Discussion Posts — Week Two — Sarah Frank

 From Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, “The meaning of New Times” by Stuart Hall.

I have quite a few questions about this Hall piece, but the question undergirding my other queries, and a question only partially answered in a later chapter from the Stuart Hall Reader, has to do with the binaries Hall invokes when discussing Cultural Studies vis-à-vis the project of modernity and ‘New Times.’

Question: Although sitting with vital contradictions and tensions is implicit to the work of Cultural Studies—indeed necessary, in Hall’s terms (‘Cultural studies and its theoretical legacies’ pg. 271)—what do we do with the apparatus of binaries that theoretical predecessors have left to us? I’m curious about some of the binaries Hall invokes: postmodernism as distinct from modernism (so much to say about that!), and culture as distinct from nature (I want more on how Hall defines nature on pg. 234). Part of the configuration of tension, as I have learned it, is that bipartite relationships are often imbricated, not discrete—not honest and true binaries, one could say. I’m curious to talk about the separations and distinctions Hall makes and how we should understand and traverse boundaries that may indeed be porous.  

From Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, “Cultural studies and its theoretical legacies” by Stuart Hall.

First, a quote I love: “The only theory worth having is that which you have to fight off, not that which you speak with profound fluency” (Hall 265).

Now, a question: I’m fascinated by the “organic intellectual” that Hall introduces on page 267. I don’t understand the organic intellectual as an endeavor that Hall and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies sought to produce (and in Hall’s estimation, failed to produce), and would like to learn more. What I’m most interested in understanding is the adjective Hall chooses. The word choice seems important, like a key facet of Cultural Studies pivots on an understanding, not of the intellectual, but of the organic intellectual. What does Hall mean by “organic,” and what is the relationship of an “organic” intellectual to Cultural Studies?