A question I think is relevant across all readings is how to read the texts, which hyper-specific to their time, and extract general or ubiquitous meanings from them? For example, in "The Great Moving Nowhere Show" I was really interested in the "Third Way," but ultimately got distracted the specific circumstance that is being talked about and explained in the text. From what I understand the "third way" is a non-political political position. It hopes to deviate from poltical extremes, but ultimately it is too ambiguous to take any sort of position on anything. I'm reading all of the elements of the "third way" as a critique but, at the risk of sounding flippant (and I don't want to), what now? Am I supposed to be interested in the "Blair Project" / "Thatcherism," or like Hall does at the end of the chapter, am I supposed to think more broadly about "modern response[s] to the crisis of our times?"
I'm also thinking a lot about Hall's "Problems with Ideology" and "The New Conservatism and the Old." From "Problems" I'm drawn back to the section of Volosinov and "concepts of ideological terrains of struggle and the task of ideological transformation (Problems, 40). There is something about the "peaceful revolution" of the middle class that resonates with "ideological transformation." With the introduction or rather increase in "private economy" more lower-middle class men were gaining access to wealth and therefore turned their backs on the class struggles they were once a part of and affected by (I'm thinking of Hall's references to taxes becoming enemy number one:"guarantee of full employment, limited controls, the cost of state assistance"). The shift in ideology made those who were new to private economy abandon their former position.I guess I don't really have a true question just wondering if this is an example of what Hall means when he says "ideology intervenes in social struggles" (Problems, 40). Also how is Hall's explanation of shift to private economies in "New Conservatism" gendered? I know he probably speaking generally but only talks about men entering these new economies.
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