Articulation & Ideology (John)

First, I want to remark on the versatility of Hall’s writing: he does the work of translating by critically and carefully reading between opposing theories, identifying points of contradiction and synthesis to ultimately deliver a central problematic (as he does so well in “race, articulation and societies structured in dominance”). And in conversation (“On Postmodernism and Articulation”), his wit comes through in his biting criticisms (“I’d like to make you eat your words,” 57) without ever sacrificing theoretical rigor. 

I appreciate how Hall makes such generative use of Althusser’s more “structuralist” framework (which can lend itself to a theorization that is not open enough to account for historical change or development) by way, principally, of Gramsci. Hall is able to mobilize a conception of articulation in order to understand the concrete, historical moments, so as to not get trapped in an unchanging structuralist paradigm that, while perhaps materialist, is not historical. 

Articulation seems enormously helpful in understanding the mechanics of class composition, subjectivity, and its relationship to ideology. So, my questions for this week:

• How does articulation help us to understand the mechanisms of ideology better? Can (or does) articulation account for the moment between being “hailed” and being “interpellated”? 

• How does Hall defend continuing to work on the terrain of ideology? Why does he continue to think it essential despite the rise of “postmodernist” critique, the “end of representation,” the end of “history,” the decline of the “surface appearance / real relations” paradigm (and perhaps we add “affect” to this, in our contemporary moment?) 

• The “conjuncture” is the privileged place from which Hall often theorizes (and says as much that he is most comfortable working on the conjecture, as opposed to taking up a more general theory that remains at a high level of abstraction). How do we distinguish what sorts of social phenomena are best understood at the level of abstraction or a governing logic, and what must be historicized at a more concrete level?

(John Tappen)