“Chapter 25: The formation of a diasporic intellectual An interview with Stuart Hall,” Kuan-Hsing Chen.
Near the end of Kuan-Hsing Chen’s interview with Stuart Hall,
in response to the question of why he left the CCCS, Hall articulates his
decision to leave in terms of the “contradiction” between theory and practice, the
tangible difference between being for something in the abstract and usefully enacting
it at ground level. Hall notes that he chose to leave the Centre not because he
stood in opposition to feminism—indeed, he had previously sought to “patriarchally”
initiate it within the Centre—but because his position there obstructed the tangible
realization of feminism at the level of representation. Productive feminism, for
the women-identified intellectuals at the Centre, demanded women-identified
intellectuals at the helm. Hall comments, “You can be for a practice, but
that’s a very different thing from a living feminist in front of you, saying
‘Let us get Raymond Williams out of the MA programme, and put Julia Kristeva
in, instead” (Chen 17). “It was a structural thing,” Hall goes on to say (17).
Question: What Hall chose to do—leave the CCCS when
he could no longer “do any useful work, from that position” (17)—is an embrace
of theory through practice. He advocated for the feminist project in the theoretical
sense, and in turn made space for it through what in today’s term we call
responsible allyship. I think Hall’s example is remarkable. But I wonder if what
Hall enacts in his well-meant, responsible advocacy seeds the potential for a deferral
of responsibility, or a hesitancy to (tangibly) advocate for groups one is not
a part of? The other side of this is what I see proliferating today in the
refrain, “I can only speak to and for my experience as it relates to the groups
I belong to.” I see this manifest in classrooms, in particular: both those I encounter
as a student and those I mediate as an instructor. There is a reticence to
speak on behalf of others—not a bad thing, always—but this creates very real
gaps in advocacy; in my classroom, I sometimes see my students slip out of
feeling responsibility for experiences not their own. So how do we, as allies,
move from abstract support to on-the-ground advocacy that is effective, cognizant
of our limits, and of apiece with the effort Hall models? Imperatively, how do
we help students do this?
“Cultural Studies and Common Sense: Unresolved Questions,”
David Morley.
In response to a reviewer who saw in cultural studies the
mere recapitulation of a priori common sense, Morely trenchantly argues
that it was cultural studies that, in investigating the uncommon, the overlooked,
the quotidian, and the “flighty and opinionated” features of culture, made
manifest what we now take for granted (Morley 6). In highlighting this review, and
in later discussions of cultural studies’ critics, Morley distinguishes cultural
studies from the straw-person it is sometimes construed as: a late-coming
upstart rooting around in the enervated detritus of anthropology and sociology.
It seems that criticism of cultural studies keeps coming back to a criticism of
its objects of study; to critics, the objects are not rigorous enough, are too entangled in the
domestic, and are politically too granular or seemingly banal (micro) issues. But think of
social media, the most recent add-on to the terrain of cultural studies in my
view, which is ripe for discussions of how media is mediating class and gender
roles on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X. Social media trends are
remarkably ideological and political in nature. (Think of the reified keeping up
with the Joneses materialism and class signaling made manifest in the Stanleys
trend. Consider the #tradwives and #redpillsociety movements.)
Question: Social media, like the cultural texts Hall
interrogated, offers a site rich with identity-shaping potential; those
identities and affinities are signaled in some of the most banal, granular, and
domestic forms—New Balance shoes, Kendra Scott jewelry, air pods, Stanleys, the "clean girl" aesthetic, the "red-pill" entrepreneur. How
is social media engaging cultural formation and, to use Hall’s term,
articulation? What parallels do we see between rigorous engagement with social
media as a site of conjuncture and the more macro political theater?
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