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traces which history has left behind—as Gramsci says, “without an
inventory”’ (1984b).
Furthermore, if we are to understand ideology as a contested terrain, we
must recognize that ideological struggles are never wholly autonomous;
they are themselves located within, articulated with, a broader field of
economic, cultural and political struggles. Thus Hall (1985b) does not
totalize the claim of the ideological; he merely seeks to put it ‘on the
agenda’ of the left’s analyses of social power. He does not deny the
importance of political economy or of the state (although many political
economists would deny ideology its place or reduce it to one of simple
domination and false consciousness) but he readily admits that he is still
unable to theorize the complex articulations that exist between them. But
ideology is not reducible to struggles located elsewhere; its importance
cannot be dismissed by claiming that it is determined by the non-ideological.
Ideological practices have their own ‘relative autonomy’ and they produce
real effects in the social formation, even outside of their own (signifying)
domain.

Hegemony
The concrete processes by which ideology enters into larger and more
complex relations of power within the social formation define the point at
which, most explicitly, Hall’s theory attempts to understand its own
historical conditions of existence. It is not only ideology that must be
located within a broader context of struggle but Hall’s arguments as well.
His preference for ‘theorizing from the concrete’ makes his work a
response to historically specific conditions: the emergence of new forms of
cultural power. Hall extends the parameters of ‘cultural studies’, calling
(1981) for us to look at

the domain of cultural forms and activities as a constantly changing
field …[to look] at the relations which constantly structure this field
into dominant and subordinate formations…[to look] at the process
by which these relations of dominance and subordination are
articulated …[to place] at its centre the changing and uneven
relations of force which define the field of culture—that is, the
question of cultural struggle and its many forms…[to make our] main
focus of attention …the relation between culture and questions of
hegemony.

Hall’s work increasingly draws attention to the historical fact of
‘hegemonic politics’, and the need to ‘cut into’ the processes by which a
dominant cultural order is consistently preferred, despite its articulation
with structures of domination and oppression. For example, he has turned