Page 15 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

INTRODUCTION 3

Studies (1992), Hebdige’s Hiding in the Light (1988), McRobbie’s
Feminism and Youth Culture (1991) and her Postmodernism and Popular
Culture (1994) have all gone beyond the originary terrain of cultural
studies and addressed various postmodern problematics. As for Hall
himself, moving on from the analysis of Thatcherism and the ‘New Times’
project, his more recent work has focused on the problematics of cultural
identities, race and ethnicities. These concerns, with the formation of the
nation-state and globalization of culture, are now often cited as the
forerunners of the discourse on ‘postcoloniality’, which in certain respects
has taken over and politicized the discursive space of the postmodern, in
the works of subaltern studies, Kwame Anthony Appiah (1993), Rey Chow
(1993), Henry Louis Gates Jr (1986), Paul Gilroy (1993a and 1993b),
Kobena Mercer (1994), Edward Said (1978 and 1993) and Gayatri Spivak
(1987 and 1990), to name only a few. The fluidity and ever-changing
nature of these intellectual concerns have thus constituted a difficulty in
finalizing this book. It is one of our tasks here to try to capture the key
aspects of these changes of intellectual mood and concern, over the last
decade.

CRITICAL DIALOGUES AND NEW TRAJECTORIES

Against this historical background, it is quite obvious that this is not
simply a book ‘about’ Stuart Hall; rather, the book focuses on Hall’s work
as a catalyst for ‘critical dialogues’ and as a key site on which they have
taken place within cultural studies, since the mid-1980s. For us, Hall’s
major intellectual contribution does not lie in making definitive statements
on theoretical and political issues, but rather in his involvement with a
wide range of collective projects, and in his capacity and willingness to take
on new issues and to constantly move on, beyond his own previous limits.
Although his full influence remains to be researched and documented, one
thing is certain: the impact of his work cannot be limited to the academic
context; his analyses have been appropriated by social movements within
and outside academia and well beyond ‘British’ boundaries, in places such
as America, Australia and Taiwan.
In organizing these critical dialogues, we have had several goals in mind:

1 to trace continuities and breaks in Hall’s work, and in particular, to
examine his own persistent ‘critical dialogue’ within marxism;
2 to document and explore the impact of ‘postmodernism’ in cultural
studies and to investigate some of the theoretical consequences of these
postmodern interventions;
3 to mark out some of the new directions of development in the field, as
debates about postmodernism have rapidly been transformed by
debates about postcolonialism, ‘race’ and identity;