Stuart Hall. Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History. Ed. Jennifer Daryl Slack and Lawrence Grossberg. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2016. 232 pp. $23.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-8223-6263-0.
Reviewed by Sergiy Yakovenko
Published on H-Russia (January, 2017)
Commissioned by Hanna Chuchvaha (University of Calgary)
Today’s undergrads who take courses in cul‐ of British cultural studies from its inception in the tural studies might be surprised to learn what 1960s, has undoubtedly earned his place in histo‐ their discipline was primarily about thirty-fve ry as the most infuential theorist in the feld. Con‐ years back. Moreover, leaving alone today’s ever sidering the fact that most of his pioneering work, more diversifed feld of cultural studies’ inquiry, done both at the Centre for Contemporary Cultur‐ even such areas as postmodernism, ethnic stud‐ al Studies at the University of Birmingham and at ies, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, new his‐ the Open University, was primarily collaborative toricism, psychoanalysis, communication, and research published in edited volumes, this edition gender, which attracted so many scholars at the is unique in bringing to the public one of Hall's discipline’s very beginning in the United States, full-authored contributions. are barely touched if ever in Stuart Hall’s Cultural The provenance of the totalizing Marxist in‐ Studies 1983: A Theoretical History (2016), edited fection of Hall’s Cultural Studies becomes clear and with an introduction by Jennifer Daryl Slack when we learn about the occasion for the collect‐ and Lawrence Grossberg. Marxism and Cultural ed texts to appear: the eight essays comprising the Studies 1983 would be a much more candid, al‐ volume were initially lectures delivered by the though, admittedly, less commercially viable, title author in the summer of 1983 at the University of for the book. Hence both the editors’ introduction Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as part of the teach‐ and the author’s preface are full of disclaimers re‐ ing institute “Marxism and the Interpretation of garding the seemingly comprehensive and uni‐ Culture: Limits, Frontiers, Boundaries.” As Hall versal character of the title—the disclaimers that had some reservations with regard to the publica‐ are necessary to appreciate Hall’s volume for tion of his lectures as a book (having written, nev‐ what it is and is declared to be: a theoretical histo‐ ertheless, a preface to the projected volume in ry. Hall (1932-2014), who was at the foundations 1988), this posthumous edition can be viewed as a H-Net Reviews tribute to the great scholar by the collection’s edi‐ studies from the very beginning was taken up by tors Grossberg and Slack—Hall’s disciples and col‐ professors and graduates of departments of Eng‐ leagues, who applied minimal editing in order to lish as well as Hoggart and Hall himself, both of preserve “the characteristic rhythms of Hall’s oral whom shaped their theoretical perspectives in a delivery” (p. xiii). In their introduction, the editors respectful opposition to a very infuential fgure make it clear that they want us to perceive of the in British literary criticism—F. R. Leavis. Having volume as a record of the event rather than as a paid homage to literary criticism, especially to closed theoretical position: being primarily Leavis’s close reading methodology, as an impor‐ “Marxism’s contribution to the interpretation of tant resource for the constitution of cultural stud‐ culture” (p. ix) due to its necessary compliance ies, Hall notes that it was crucial for Hoggart in with the topic of the teaching institute, the vol‐ his The Uses of Literacy (1957) to overcome ume’s obvious lacunae with respect to a compre‐ Matthew Arnold’s traditional take on culture, hensive account of cultural studies as a discipline championed by Leavis, as the highest achieve‐ were later partially fxed by Hall himself in his ment of human thought, and to turn to the read‐ widely anthologized essay, “Cultural Studies and ing of “the front living room” of the prewar Its Theoretical Legacies” (1992), presented initial‐ British industrial working class as if it were “a ly as a lecture at the 1988 conference “Cultural piece of prose” (pp. 9-10). Among other infuential Studies Now and in the Future” (University of Illi‐ sources of cultural studies, Hall mentions anthro‐ nois at Urbana-Champaign), where he extended pology (practiced mainly by Raymond Williams), his survey to the questions of race, subjectivity, admitting its relative weakness in Britain, and so‐ poststructuralism, and feminism. ciology, with its important discussion of mass soci‐ Marxism as a centerpiece of Cultural Studies ety and mass culture, initiated by the Frankfurt 1983 is not only a tribute to the institute’s topic. As School in the 1930s. According to Hall, mass cul‐ Hall elucidates in his preface and in the frst lec‐ ture and late capitalism are exactly the subjects ture, “The Formation of Cultural Studies,” his out‐ where Hoggart’s mere refocusing of Leavis’s look refects his own personal experience of cul‐ methodology proved utterly insufcient and tural studies, which has its undisguised political where cultural studies wended its way to what and institutional underpinning specifc to the in‐ Hall considers its most efective direction—the so- tellectual situation in Britain in the 1950s and called Western Marxist tradition, represented by 1960s. Emerging “as a response to a very concrete Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Ben‐ political problem”—how the British working class jamin, György Lukács, and Antonio Gramsci. That evolved “under conditions of economic afuence” is why Hoggart’s departure from the Centre for (p. 5)—the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Contemporary Cultural Studies to join UNESCO is Studies at the University of Birmingham, of which underlined as a milestone for “the Marxist alter‐ Hall was a director from 1969 to 1979, succeeding native [to] become … a signifcant reference point its founding director Richard Hoggart, cultural and resource for developing Cultural Studies” (p. studies became a platform for the New Left to 24). wrestle with a vulgar Marxism of class struggle Williams’s contribution to cultural studies, and economic determinism. As Hall himself ad‐ which is the focus of the second lecture, “Cultural‐ mits, “it was partially fortuitous that the feld was ism,” vividly exemplifes that passage from Marx‐ organized around the concept of culture, which is ism as literary criticism to Marxism as critique of exceedingly slippery, vague, and amorphous, with ideology. Williams’s early Culture and Society: multifarious and diverse meanings” (p. 4). In spite 1780-1950 (1958), being just a rereading of the lit‐ of its strong sociological implications, cultural erary, Arnold-Leavis tradition from a broader cul‐
