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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?


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