Re: <nettime> A tribute to Stuart Hall

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

Jeremy Gilbert has written a beautiful tribute to Stuart Hall. Nothing 
could tell us more about the qualities of the man who has just passed 
than this living echo of those qualities, remade and transformed by 
another human being. One learns that the greatest thing you can possibly 
create is not your own authorial monument, but instead, the powerfully 
resonant space in which others can become conduits of awakened 
perception, engaged interpretation and vital resistant force. Stuart 
Hall unleashed a generation - in fact, several generations. We all have 
the opportunity to greet him in those who go on living up to their times.

I was struck by this:

> He lamented that
> ‘cultural studies’ as it was taught and practiced in most academic
> institutions today was too often reduced to cultural theory, with very
> little in the way of conjunctural analysis going on anywhere; yet he
> acknowledged that the individualisation and instrumentalisation of the
> academy increasingly pushed scholars towards personal projects with
> grandiose, abstract ambitions (my own would be no exception).

Conjunctural analysis: What is it?

Conjunctural analysis is when you interpret what's happening right now, 
by sifting the facts through the most adequate theory you can devise, 
then taking a position as a consequence. So the question is: What's a 
position? A position is a stance, your own body's stance within and 
against the social order, a stance you strike so that others can feel 
it, internalize it, transform it and put it into action.

To do a conjunctural analysis is to expose yourself, not only to error, 
but far in advance of that, to the immediate scorn of those whose greed 
and fear make them toe the dominant line (it most often reduces to 
cynical passivity). The academy, it's sad to say, is filled with 
generations of timid neurotics who wanted to have a grand theory but 
never dared let themselves feel the urgent passion of responding 
precisely to the demands of a conjuncture. The result is no theory at 
all - just the aimless hot air of untested theorizing, crafted to please 
one's betters but discarded by them for its minor inconveniences.

Stuart Hall: he made a difference. Honor the activist in the life you 
live today.


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org