Stuart Hall 2022 Seminar

 I am interested in the way Giroux uses the phrase "public pedagogy" and the adjective 'public' in his piece for this week. When he says that we need to understand that "culture is a strategic pedagogical and political terrain," how can we interpret this as a statement in support of alternative instruction venues? What pedagogical role does "culture" play outside of the academy, and how can intellectuals find ways to tap into these roles? Regarding Kiang's article on pedagogy and community building, I can't help but think about today's educational context as similarly critical, susceptible to student "evaluations" and complaints, and wary of professorial freedom of speech in favor of rules/recommendations that tacitly encourage us not to make our pedagogy too polarizing. I'm all for pushing the boundaries of accepted pedagogy as far as we're comfortable, but at what point do the confines of academia as an institution b...

Giroux has a great rebuttal for Todd Gitlin’s critique of social movements organized around gender, race, sexual orientation, multiculturalism that, according to Gatlin, overlook the more ‘real politics’ of economic inequality and class. Giroux uses Hall’s insight that class is lived through the modalities of race and gender to show how social movements organized around racial and gendered issues expose how these issues are connected to class-based politics (example: the social movement ACT UP, which tried to make AIDS visible, exposed how AIDS was taking its greatest toll on poor black women). My question is, can we think of social movements that are seemingly organized around class issues, but which also expose how race and gender are tied up in class politics. As I am writing this, I am thinking of Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City , a study of how eight families in Milwaukee struggled with poverty and home insecurity. Although the families are ...

Given the emphasis on "practices" related to pedagogy in these readings, I want to consider our conversation from several weeks ago about the often "difficult and demanding language" of academic prose and cultural criticism.  In recounting his transition from BCCCS to Open University, Hall remarks that he did not see "why it [cultural studies] wouldn't 'live,' as a more popular pedagogy." (501). The imperative that cultural studies "live," that it be active and alive is reminiscent of Althusser's conception of ideology as actions inserted into practices within apparatuses — that ideology has a material basis. Giroux cites Hall on the role of intellectuals as it relates to these ideas: to "translate knowledge into the practice of culture" (348). Certainly there is some degree of "translating" that Hall believes necessary in a pedagogical project. But it seems we shouldn't mistake the work of translating for...

As I am co-facilitating discussion this week I will keep this post briefer than usual. I will make room, however, to note that these readings were very generative; I imagine I will refer back to many of the articles (especially Hall and Giroux) in coming months. These questions may appear in some form during our class presentation so please feel very welcome to leave them until then!  1. In light of Morley's presentation of Hall as someone cared more about the production of questions than the "production of definitive Answers or Theories" (253) and Kiang's aim to "create community in the classroom" (50) I ask:  When teaching, how can we build our own classroom communities that value questions above dogmatic theories?   a. Have you experienced a set of students, like Kiang, who have arrived in the classroom with a premeditated attempt to disrupt? If so, how did you approach resolving the issue without "failing to invest" (58) in other students?  2. ...

Before I get into my questions for this week, I want to revisit a question asked during class last Wednesday about the political subjects formed by TikTok. I believe the question was something along the lines of, “What would Hall think about the example of political subjects moving through TikTok trends, specifically, the damaging of school property and assaulting other students and teachers?”  I’m not sure I have a full and satisfactory answer, but I know Hall would have a lot to say about the ways in which culture and power are mutating when it comes to social media platforms like TikTok. When young political subjects are moving through a platform that appears to empower them and gives them political autonomy and unity with others in their demographic group, this is obviously going to create political subjects interested in exerting influence and power over cultural formation and political discourse. My concern is that the experimental form of social media represented by TikTok a...

  There’s a lot to talk about in these readings (as always!), especially as related to questions of discipline, culture/meaning make, the political/what should be political, and the academy/school (and the self - I really liked the interview with Hall). Nevertheless, I want to talk about the Giroux piece and citational practices, as put in context with the Harvard letter.   I think the Harvard letter speaks to a lot of Giroux’s argument and the ways in which educators can become agents of corporate power (343). It also stirred conversation about sexual/abuse within the academy, though many are highlighting the fact that this is *happening in almost every institution, whether among faculty and students or students and students or TAs and students, everyday.* The point is that sexual abuse is rampant and many in the academy *know* of known abusers, even if only through whispered networks. And, yet, nothing is done; but perhaps most importantly, these scholars are still scholars ...

In this week’s selections, Hall introduces us to the “new-style, middle-class, peaceful revolution” (The New Conservatism and the Old), “Authoritarian Populism” (The Great Moving Right Show), and “New Labor” (The Great Moving Nowhere Show). As a general remark, reading Stuart Hall read the “conjuncture” of three distinct moments in the postwar years was remarkable for the ways these pieces (together) provide an abstract or aerial view of the progression of political moments (or movements) and as individual texts, offer us a template for how to think, write, and analyze the conjuncture.  Because conjunctural analysis is one of principal importance to Hall as a mode of interpretation and genre of writing, my questions this week are centered mainly around how we identify, define, and analyze a conjuncture. I also have questions about the extent to which a conjunctural analysis, while descriptive, also suggests ways forward and to what extent the terrains of struggle are limited/narrow...