My first question is addressed to Stuart Hall's project of cultural studies on a strategic level, specifically as it is related to speaking of a 'popular culture.' I loved how candid Hall is in these essays this week--clearly written for a general, editorial readership. In "The Empire Strikes Back," Hall wrestles public support of an imperialist war in the Falklands (mytho-historically coded identification). However, I wonder: how much of so called 'public opinion' is the actual public's voice? Sovereign bodies, it has been proven time and again, can operate above law, etc--using the 'objective' reporting by the media as its tacit consensus. It seems like cultural studies, if it is ever to be a liberatory politics would need to insist on what the people actually do want--this would require dense, vigilant sociological work of the kind I assumed Hall was operating. However, in this case of the Falklands, it seems more that what people are expressing--if there was evidence that they actually were expressing support--would be symptomatic of a connection to history as process of change (however violent), rather than simply motoring out dead ideologies from the past.
Another general question, but one that came up in my reading of "The New Conservatism and the Old," is: what is the calculus by which we measure ideology's effectiveness? Regarding public, mediated political speech, he writes "This kind of language persistently undermined democratic sentiments in the community: it eroded the foundations for the just and responsible conduct of public affairs; it created the ethos within which irresponsibility could thrive." To me, this assumes that there is only ever one interpretation of ideology-expression speech; and that there is only, likewise, one type of interpretant--a reduction of the vast difference of cultural modalities of individual living.
In formulating both of these questions, I keep thinking about the neoliberal ideology of work-as-opportunity--Joe Biden's repeated insistence that "America wants jobs...Americans want to work." Who says? And who's to say anyone is particularly hailed by this particular American-identity other than people of the managerial class and above: those who, nonetheless, don't need work, but need consistently new others to legitimate their directives?
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