Question: How do we evaluate the current popularization of Black culture that Hall referenced in his 2012 interview without viewing structuralism/culturalism as co-constitutive?
Stuart Hall’s "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms" helped me think about our current concerns about defining culture and his sentiment in last week's reading about the emergence of Black culture into the mainstream. Hall posits in “Two Paradigms” that the traditional debate between culturalists/structuralists fails to provide an accurate definition of culture. However, how can we understand culture - as an ongoing project without the emphasis on structuralism informing culture or even ideology informing the structure of race?
Could this rise of Black culture into the mainstream potentially serve as both products of structuralist and culturalist explanations? For instance, under the framework of false consciousness, more traditional Marxist scholars might pose we are better equipped to grasp the creation of “fantasy,” referenced by last week’s interview as a tool utilized by those who determine what is “popular” to mask hegemony through the commodification of Black culture.
From "The Need for Cultural Studies" and "A ‘Bad Writer’ Bites Back"
I am stuck between Judith Butler’s call for scholars to challenge common sense and “natural understandings,” along with Giroux et al.'s piece and their notion of resisting intellectuals as a counter-hegemonic practice. Once again, in referencing Hall’s 2012 interview, there is a need to “understand how the bloody system works.” Are these sentiments posed by Butler and Giroux et al. inherent privileges? How do cultural studies as a community (specifically within the academy) actively protect already marginalized groups working in these respective systems - who disproportionately face the harm of, e.g., tenure systems when they engage with these counter-hegemonic practices?
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