It’s interesting to read the epigraph from our course syllabus in its original context—and with a bit more context from having engaged with Hall in the past three weeks. In Hall’s discussion of the relationship of the “organic” to the “conjunctural,” he positions the reflection of a crisis against the response to a crisis. These terms, he argues, are not one and the same. I’m not sure of the pulling-apart here; is it tangibly essential to parse these terms? To make the distinction at all—in such a context where each term is ever so carefully chosen and defined—suggests a significance for which I have no referent. What examples might we find that tease out the discrete but still-coincident relationship of the reflection of a conjunctural moment versus a response to such a moment?
Across Hall’s essays on New Conservatism, the empire striking back, and the “great moving right show,” Hall flags systemic ideological issues underpinning political systems. And he also delivers stirring calls to action, appealing to his reader in solidarity, with the collective we—“we are all up against the wall of rampant and virulent gut patriotism”—which hinges on a collective responsibility, in Hall’s case, that of the British people, although his ideas fly above and beyond the British flag (“The Empire Strikes Back 205). But who is “we,” really? In some ways, I’m still wondering who Hall is writing to. And where Hall, if asked, would place the mantle of responsibility. Hall's writing is partisan, and incisive and brilliantly so. But the new historical bloc that needs constructing, the new political configuration in need of systematizing, the new philosophies that must be imagined and articulated—on whom rests this mantle? Revolutionists, the working folk, the Left? Or is this the role of the “organic intellectual,” who, rising alongside the “organic” and “conjunctural” elements of crises, asserts herself?
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