Stuart Hall on the importance of understanding & analysing the present
Jenny Turner has written a lengthy piece in the LRB on the late Marxist theorist Stuart Hall, who some might call a genuine cultural Marxist. She is appropriately critical of Hall’s Marxism Today,New Times period but finds elsewhere in his writings a sharpness of insight that remains relevant.
I was struck by this passage towards the end of Turner’s piece. Being an historian of the present has never been more urgent
Hall made clear that we must direct ‘our attention unswervingly to what is specific and different about this moment’, think about our problems ‘not as you’d like them to be, not as you think they Hall made clear that we must direct ‘our attention unswervingly to what is specific and different about this moment’, think about our problems ‘not as you’d like them to be, not as you think they were ten years ago, not as they’re written about in sacred texts, but as they really are’.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n21/jenny-turner/a-difficult-space-to-live
Jenny Turner, London Review of Books 3rd November 2022
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