akemi_666's review against another edition
3.0
The first half is a historical overview of the differences between historicism and structuralism, a split that Hall traces back to Marx and Durkheim, and then through E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams v. Levi-Strauss and Althusser. This part of the book really shines.
The second half is Hall working through Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory, without ever naming them (though he does name Gramsci). It's essentially an attack on Althusser's ahistorical structuralism and classical Marxism's base-superstructure model of class consciousness. It's okay, but I wish he dedicated a chapter to Laclau and Mouffe (as well as Foucault), to show what they were contesting, how they overcame previous inadequacies in the theorisation of class consciousness, and why he thinks discourse analysis is a retreat into idealism.
Like, if I hadn't already read some of Laclau and Mouffe, I wouldn't have known wtf Hall was saying when he used words like articulation (the chaining together of signifiers by positing them against another signifier that defies signification / is outside of signification. An example: the radical left and right, despite their positive political difference, are united against neoliberalism, through a negative difference — essentially, neoliberalism operates as the barrier to full political freedom for both left and right radicals). Signifying chains of equivalences and differences are pretty obscure / used by many structuralists to talk about very different things.
The second half is Hall working through Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory, without ever naming them (though he does name Gramsci). It's essentially an attack on Althusser's ahistorical structuralism and classical Marxism's base-superstructure model of class consciousness. It's okay, but I wish he dedicated a chapter to Laclau and Mouffe (as well as Foucault), to show what they were contesting, how they overcame previous inadequacies in the theorisation of class consciousness, and why he thinks discourse analysis is a retreat into idealism.
Like, if I hadn't already read some of Laclau and Mouffe, I wouldn't have known wtf Hall was saying when he used words like articulation (the chaining together of signifiers by positing them against another signifier that defies signification / is outside of signification. An example: the radical left and right, despite their positive political difference, are united against neoliberalism, through a negative difference — essentially, neoliberalism operates as the barrier to full political freedom for both left and right radicals). Signifying chains of equivalences and differences are pretty obscure / used by many structuralists to talk about very different things.
jenna0010's review against another edition
5.0
Wowwwww. My brain is so full of ideas and questions and longings to dive back into all things Marx again. Stuart Hall's lectures are groundbreaking in so many ways. He shows the limits of theory, reminding us of the dangers of fetishising terminologies, boxing ourselves into categories and schools of thought. Real real good stuff here.
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