Cultural Critique and Cultural Policy: Handmaiden or No Relation?

Abstract

What relations should exist between cultural critique and cultural policy? This article questions whether the usual idea that 'theory should undergird practice' and that 'critique implements theory' holds for the distinct discourses of critique and policy. Nevertheless. they intersect in often surprising and ironic ways. Comments on the current, major Inquiry into Australian Content on Commercial Television by the ABT draw out some of these intersections. Implications for research and for curriculum development of the complex relations between critique and policy are explored.