As I read these articles and interviews, one thought repeats on an endless loop in my brain: "I need to read more." Having read very little Baudrillard, a little more Gramsci, but virtually no Habermas, Lyotard, or many of the other names Hall casually cites (not drops, not invokes, but cites--in an interview), I spend more time reserving books to check out for context than I do reading the main text.
I'm drawn to Hall's remark on the "collapse of the French Intelligentsia during the [1980s-mid-1990s]," in which he talks about how Baudrillard et al were quick to declare "when and for whom history ends, how the masses can or cannot be represented, when they are or not a real historical force," and so on, largely because of what we're witnessing in Eastern Europe vis-a-vis the USA/Russian stand-off. In 2003, as Iraq War 2: Halliburton Boogaloo jumped off, I (somewhat melodramatically) called it the "Death of America," by which I simply meant the formal abdication of even the illusion of credibility of the USA military industrial complex; by 2016, with the effects of climate change now spiraling ferociously out of the range of our ability to navigate, let alone control, we began to see people officially declaring an end to history. I wonder exactly when the British people realized that their hegemony as THE dominant imperial power was over (for my money, I'd have said the surrender at Singapore in 1942). I also wonder if my own fatalistic presumption about how the USA's nonexistent soft power may force the white patriarchal power structure to turn to hard power to attempt some last gasp to maintain dominance isn't just arrogant presumption.
My questions, on the other hand, center on Hall's view of the Silent Majority.
I'm drawn to Hall's remark on the "collapse of the French Intelligentsia during the [1980s-mid-1990s]," in which he talks about how Baudrillard et al were quick to declare "when and for whom history ends, how the masses can or cannot be represented, when they are or not a real historical force," and so on, largely because of what we're witnessing in Eastern Europe vis-a-vis the USA/Russian stand-off. In 2003, as Iraq War 2: Halliburton Boogaloo jumped off, I (somewhat melodramatically) called it the "Death of America," by which I simply meant the formal abdication of even the illusion of credibility of the USA military industrial complex; by 2016, with the effects of climate change now spiraling ferociously out of the range of our ability to navigate, let alone control, we began to see people officially declaring an end to history. I wonder exactly when the British people realized that their hegemony as THE dominant imperial power was over (for my money, I'd have said the surrender at Singapore in 1942). I also wonder if my own fatalistic presumption about how the USA's nonexistent soft power may force the white patriarchal power structure to turn to hard power to attempt some last gasp to maintain dominance isn't just arrogant presumption.
My questions, on the other hand, center on Hall's view of the Silent Majority.
If the silent majorities are as thoughtful and full of things to say as Hall opines they are, what, then, have they said over the course of the last four decades?and
Has the notion of a "silent" majority fallen by the wayside in the age of the internet? Are the masses truly silent or being silenced? If the masses are a "point that you have to pass through," what exactly is being filtered out through that passage?
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