Phew ok, now that I’m done having an existential crisis about identity (or, really, as Hall talks about, identification) and its “increasingly fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different intersecting and antagonistic discourses, practices and positions” (4). Basically, the foundation being in constant articulation. ((Is this what Whitman meant by containing multitudes??)). I wonder what it would look like for a subject not to invest in a position (6); could you invest in some but not others? Are we aware of this investment? Or just consenting? I’m just interested in unpacking how something so fragile - an identification that constantly needs to be worked on and upheld through various (re) articulations - can be so hard to destroy. And by destroy here I mean dislodging identification/identities that hail/invest logic’s of oppression like, say, that of nation. Or, as Julien and Mercer propose, can we take up the deconstructive project (453)?
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?
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