Stuart+Hall,+Cultural+Studies,+and+Marxism


 * =Title= || "Stuart Hall, cultural studies and marxism," in __Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies__ ||
 * =Author= || Colin Sparks, ed. Morley and Chen ||
 * =Date= || 1996 ||
 * =Summary By= || Sonja Kelly ||
 * =Summary= || This chapter looks at two shifts in the cultural studies literature: the move toward marxism and the move away from Marxism.* Stuart Hall is arguably the most important scholar who shaped the cultural studies field, and is therefore spotlighted in the chapter (and, obviously, the book).
 * Precursors to Hall include Willilams, Hoggart, and Thompson, who were critical of Marxism.

THE MOVE TOWARD MARX:
 * It was between the late 1960s and the early 1970s that the relationship between cultural studies and Marxism began to grow, thanks to Stuart Halls move to thinking about structures. This move rescued cultural studies from its British literary pigeonhole.
 * This move from "culturalism" to "structuralism" as outlined by Marx, coupled with an earlier "rediscovery" of structural analysis among cultural studies introduced and solidified marxist ideology as a valid and substantive contribution to the field.
 * We can now look back and call this the "heroic age" of cultural studies, and its character was largely Althusserian.

THE MOVE AWAY FROM MARX: = = = = = = = = = = = =
 * Hall then began to engage with Laclau, which questioned the reductive character of a marxist structural analysis (ala Althusser), and who questioned the relationship between ideology and social structure.
 * Grassroots social movements also served to push cultural studies further away from Marx. ||
 * =Discussion points= || * Clearly, this engagement with and subsequent disengagement from marxist structuralism radically changes the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the cultural studies project. Should we consider re-labeling cultural studies because of this? Has it become something entirely new (or is it simply enough to say that cultural studies is indexical)? ||

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