Stuart Hall 2022 Seminar

  “In the Problem of Ideology: Marxism without Guarantees,” Stuart Hall insists that Marxism is a “living body of thought” that can help us understand any given conjecture (45). In the 2012 transcript to his last interview, however, Hall laments that the field barely wrestles with this framework: “It is not that Marxism is not around, but that kind of conversation which cultural studies conducted against some aspects of, around the questions, expanding a Marxist tradition of critical thinking - that is absent and that is a real weakness.” (6). Why do we think the dialogue between Cultural Studies and Marxism declined in the twenty-first century? How do we rearticulate Marxism, if at all, in our present conjecture?  “Language is the medium par excellence through which things are ‘represented’ in thought and thus the medium in which ideology is generated and transformed” (The Problem of Ideology, 35). My question is: What kind of language/discourse is required to negotiate, dec...

Althusser makes a point that ISAs operate as "unified" under the ruling ideology. To what extent are certain ISAs unified if they are "the site of class struggle" playing out, holding the potential for "ruptures" (to use Hall's phrase) with dominant ideologies? Here, I am thinking about the University of Iowa's COVID policies and how its rules are practiced and applied in many different ways throughout campus, as administrative burdens and scale make it difficult to oversee large numbers of employees. More generally, as junior scholars, grad students, and/or individuals doing cultural studies work, does it make more sense for us to do deep and nuanced readings of theorists such as Marx and Althusser in our work, or to cite others who have expanded these traditions over the years?

 1. At the risk of oversimplifying, one question that kept popping into my head: can ideology ever be good? Does reaching an "ideological status" necessarily mean we need to go back to the drawing board? Are we all doomed to "reify a narrow concept of culture and construct [our] own selective tradition of the best that has been thought and said (Sparks, p. 71)? Is it possible for society to exist without the process of constant theorizing (Hall, p. 44/45). Or will the need to go "beyond...in order to understand contemporary culture" always be a must (Sparks, 78)? In other words, will we ever get to rest?? 2. In a similar vein, can texts - even if read differently/in opposition to - ever exist outside of ideology? I suppose I know the answer is no, and a new order would have a historical link to current power systems, but for some reason this feels sticky to me. Maybe I'm just overthinking this one.  ** I think my second question relates to Butler's ...

After finishing Stuart Hall’s re-reading of some of the more argued-over components of classical Marxist thought, I found myself encouraged to (re) re-read Hall’s intervention using one of my favorite movies “The Matrix.” I hope I am not totally off in this comparison, but it seems that false consciousness (experiencing the circuits of capitalist production exclusively through only a couple of the categories present) is kind of like the Matrix. The Matrix is a simulation of what life was like before; life is not like that anymore, but the Matrix is still real in that the real bodies of humans are plugged into a machine. Hall’s distinction between what is “true/false” and what is “partial/whole” really helped me understand the concept of false consciousness. However, I found myself wondering how one gains a more complete insight into the circuits of capitalist production. Hall says that theoretical discourse can help us see all the different relations (discourse would be like the red pi...

I'm stuck on certain aspects of the Butler piece, and not necessarily because of Butler's own opinions; I'm particularly drawn to their citation of Adorno's position that "nothing radical could come of common sense." I like the idea, especially the fact that anything that could truly constitute "common sense" could be interpreted as maintenance of the status quo. However, I immediately think of philosophical and political movements based on the unity of the working classes. Toward the end of World War II, then-US Vice-President Henry Agard Wallace gave a particularly compelling speech in which he declared that, in order for society to progress and reach its potential and for all humanity to achieve a lasting peace, the era after WWII needed to be the "Century of the Common Man," in which peaceful intellectual and economic competition would enable the free people of the world to create a better society. Wallace insisted that WWII was, in fac...

In both "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms" and "Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies," Hall explicates one of cultural studies' primary aims — to grasp the relationship between culture and society — by holding several contradictory theoretical and political perspectives in tension: structuralism/culturalism, base/superstructure, ideology/culture, conditions/consciousness. Hall calls for "living with this tension," in the latter piece. From my reading, it seems part of why cultural studies must live with this tension is because of what Hall calls "the displacement of culture." What exactly does Hall mean by the displacement of culture — that we must work through textualities, but that "textualities are never enough"? And what does this insight allow us to do?  Hall ends "Theoretical Legacies" with a passage on contemporary (1990s?) American cultural studies — the "crude work" of merely connecting power to ...

