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Hall on Gramsci (John)

 In "Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race," Hall intervenes in debates surrounding the supposed limitations of Gramsci's theoretical contributions — specifically Anderson's claim that because Gramsci's central problematic was the failure of socialist revolution in "the West" and his preoccupation with "advanced" societies, this confined Gramsci to the "distinguished company of so-called 'western Marxists.'" (Race & Difference 300). Hall persuasively argues for the relevance of Gramsci to the study of race by historicizing Gramsci's thought — attending to the concrete political moments that propelled his thought, as well as the different levels at which his concepts operate. 


My questions this week follow from this essay: 


Hall perceives Anderson to have "commit[ted] the error of literalism" in his read of Gramsci. In essence, that is because Gramsci did not write of race in explicit terms; therefore, his concepts and theoretical formulations have little or no relevance to the study of race. What is it in Gramsci's concepts that Hall finds so powerfully relevant to understanding race? What can't we understand about race absent Gramsci's terms and formulations? I am also interested in how we might commit the error of literalism when we read all sorts of scholarship. How often do we fall prey to a literal reading of a text, and in what ways might that limit the work's theoretical capacity and application to political problems outside its supposed focus? 


In part II of Hall's essay, he raises the question of determination, a central and perpetual problematic in marxism. The notion of mechanical function or "simple expressive totality" does not allow us to conceptualize the political and ideological levels sufficiently: 


"This collapses Marx's somewhat problematic formulation — the economic as 'determining in the last instance' — to the reductionist principle that the economic determines, in an immediate way, the first, middle, and last instances. In this sense, 'economism' is a theoretical reductionism. It simplest the structure of social formations, reducing their complexity of articulation, vertical and horizontal, to a single line of determination. It simplest the very concept of determination' (which in Marx is actually a very complex idea) to that of a mechanical function." (Race and Difference, 302). 


My question: what is the relationship between time/space to determination?


(John)


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