From Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,” by Stuart Hall.
This week, I am thinking about the term “organic.” We have read pieces in which Hall discusses the concept of an “organic intellectual” and this term has come up in a couple of the quotes we have engaged. In this essay, Hall states, “Gramsci remind us that a ‘crisis’, if it is organic, can last for decades” (422). Later in the essay, he says, “‘hegemony’ is a very particular, historically specific, and temporary ‘moment’ in the life of a society…Crises mark the beginning of their disintegration” (424). Here is my question:
We live in a world in which multiple crises are occurring, but for which hegemonic formations are these crises signaling disintegration? That is, how do we identify which crisis matches which hegemonic formation?
From Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, “New Ethnicities,” by Stuart Hall.
This was a really illuminating piece. I was particularly struck by Hall’s discussion of decoupling ethnicity “from its equivalence with nationalism, imperialism, racism and the state, which are the points of attachment around which a distinctive British or, more accurately, English ethnicity have been constructed” (448). This idea resonated with me because it seems, in common dialogue at least, people have a tendency to use race and ethnicity synonymously. Here is my question:
If we think of Hall’s discussion of English ethnicity as a model, then how might we interrogate the construction of a US-American ethnicity? And what sort of decouplings would need to occur?
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