Brittany Bahl, Week 7 Discussion Questions

From People's History and Socialist Theory, “Deconstructing ‘The Popular’” by Stuart Hall.

I really enjoyed this reading. My master’s thesis was a rhetorical analysis of three popular film franchises and it was interesting to dig a little deeper into the true value of popular culture through this reading. In this piece, Hall states, “Culture, conceived not as separate ‘ways of life’ but as ‘ways of struggle’ constantly intersect: the pertinent culture struggles arise at the points of intersection” (237). I feel like this quote was particularly generative for me in reflecting on the experience of writing my master’s thesis (on popular culture artifacts), but also in thinking about the ways in which we discuss “culture.” Here is my question:

If we think about culture as “ways of struggle,” then how does this change the way we approach cultural studies (or the various ways our own fields intersect with cultural studies)?

 

From Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, “What is this ‘black’ in black popular culture?” by Stuart Hall.

This piece was full of deep, critical insights. Among them is the following: “The moment the signifier ‘black’ is torn from its historical, cultural, and political embedding and lodged in a biologically constituted racial category, we valorize, by inversion, the very ground of the racism we are trying to deconstruct. In addition, as always happens when we naturalize historical categories (think about gender and sexuality), we fix that signifier outside of history, outside of change, outside of political intervention” (475). I appreciate how statements like these have helped me to slow down and rethink the ways in which I have been thinking through various concepts. It is important to always remember the histories and cultural and political meanings of these signifiers, but I think we do tend to forget them. Here is my question:

As budding scholars, how can we train ourselves not to forget that every signifier related to identity construction has histories and cultural and political meanings? And, relatedly, how do we incorporate that knowledge and memory into our work?