tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post8600089215811310843..comments2024-01-13T23:32:12.331-06:00Comments on Slaves of Academe: Five Favourite Revolutionaries: Stuart HallOso Rarohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11345231159759787852noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-29731275629196226452008-05-04T19:31:00.000-05:002008-05-04T19:31:00.000-05:00Well, brevity isn't truly my strong suit, but suff...Well, brevity isn't truly my strong suit, but suffice it to say, if Hall calls for a contingency of identity, with an eye towards building politically meaningful alliances on the Left, then what was elided in the work of some of my colleagues was the notion of contingency itself, and the implication of change, transformation, and mobile politics- the fact that politics is change, and one can no longer depend on identity as a grounding *in and of itself* in politics. One of the struggles of theory and race has been accounting for social formation in the face of PoMo theories that undermine authorial positions (i.e., Spivak's "strategic essentialism," Realist theory, etc.). Some of this has been ironed out a bit, or at least seems less important now, <BR/><BR/>However, back in the nineties, I was surrounded by graduate students who read and embraced the theoretical precepts that undermined essential subjectivity, especially how it emerged out of the sixties racial-ethnic social movements (patriarchal, heterodominant, culturally nationalist), but then reinscribed essentialism (or had a queer shotgun wedding between essentialism and post-structuralism) under the guise of new identity formations that were, at least as they were applied in the classroom and the thesis (and in some cases the monograph), as tiresome and rigid as the old ones, if wearing florid theoretical language. One saw these tendencies in some application of theory in reference to racial-ethnic gender and sexuality identities in particular. <BR/><BR/>Which is not to indict important substreams of new gender and sexuality study in toto, but is to say that breaking free of the certainty of essential identities, whether those are patriarchal culturally nationalist ones or newer feminist or Stonewall-inspired forays, is difficult work. I am sensitive to this challenge insofar as my theoretical opponents don't engage in the ad hominem that unfortunately tends to characterise these debates, itself a function of politics that passes as identity discourse.Oso Rarohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11345231159759787852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-90656526998764819982008-05-04T16:23:00.000-05:002008-05-04T16:23:00.000-05:00"...as my fellow doctoral candidates struggled ove..."...as my fellow doctoral candidates struggled over their theses, they often used Hall in ways that raised questions about identity that were then foreclosed by their very own projects, by their insistence on rather rigid ideas about identity that exemplified themselves in rather ugly struggles over who counted as what, the hows and whys."<BR/><BR/>I'd be curious to see you expand on this. Not with a whole essay, just with a brief example. <BR/><BR/>Why ... well ... not because I want to steal your sentences for an article of mine (in case you wonder, I say this because I know it could sound like that).<BR/><BR/>The kind of question I am thinking of is one which came up yesterday in a discussion about affirmative action too baroque to reproduce here.<BR/><BR/>Anyway - I'd be curious to hear more about that critical misuse of Hall.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-67955577093353863802008-05-01T14:04:00.000-05:002008-05-01T14:04:00.000-05:00If I were in the interview room, I would have been...If I were in the interview room, I would have been immensely pleased by the choice of Hall. It does make one wonder, though, who they would have preferred/expected you to choose.GayProfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11289510184782252498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-20864918573658132072008-05-01T10:37:00.000-05:002008-05-01T10:37:00.000-05:00what a beautiful post. thanks for reminding me why...what a beautiful post. thanks for reminding me why i love hall's work.<BR/><BR/>regards - anonymous blog lurker in canada.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com