  Judith Butler’s op-ed in   The New York Times   from before I was born (lol, not to date myself) is missing a response to what I believe is valid and constructive criticism. Butler’s piece is in part a response to being crowned in a bad writing competition by a conservative journal which Martha Nussbaum likely made them aware of in her scathing critique. I know this because I wrote a poem (a sonnet) about it last year which I would be happy to share in class if there is any interest. Nussbaum, a philosopher and professor at UChicago, wrote a hit piece on Butler called   “The Professor of Parody”   published in   The New Republic   on February 22, 1999 and was shortly thereafter rebutted (indirectly) by Butler’s article published on March 20, 1999. In this article, Nussbaum argues, from a feminist perspective, that Butler and other academics have detached themselves from material politics and have adopted a defeatist politic to societal woes...

 1. I am very intrigued by the discussion in this week's reading about academic language and discipline as an exclusion practice. Are interdisciplinary studies a fallacy or fantasy?  2. Graduate and post-graduate studies require us to pick a very specific area and become an expert in that area. Many of our graduate training requires us to be versed in specific research writing structures, theories, and schools of thought. As academia is historically dominated by Western, white elite men, how can we wrestle with this history, and challenge norms as graduate students and junior scholars as we progress and survive or even thrive in academia?

I am interested in whether we think Giroux et al.'s call for a cultural studies that questions the cultural norms that are "so often unconsciously absorbed" (9) have been answered. In addition, I am intrigued that this piece mentions the public sphere but centers most of the discussion around "resisting intellectuals" as they operate within their classrooms. What parallels can we draw between the "New Times" of which Hall writes and the politics, forms of capitalism, subject formation, (etc.) of today? What does this say about any "deeper [cultural] tendencies" (231) that may exist? - Shannon

My two questions from this week have emerged from the Judith Butler piece, A 'Bad Writer' Bites Back , both centered around the journal, Philosophy and Literature —which Butler describes as the self-proclaimed “arbiter of good prose.”  I agree with Butler’s staunch defense of questioning common sense and provoking “new ways of looking at a familiar world”, and was reminded of David Harvey’s quote in the introduction to his Companion to Marx’s Capital : “Real learning always entails a struggle to understand the unknown.”   Butler describes Philosophy and Literature as a “culturally conservative academic journal” which naturally led me down a longer-than-anticipated visit to the journal's website . I was greeted with a video presented by the Philosophy and Literature’s editor Garry L. Hagberg, who rails against the “jargon infested” work that litters the journal’s field, locating Philosophy and Literature in clear opposition to such bothersome clutter.  However, Hagberg...

 1) I, like many of my peers by the looks of the posts before me, was struck by Giroux et al.'s arguments surrounding Cultural Studies and the constraints placed on knowledge production by the academy and disciplines within it. I was particularly interested in their discussion surrounding "interdisciplinary" programs within the academy, such as American Studies or Gender/Women's Studies. They note that, although these departments were constructed because of the "sense that the most important issues were being lost in the cracks between the rigid boundaries of the disciplines," they tend to either be radical and resisting of these disciplines, which discredits them in the academy, or they tend to lose their radical edge in order to become more successful and "legitimate" within the academy. I think these are still concerns for people who study within these interdisciplinary programs, and so my question is if this paradox can be remedied, and if it c...

1. In her rebuttal of the “culturally conservative journal,” Butler seems to insist that radical thought can only be articulated in non-ordinary language. I am keen to understand how such an argument will shift if the critique is to come from people who didn’t have generational access to academic knowledge. Can academia sustain gatekeeping and delegitimize work that is more accessible (hooks “Theory as a Liberatory Practice”)? What courtesy will be afforded to such critiques? 2. The essay, “The Need for Cultural Studies” by Henry Giroux et al makes a case against academic disciplines within Social Sciences and Humanities and instead reminds the reader about the role of the resisting intellectual.  Is such a positionality crucial to research, especially if researchers are to be seen as agents, rather than effects of academia? Are these positions contingent on place and identity (Hall 236)? Should “differences in position” be separated from the “informing identity”? (Brunsdon 283)

In  Cultural Studies:  T wo  P aradigms , Stuart  Hall  defines culture as  “patterns of organization, those characteristics forms of human energy which can be discovered as revealing themselves- in ‘unexpected identities and  correspondences ’ as well as in ‘discontinuities of an unexpected kind ’ - within or underlying all social practices” (60).  If we examine culture through studying the “relationships between these patterns” how does  counter cultural alter the patterns within cultures and subcultures? Is counter cultural rhetoric  different from the analysis of the whole?    In the op-ed article “A  ‘ Bad Writer’ Bites Back , the writer(s) target  the usage of difficult and demanding language to express social criticism.  As a writer that focuses on accessible modes of knowledge and information sharing, I often struggle to share academica lly dense work of scholars when sharing or teaching work for those...