2 H-Net Reviews tural perspective, was later ofset by E. P. Thomp‐ Althusser’s constant attempts to impose a struc‐ son’s The Making of the English Working Class turalist stigma on such key Marx’s concepts as the (1963), where the court documents, pamphlets, metaphor of the base and superstructure, the the‐ and newspapers represent precisely those popu‐ ory of determination, the problem of the subject, lar voices that Williams could not fnd in the liter‐ and the nature of the social formation. Hall ex‐ ary canon. Williams’s The Long Revolution (1961) plains Althusser’s fallacy in distinguishing be‐ brings a diferent and, for Hall, a much more in‐ tween the “false,” early, Hegelian, pre-structural‐ teresting perspective on what he calls “the totali‐ ist Marx and the “true,” post-Hegelian Marx by a ty” (p. 38), or a conception of narrowly under‐ misreading of “diferent levels of abstraction” (p. stood social practices in their relations with the 103), on which Marx operates approaching his rest of the social formation. Williams’s “cultural‐ various concepts. Despite his disagreement with ism” stems from his newly acquired philosophical Althusser, what Hall calls “Althusser’s break with and anthropological concept of Promethean Man, classical Marxism” (p. 127) helped him to hone his “who does not exist apart from the activity” (p. position on ideology (Lecture 6, “Ideology and Ide‐ 39), which confrms Williams’s inclination to ological Struggle”). Contrary to Althusser, Hall in‐ Hegel and early Marx’s abandonment of economic sists that ideology does not only reproduce the so‐ determination in favor of human energy that con‐ cial relations of production but also sets limits to stitutes the material social practices. Williams’s the self-reproduction of society by means of an turn to “the structure of feeling” points to the bal‐ unending process of “the shifts of accentuation,” ance of Marxist realization that people are sub‐ which constantly occur in ideology understood as jects of the imposed economic relationships and a language. This conceptualization of ideology as greater attention to the feld of culture and con‐ language with its shifts of accentuation, akin to sciousness, as well as signifes, in Hall’s view, Derridian diférance, makes perfect sense when Williams’s passage from being a covert Marxist to projected on Hall’s conceptualization of hegemo‐ a covert structuralist. Hall’s next lecture, “Struc‐ ny, understood in terms of Gramsci, with whom turalism,” is both a tribute to and a refutation of Hall seems to have an unreserved propinquity Émile Durkheim and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s struc‐ (Lecture 7, “Domination and Hegemony”). Refut‐ turalism understood not so much as a particular ing the vulgar economic determinism, Hall posits method as rather “a mode of thought” (p. 54). Like the concept of hegemony as fuctuating and ongo‐ Williams, Lévi-Strauss shows an evolution from a ing mastery of a historical situation where power Marxist-culturalist perspective to a structuralist with its ideological discourses is negotiated in a one; yet, unlike Williams, his structuralism is not wide cultural feld rather than imposed upon pas‐ “covert,” and by the time Lévi-Strauss writes his sive social subjects in a pre-existing class distribu‐ four volumes of Mythologiques (1969-81), he parts tion of power. The same “noneconomic and non- company from cultural studies as he moves “away class-reductionist way” (p. 180) of thinking the from the interface between the symbolic and the Marxist cultural theory is characteristic of Hall’s social and into the internal organisation of the approach to the concepts of resistance, opposi‐ symbolic forms themselves” (pp. 67-68). In accord tion, and struggle (Lecture 8, “Culture, Resistance, with his decisive repudiation of Lévi-Strauss’s and Struggle”). Drawing on several vivid exam‐ treatment of myth as “a self-sufcient system of ples, including his own collection Resistance logic” (p. 67) outside of historical specifcity, Hall through Rituals (1976), Hall demonstrates how dedicates two subsequent lectures, “Rethinking marginalized yet emerging hegemonic groups and the Base and Superstructure” and “Marxist Struc‐ individuals build their ideological discourses into turalism,” to a constructive argument with Louis the residual languages of dominant culture. The
3 H-Net Reviews circuits of these fuctuating re-accentuations in ideological languages, “in which residual cultural forms are constantly appropriated, expropriated, and reworked” (p. 206), seem to be, according to Hall, the real subject of cultural studies. Hall’s lectures from 1983 appear to be a pecu‐ liar event of appropriation—a fundamental at‐ tempt to retain Marx as a nondisposable basis for cultural studies by means of a meticulous, well-in‐ formed, and earnest guarding of his heritage from vulgar and reductive misreadings. The volume it‐ self is a praiseworthy enterprise of retaining this hallmark of theoretical history and making acces‐ sible at least some of Hall’s works, otherwise scat‐ tered across less-known collections and antholo‐ gies. As the front page of the book reads, “Stuart Hall: Selected Writings. A series edited by Cather‐ ine Hall and Bill Schwarz,” I personally look for‐ ward to reading the subsequent—apparently pro‐ jected—posthumous volumes of this interesting and independent thinker.
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Citation: Sergiy Yakovenko. Review of Hall, Stuart. Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History. H- Russia, H-Net Reviews. January, 2017.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=48239
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