Skip to main content

Robert Taylor - Mapping the Past, Present, and Future

I am keeping my post short this week. :)


1) The first question comes directly from “Articulation and Culture” and is one I have been stewing over since reading this text.


“How are critics to make sense of cultural practices, trends, and events?”


As a group, we have danced around this question for the last couple of weeks, but I am wondering if we can start to pinpoint a place to start, given all of the complexity and intertextuality within a contemporary lived experience that we have discussed over recent weeks. Grossberg mentions the “cartography of daily life” (63), and I wonder what this map might even look like. I’m interested in hearing what people think!


2) My second question comes from the Hall interview, edited by Grossberg.


“In what ways does Hall’s defense of modernism reflect his view that theory is an open horizon and how can his open horizon and defense of modernism move us into the future?”


In education, we have a common saying, “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” meaning beg, borrow, and steal from mentors, colleagues, the internet, etc. Essentially, don’t be afraid to stand on the shoulders of those who came before you. How is Hall’s critique of postmodernism also a critique of theorists trying to reinvent the wheel?

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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?
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 6 Discussion Qs

 Hall brings up the concept of interpellation as applied to social formations. (p 335) How is interpellation related to articulation? How are the two different, if at all? Must the two be discussed together? I have more difficulty conceptualizing interpellation than I do articulation. If we are to take up Hall's warning not to study racism as a set of "historically specific racisms" (336) nor as something with a "universal structure" (337). What balance can we strike today between these two approaches in our current historical moment? Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has written that certain forms of modern racism have been impacted by the prevalent ideology of "colorblindness." Are we still in this moment or are new specificities arising?
Post a Comment
Read more