Skip to main content

2/2 Discussion Questions

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?





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Corrine Contemplates the Funk

 I will keep my intro brief, as I think I will mainly just be echoing my classmates, but what a delicious book! I have really be enjoying reading two great minds converse through "the mundane to the profound" (2). Gilroy mentions in his introduction that "readers...are invited to appreciate the tone and timbre of these interlocked voices in the same spirit with which the participants listened carefully to each other" (x). I was reminded of this early in the reading, through hooks and Hall's mediations on conversation as pedagogy, especially Hall's comments on page 7: "It is as much about rhythm as anything else. If you are living the rest of your life at a certain intensified rhythm, it just doesn't fit the rhythm of conversation. You can't hurry." This seems to be compounded for academic readers by their reflections on how being "paid to talk" or teach in the academy changes the status of talking or teaching. My question then rev...