Skip to main content

On the Husk of Marxism & Language

 


  1. “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? 


  1. “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, deconstruct, and transform ideologies? Can we theorize (and transform) ideologies without the difficult & demanding language of theory?


Comments

Post a Comment

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...
Post a Comment
Read more