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Griffin- Week 7 Questions

 

Hall writes about how essentialized identities are somewhat necessary to “win” space within cultural hegemony; when it comes to Blackness, “Where would we be, as bell hooks once remarked, without a touch of essentialism?” (475). Is this essentializing of a racial identity reproduced through production or reception of popular culture? In what ways are people told something is “Black” (or any other identity) versus it becomes “Black” because audiences say it is?

In Adorno and Horkheimer’s culture industries framework, is there space for meaningful decoding practices (as Hall would say)? Or does any attempt to construct the meaning of cultural commodities become a reinforcement of the culture industries?

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