“What Are My Words Worth”: the role of academia’s ivory tower in cultural transmission

my talk given at the Creative Industries Festival 2026

“What is left, what is remembered and what is still fit for use in the heritage of classical bourgeois culture?”

It is with these words that Eric Hobsbawm opens his 2012 essay ‘Heritage’. Hobsbawm, a historian in his 95th year when this was written, is concerned here not with modern technology or how cultural behemoths of his prime survive, despite his astonishing perception regarding these topics. Elsewhere in Fractured Times (the book we take ‘Heritage’ from) Hobsbawm seems to predict Spotify and the homogenised vocabulary of social media, but these developments do not concern him so much as how culture passes from one person to another, old to young, across time. Unlike Hobsbawm, I am “specifically concerned with culture in the broader anthropological sense”: my own work interrogates what we choose to value and seeks to acknowledge the underlying messages of how and why certain texts find success in order to elucidate our understanding of society more widely, but this Hobsbawm essay struck me deeply because he talks about the role of money in the creation and preservation of art – cinemas “lived and died by the box office” – but also of the role the patron plays in preserving and funding art. I am going to argue that the university, that great ivory tower that we are all a cog in the machine of, is able to play the role of patron, and that we thus have a duty to study things that without us will be forgotten or dismissed.

The role of bourgeois in Hobsbawm’s work is interesting: as a Marxist he is using the term clinically, as a descriptor, and one which may well be applied to us. For most academics, cultural capital is our main currency, and I stand here today in Oxford which like most university towns (it was the same where I grew up in Leicester) finds study “expressed in institutions and buildings that transformed [its] city centre[]” – perhaps moreso even than the symphony halls and art galleries that Hobsbawm alludes to.

Some things, Hobsbawm tells us – his own examples are jazz and avant-garde films – “are regarded as valuable culturally or for other non-economic reasons, but cannot earn an adequate commercial return”. I am sure all of the early-career scholars here have their own opinions on how far academia subsidises archival work and research, but an effort is made to (sometimes) pay us for our work. We are supported by the state education apparatus, whilst also being in some ways separate from it. This is key: the state “constantly undermines and destroys the contemporary concept of ‘heritage’” in service of its own narrative. State education flattens by “introduc[ing] distortions and open[ing] the way to a lot of political brainwashing”. Anybody who’s taught in a British high school recently, for example, may share my disapprobation that ‘democracy’ is considered a fundamental British value, always having been here, when we still live under a party system that requires debates every election about tactical voting, not to mention a literal king.

Hobsbawm’s essay also has implications that he did not intend. Using art collector Oskar Reinhardt as his example for national – that is, works of culture which are curated to define a nation – and “supranational” collecting – ie a collection built for private, personal taste – allows us to recognise those behaviours in our own work. As academics we do sometimes make work because it will sell, or because we need to teach ‘101’ courses of fundamental building blocks to our youngest students, but our ‘supranational’ networks are founded in that which we love, or feel important to us, and they extend beyond the borders of our institution to other scholars. All things, however, as Hobsbawm readily points out, “coexist[] in an uncomfortable instability with the independent force of an increasingly globalised and rapidly growing capitalist economy which… may be a more powerful engine of… homogenisation” than the state education.

Hobsbawm looks upon the future of culture within this landscape with concern: “how much of the great simultaneous circus show of sound, shape, image, colour, celebrity and spectacle that constitutes the contemporary cultural experience will even survive as preservable heritage, as distinct from changing sets of generational memories occasionally revived as retro fashions?”

This brings us, as all things surely do in time, to Taylor Swift. All of the books you see here are taken from my personal collection so rest assured you are in the presence of an expert.

Swift is perhaps the greatest example of homogenisation in our current society. She is, as Sam Lansky puts it in his Time profile of Swift, “the last monoculture left in our stratified world”. She is Hobsbawm’s high bourgeois culture, in the sense of pride belonging to the Swiftie tribe can engender and in how “the corpus of [her work] [is] not simply to be enjoyed but absorbed with both aesthetic and spiritual emotion or… by tourist-pilgrims to [her] holy places”, as well as the money spent on collecting superfluous items or displaying your identity as a Swiftie and within sub-tribes of the in-group. We will not be showing my collection of Swift merch, but suffice to say I am once again speaking from a place of experience and authority. We can understand this through criticism of Ms Swift and the application of Hobsbawm’s work: Swift recognises, as the conceptual artists Hobsbawm references did, that “the [artistic] product [is] a product for sale like everything else,” yet she has maintained both brand name and “moral obligations and work discipline” in her product, allowing her to operate as both traditional high art and modern mass culture. Swift herself demonstrates an awareness of this: “What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. So actually, if we’re going to look at this in the most cynical way possible, feminine ideas becoming lucrative means that more female art will get made. It’s extremely heartening.” (Lansky, 2023)

