Selected Writings on Marxism

Stuart Hall: Selected Writings

by Stuart Hall, Gregor McLennan (Editor)

"Selected Writings on the Question of Marxism focuses on Stuart Hall's relationship with Marxism and exemplifying his distinctive interpretations of Marxist concepts and debates. Editor Gregor McLennan's three-part structure brings out the different styles and formative questions at work in Hall's engagement with Marxism. In his introduction to the volume and in the discussions following the Hall writings in each part, McLennan offers in-depth textual and contextual guidance, together with fresh interpretations of Hall's thought and of his distinctive mode as an intellectual"--

Genres: Theory, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology, Nonfiction

368 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 22, 2021

About the author

Stuart Hall was an influential Jamaican-born British sociologist and cultural theorist. He was Professor of Sociology at the Open University, the founding editor of New Left Review, and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

for better or for worse (mostly for the better i’d argue) i’ve learned much of what i know about dialectical method from the work of stuart hall, and this collection is a great distillation of those lessons. the essays aren’t flawless and sometimes skate too long on the surface of their arguments (lots of summary, lots of reconciling supposedly antagonistic analytical tendencies, not as much deep criticism or original theoretical intervention), and hall’s commitment to carefully considered mediation over sharp-edged polemic doesn’t exactly make the pages fly by, but it’s still Good Stuff, and he’s a vastly better writer than most of his peers. left me feeling more grounded in my own set of (neo)Marxist tendencies. first three essays are the highlight.

well-organized collection overall, with helpful if occasionally tedious editor’s notes.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend has been prodding me to read Hall for a while and as usual they were right and I should have listened way earlier. Western Marxism's attempts to rigorously tackle extremely difficult topics of analysis like the nature of the state, the role of culture in politics, the function of ideology had seemed to me to trail off following the Althusser/Poulantzas ere of structuralism, which I always found very frustrating because while I learned a lot from both thinkers, their primary work was completed fifty years ago, so it was very helpful to read the work of someone building on theirs into the 80s and 90s.

Hall is a master of constructive critique, and even when he is fiercely critical of a controversial thinker like Althusser, he is always insistent on keeping the bulk of the work which is important and valid while working to clarify, improve, or move away from those parts which were perhaps less fully developed. While some of his later writings feel like they lose w bit of that his earlier rigor and precision, especially after the "linguistic turn" when the hegemonic school of thought in western academia shifted firmly to Foucaultian post-structuralism, his contributions are still far more intriguing than nearly any other western Marxist thinker of the era. Definitely recommended.

[Molebatsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stuart Hall, a pioneering cultural theorist, didn't just apply traditional Marxism to the modern world; he stretched and reshaped it to explain new realities. In his Selected Writings on Marxism, Hall argues that while economic forces are powerful, culture, ideology, and media aren't just simple reflections of class—they are active terrains of struggle where meaning, identity, and power are constantly fought over. He showed how people's "common sense" is shaped by these cultural forces, often reinforcing the status quo, but also how it can be challenged. His crucial contribution was to insist that to understand politics and change, Marxism must seriously grapple with race, gender, and other forms of identity alongside class, making his work essential for analyzing our complex, media-saturated world.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel this is a poor collection to use as an attempted introduction to the work of Stuart Hall, whose contributions seem to mostly revolve around communication/media studies. Instead, the image I get of Hall as an intellectual figure here is basically of a commenter on pre-existing theorists, instead of a novel theorist in his own right. The image that comes into view on the basis of this selection of writings is also of a largely ambivalent figure, caught between that standard opposition between base and superstructure as causal explanations of various phenomena. But unlike his theoretical colleague Raymond Williams, who is able to turn his ambivalence towards "class reductionism" into clearer thinking on the dialectic between base and superstructure, I don't find Hall's writing particularly enlightening on this front. In fact, the moves he makes throughout his life follow a familiar trajectory that we would today identify as distinctly "post-Marxist," notably the turn to Gramsci as a means of retaining something of Marxist commitments while moving away from more class reductionist readings, a move which is also performed by Laclau and Mouffe, for example. I personally have never found Gramsci an illuminating figure, especially given that his most prominent legacy seems to be in influencing Italian anarchism. And yet, Hall has some surprises up his sleeve, namely his defense of Althusser, to which he as yet remains ambivalent, due to his suspicion towards structuralism. But perhaps their agreement lies in their mutual belief that Marx is not best-read through Hegel, instead preferring Spinoza, another move that will be familiar to us from a post-Marxist perspective, namely as shared by Hardt and Negri. But I reject this reading of Marx as an "inversion" of Hegel, this reading of Hegel as an "idealist." Hall also finds Althusser's notions of "relative autonomy" of the superstructure and the "effectivity" of the base helpful, but this whole discussion of base and superstructure, of class reductionism, seems tired and a bit of a strawman: of course Marx's thought was not as linear and simplistic as all that. This also holds for the discussion of "false consciousness," which Hall replaces with Gramsci's notion of "war of position." The discussions of subcultures, liberalism, and Thatcherism are not particularly interesting, though that on the criminalized class in relation to the class struggle in general, mostly focused on the notion of the "reserve army of labour," if obvious, is moreso. I have not read Poulantzas, and therefore don't have much in terms of reflection on Hall's indebtedness to his thinking, though I find that his discussion of the "controversy" over the advent of "postcolonial theory" as a category has some useful points to make, even if I find the general debate tired, especially in his tepid defense, of "postcolonial" as a global situation, rather than a descriptor of specific countries' current state. I think his ambivalence towards Derrida is fascinating, for while he is suspicious of poststructuralism and deconstruction, he as yet brings on board a certain Derridean reading, understanding that "postcolonialism" is meant as a critique of binaries that can no longer be said to hold, a position to which he is sympathetic. I just think Hall would be more interesting, would have more to say, if he was less hesitant, caught between suspicion and agreement, and simply made some bolder claims, instead of simply reacting to pre-existing positions, especially in such an ambiguous manner.

[Conor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hall is one of the most cogent contemporary Marxist writers I have come across so far. Really enjoyable to read, especially when he is, you know, actually saying something! He was a good Marxist. And even around the time he no longer was, he--in contrast to others with similar endeavors--actually took seriously the subject he was critiquing. That makes it worthwhile to read for Marxists and non-Marxists alike. It's also a unique occasion to read cultural studies that are not incessantly navel-gazing and trivial. Hall cuts through the bullshit without self-important, long-winded masturbatory psychoanalysis. The first half of this book had me hooked; it dipped a little in places here and there in the middle; he nonetheless lost me in the last few chapters, unfortunately.

The writing itself was much better than the editing. The editors opted to excise a few sections of some of the excerpts, and they turned out to be those most relevant for me and my project. This is a doubly infuriating omission, since it only left me wanting more, and seeking them out in sources that are rather hard and costly to come by. Triply infuriating because reference is often made to the length of the sections omitted in long, rambling expositions by the editor that frankly were unnecessary. Not only could a good deal of Hall's original work be printed in the space that was wasted explaining why they were not included (and haphazardly summarized nonetheless), but much of the editor's efforts to periodize Hall's thought could much better be explained by Hall himself--the texts speak for themselves; one does not need McLennan to point out when and where Hall begins diverging from the more solidly Marxist core where he began. I'd have been much more satisfied with a brief foreword, and with that even an additional afterword would be pushing it.