I like Giroux’s view that we need more resisting intellectuals who engage with the public sphere through reviews and books and by joining movements outside of academia. My question is, how can we move beyond just producing content that is ‘public-facing’ or ‘accessible’ to people outside of academia. What can we do to make sure that this content does reach an audience? Or perhaps the question is, is producing content the best way to engage the public? My second question is related to the first; how can we make sure we engage with a broader audience without jeopardizing personal goals, such as getting a degree or publishing individual papers? This question was prompted by Brunsdon’s analysis of what factors made it hard for students to complete PhDs at CCCS, some of which were a stress on collective work and research into social policy which led to careers outside of academia. 

I am interested in connecting some of the concepts from the reading to the current social reality of the COVID pandemic: 1) How can we apply the idea of the isolated expert and the need to disrupt disciplinary thinking to the current wave of anti-intellectualism facing all of the various disciplines/ professions within our society and culture (think: physical health, mental health, education, law enforcement, etc.)? As a high school teacher, this pandemic (and the social response to it) has given me a particular sense of existential dread, so my second question is more specific to my own work in secondary classrooms: 2) What role do educators, who are typically burdened with "healing" the woes facing society, play in addressing the resistance to any sort of meaningful cultural critique (See: recently proposed legislation banning curriculum in Iowa --House File 222--or the legislation seeking to ban language in Wisconsin schools )?

  I’m interested in Giroux et al’s idea that academia has overly rigid disciplinary structures. I’ve heard this point from a variety of perspectives, including anthropologists, religious scholars, and now cultural studies theorists. In what ways are disciplines naturally formed, vs. maintained by economic and institutional structures of academia? How could we take steps to reshape this in today’s context?   Hall often refers to Reagan and Thatcher, and in the “New Times” piece he refers to Thatcherism’s attempts to make Britain “great again.” This phrase really struck me due to its modern American connotation. I’m curious to know about the major connections between our current political context and the 1980s moment that Hall frequently refers to. What’s similar or different between today’s world and the “New Times” Hall writes about?  

 1. "Why are some of the most trenchant criticisms often expressed through difficult and demanding language?" This is the question I expected Butler to answer in the op-ed "A 'Bad Writer' Bites Back." If there was an answer, I missed it or misunderstood it. Butler suggests that complex, radical critiques of "common sense" cannot be made in ordinary language using the legacy of the Frankfurt School to show how [intellectual] language can challenge our social realities. My questions are: What about the "common sense" or power that haunts the "intellectual" world? How does this theoretical & intellectual work reinscribe the politics of domination or the "game of hegemony"("Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies" 267)?  2. In "The Meaning of New Times," Hall notes how the individual subject is no longer a stable or whole "self," but an amalgamation of different selves produced by th...

I realize this is supposed to be brief, so I am going to sum up the questions from my meandering thoughts below here:   Is there really a divide between “ordinary” language and academic – or really, is no language enough to capture the difficulty of lived reality? And, if so, where does that leave the academy? How do we work through that in radical ways?   I think grounding this question, as well as the readings from this week, materially could be a potential response. Finally, going back to Butler’s piece, I keep thinking about this division between “ordinary” language and “intellectual.” I honestly really don’t understand Butler sometimes and if we, as academics, can’t, who can? And, regardless, if we cannot transmit our ideas, as Hall would say, what in God’s name is even the point?? If you want to see how I got to these questions, read on :-)   I wanted to reflect a bit on Butler’s piece; although a short one, I think there’s a lot to unpack as it relates to all the r...

Dear Colleagues, Thank you for taking this journey with me! This site is the digital repository for your discussion questions, assingments, and course multimedia. About the Course : Our course will explore the scholarship of Stuart Hall. In so doing, we will also examine the theories, methods, and history of cultural studies. The course focuses on the major areas of Hall’s work: Marxist thought and the political economy, diasporas and globalization, cultural production and popular culture, film and cinema studies, race, ethnicity, identity, and differánce. It will also cover key theorists that influenced Stuart Hall (e.g., Marx, Foucault, Fanon, Gramsci, and Althusser) and contemporary scholars in cultural studies that have made use of Hall’s writings and theories in their own work. Finally, we will consider the role of theory in everyday life and the critical role of public intellectuals. This English graduate course is cross-listed with the African American Studies Program, the ...