Like much bourgeois culture, Swift’s legacy is kept, in the main, by women: elsewhere in Fractured Times Hobsbawm discusses the role of women, specifically the stay-at-home wife, in seeking and demanding the intellectual stimulus of art. Swift’s work, though, faces scrutiny that classical, historical cultural objects do not. Dr Elly McCausland of the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Ghent tells us that “whenever we unpack what appears to be mere snobbery – whether about Swift or Austen, Twilight or One Direction – we tend to find something more specific and targeted”. This is where we need to bring in intersectionalism, diversity, and class structures, because when we defend the teen girl’s proclivities we defend a white-presenting, seemingly middle-class interest. All of McCausland’s examples are coded in the modern world as female, white, and in some way juvenile – if not directly for children, then for adult women who are deficient in authority. This is why ‘gaylor’ – the fan theory that Taylor Swift is gay – is important, because we are using what poet Maggie Nelson tells us is “the fearsome dimension of fandom,” that is, “its inability to be satisfied”, in order to interrogate and assert what we hope to see reflected in celebrity. In fan circles these discussions rage fiercely as enthusiasts attempt to decode or interpret images, lyrics, and actions as ‘flags’ or ‘easter eggs’. Similarly, we find eco-critical engagements with Swift and celebrity within her fan sphere, and even some burgeoning elements of critical race theory regarding her use of metaphor and attempts to decolonise her own artistic world. Whilst we may as academics look at these Substacks and Reddit posts as childish attempts at academic study, surely the next step is to welcome this application of critical thought into the academy, thus raising its standard and making it answer to the structures of citation, close reading, and critical engagement we have developed in our own fields?

McCausland says that the outrage Taylor Swift’s inclusion in the study of English Literature causes “suggests that there is something fundamentally newsworthy and thus potentially controversial about Swift’s place on a syllabus. Yet this shows a profound misunderstanding about what English literature professors and students actually do.” We can exchange Swift for any number of texts we study that don’t belong in the canon: personally, I’m currently working on 50SOG, which despite its status as a symbol for the zeitgeist of the time when it was published and its astronomical success making it, in my eyes, an obvious subject for study, my sharing this fact continues to cause raised eyebrows – not only because the text is sexually explicit, though I am sure that plays into it, but also because of its audience and disposable nature. Yet despite its been-and-gone success this text has shaped multiple industries and impacted great swathes of art even today. ‘Why’ and ‘how’ are not a questions that can be answered easily, but perhaps the 60000 words of my thesis, which has taken longer to write than the text itself, can begin to signpost a direction which respectfully acknowledges the impact of something which is may otherwise be forgotten by history or mocked by posterity.

So, why study the most famous pop star in the world? Why write essays on her output like it matters? Firstly, because it’s good. As comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan puts it: “Red bangs from beginning to end, and only a fool would say otherwise.” Swift’s work may not appeal to everyone, but it is churlish to suggest there is no enjoyment had in her music and aesthetic choices, or to presuppose her work is shallow because of its genre and medium. Secondly, what a society values reflects that society. The assertion that Swift is only for tween girls to dance to belies the influence she has across art and society; additionally, this attitude dismisses the taste of an apparently large and motivated group solely on the basis of age and gender. Third, Swift has self-consciously positioned herself in a legacy of poetry which she learns from and references repeatedly across a copious and growing body of work, allowing us as scholars to easily use her work for comparative or illustrative purposes. Beyond that, though, what we talk about when we talk about Taylor Swift is not simply Taylor Swift. She is where we are situating an argument, the illumination of a point, the way of making explicit an inference. When we practice the study of any humanities subject we are bringing a perspective which aims to answer or comment upon some larger question. As McCausland puts it, “the study of literature is always looking to broaden itself, to encourage thinking outside of the box… We can read almost anything as a text, open for debate, analysis and discussion.”

There is no simple answer about what ‘belongs’ in academia, except on the level of the professional who brings the text and its interpretation. What belongs – definitively – in academia is your passion, your unique perspective, and your depth of research. We have the power to act as independent of the state’s control yet still benefit from the state’s reputation, and it is the unique way the university sits between state and the individual, the capitalist profit motive and the ability to put out work that rejects profit in favour of challenge that makes us the guardians of Hobsbawm’s heritage. It therefore our job to decide what the canon is, and with us that classical bourgeois culture is protected, renewed, and reinterpreted. Or, to put it bluntly, I may not be working on Swift, but I can respect the work of those who are. Thank you.

CITATIONS:

• Hobsbawm, Eric, ‘Heritage’ in Fractured Times (2012)
• Lansky, Sam, ‘Person of the Year: Taylor Swift’ (2023)
• McCausland, Elly, Swifterature: A Love Story: Taylor Swift and English Literature (2025)
• Nelson, Maggie, The Slicks (Dopamine journal 2025)

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On This Topic:

• Promoting my delightful friends in Swift! Including Dorka Tamás, who works on Sylvia Plath, Swift, witches, eco-criticism, and all kinds of delightful feminist ideas. Buy her book!
• Iona Murphy, also a scholar on Swift / Plath who comes at it from a Disability Studies angle. Buy her book!
• Callan McCarthy, a playwright and editor I have had the pleasure of working at close quarters with. Fund her play!

To-Do:

• Queue up more posts!! I am running out, and this one can’t go out until after I give the talk
• Plan a half-term meet with J
• Update website bio to include lecturing and CI talk.

Today’s Culture:

• I finished writing this the day after the Opalite video came out and if that song ever leaves my head I will be surprised.
• Recording words I don’t know in my journal. This week: Èṣù.
• I’ve gone back to tic-tacs, my first signature mint, after decamping for polos for quite a while. Yes, they rattle, but they also don’t get smushed in your bag.