What is Cultural Criticism?

What is Cultural Criticism?' is an apt and, perhaps more importantly, eye-catching title for this book, but a more accurate name would have been 'What is the Value of Cultural Criticism?' for it is the value rather than the identity of the practice that is debated between its covers. This is a forewarning not a quibble and might seem gratuitous-surely the audience to which the book is addressed will already know what cultural criticism is? Perhaps, but on the one hand I suspect its readership extends beyond the handful of people who can rattle off a definition that isn't tautologous and on the other the identity of cultural criticism is of particular interest to me because I think I have been involved in its practice for the last eight years. I should know what I've been doing all that time yet the character, methods, and function of the practice are surprisingly opaque.