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Examining Comparative Cultural Studies in the context of the theoretical legacies of

Cultural Studies as outlined by Stuart Hall.

Stuart Hall was a Jamaican scholar and an extinguished academician, especially in the field of

Cultural Studies. Residing in England for the better half of his life and teaching there as well, he

became one of the pioneers of Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies along with

Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams. In his essay ‘Cultural Studies and its Theoretical

Legacies’, he delineates three theoretical moments or junctures that hold an important place in

the unstable formation of the field of Cultural Studies. He draws largely on Foucault, Derrida,

Raymond Williams among others to build his arguments around the nature and characteristics of

Cultural Studies as being open-ended, discursive and unstable by and large. His main aim

remains, to look back at Cultural Studies in a strictly retrospective manner in order to develop

the present and future stance of the field.

Hall first points out that Cultural Studies is a field that is incorporating of various positions and

smaller fields, and has no one rigid or definite origin. However, he argues that this in no way

suggests a perpetually open and an all-encompassing discourse. This complicated nature of the

field engenders various historical influences and in turn advances distinct trajectories and

methods of the study. The first trajectory or moment he traces back is Marxism. Hall perceives

Marxism as a problem and not a solution to Cultural Studies. He argues that Marxism is

Eurocentric in its essence and doesn’t take into account exploitation, culture, language and the

symbolic. He negates the idea that capitalism naturally grows with the passage of time and

change, adding that colonialism forced upon the colonized the issue of capitalism. According to

him, Marx was influenced by where and when he was situated and does not relate with every

society in general. Marxism then is unable to encompass every culture, every society. He also
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critiques on Gramsci’s notion of organic intellectuals, conveying that organic intellectuals are

devoid of specific emergence of movements to align with, in opposition to what Gramsci

proposes.

The next juncture he depicts is that of Feminism that according to him ‘crapped on the table of

cultural studies.’ Feminism was revolutionary to Cultural Studies, meaning it emerged as an

interruption to the already intertwined and unstable field of study. It opened to questions and

theories of personal being political, issues of gender and sexuality, alter and expand the notion of

power altogether, it’s gendered nature and reopened theories like psychoanalysis. Feminism in its

entirety catalyzed mobility to the field of Cultural Studies, something that Hall and others

weren’t ready for. Nevertheless, it brought about changes that was impending to the field and

stirred new ways of thinking that was never thought about prior to its evolution.

The last moment Hall mentions, that holds an importance to Cultural Studies is the entrance of

the race issue. Incorporating the issue is a struggle for the field that has to cater to a very

conscious a critique of race and its problems, its questions of cultural politics and politics of race.

He claims that these junctures or ‘detours’ have all added to the corpus of Cultural Studies and

have gained from them in multitude. He explains the importance of language, texts, symbolics,

etc. to the study of culture that is dynamic and evolving in nature. There remains a certain

tension, due to this perpetually changing nature that Cultural Studies have to live with. Thus, the

need to be constantly alert for changes and new developments.

Through his insightful essay, we see the transitioning nature of culture and Cultural Studies, how

it is not a one continuing field, but rather is fraught with interruptions and ruptures. This field

perhaps then, is a mode of studying cultures and not a mastered course in itself. The very feature

of this essay is by and large discursive, taking detours and defer from point to point. It is
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stylistically symbolic and attempt to deconstruct the components of Cultural Studies, which

perhaps is exactly what Hall intended and ultimately what he perceives is Cultural Studies: a

strenuous field that always has tensions within itself, new evolutions and issues rising from

various points which renders the ceaseless need for intellectuals to understand and address to

them.
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WORKS CITED

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies.” in Simon During (ed). The Cultural
Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.