Journal of the Aesthetics of Kitsch, Camp and Mass Culture.
You are reading our first blog post. This is how we work: When all of the texts of the Fall issue 2017 have been published here, we will publish the whole as a PDF Fall issue 2017 on our archive website. Having this blog site is for reaching new audiences, making sharing easier and making reading with smart phones simple.
This journal was born out of a need to have more open-minded publication venues for theoretical texts, especially ones dealing with popular culture. Most of us who share a philosophical interest in kitsch, camp and mass culture have encountered glass ceilings, partly due to the prejudices of old school scholars still have towards the ‘new arts’ and partly due to the non-theoretical nature of most popular culture venues.
We hope to foster theoretical and even non-academic intellectual discussion on issues as varied as rap music, sport, malls, popular painting, toys and internet culture – without forgetting the fact that it is also important to study critically ‘high culture’, ‘highbrow’ and aesthetic hierarchies. Texts on these topics are more than welcome here. We also invite you to work on taking back the popular from the highbrows who have since the establishing of the highart system been appropriating the popular. We hope you will also write to us about popular culture in your cultural context, whatever it is. We’d love this to be both global and glocal, mainstream and marginal.
Please follow us on Facebook (Popular Inquiry) and Twitter (@PopularInquiry) to get the latest news and articles. Authors, see our requirements on the main page. Do not hesitate to write the way which is best for your discourse and do not hesitate to contact us.
Max & Jozef
