Stuart Hall's pessimism of the intellect,optimism of the will: reflections on an intellectual life |
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Authors: | Sut Jhally |
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Affiliation: | Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA |
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Abstract: | Stuart Hall was a seminal figure in the development of cultural studies and his death in 2014 has left an intellectual and political void. This article, based on a memorial talk, offers a number of perspectives on Hall’s life and work: the relationship between his speeches/interviews and his written work; the cultural and political context of cultural studies’ emergence; the contradictory and productive relationship between cultural studies and Marxism; the centrality of ‘conjunctural analysis’ to the project of cultural studies; the continuing relevance of the recently republished book Policing the Crisis; the responsibilities of intellectuals to make ideas matter in the world beyond the academy, and the political nature of Hall’s version of cultural studies. |
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Keywords: | Stuart Hall cultural studies marxism Gramsci conjunctural analysis |
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