Where Has the Aura Gone? Reflections on Cultural Studies, Neoliberalism, and Literature as the Auratic Event

This paper provides a cross-cultural discussion of the dynamics and problems of cultural studies. I examine Simon During’s genealogy of cultural studies in the context of the current crisis of the American higher education. I explain why there is no longer “aura”—in the Benjaminian sense—on college campuses, and how this lack of aura is related to the global dominance of neoliberalism both as a set of economic policies serving the free markets and as a political rationality governing education and the everyday life. I present several preliminary counter measures against neoliberalism. One of them is to incorporate cultural studies in literary studies—not the other way around—so as to use the aura as a critical tool against neoliberalism, to re-establish the core values of literature in teaching moral and political responsibilities as well as public goodness. The paper ends with a brief reading of Wong Kar-wai’s latest film 2046 as an allegory of the auratic event.