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Notes On Deconstructing The Popular Stuart Hall

Hall examines different meanings of the concept of popular culture. He disagrees with views that depict working class people as passive consumers manipulated by commercial popular culture imposed by the dominant class. Instead, Hall sees popular culture as an ongoing process and site of struggle between the dominant and subordinate classes over cultural domination and meanings. Popular culture involves both acceptance and resistance to the dominant culture, and cultural forms may change over time as new meanings are inscribed through this cultural struggle.

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383 views15 pages

Notes On Deconstructing The Popular Stuart Hall

Hall examines different meanings of the concept of popular culture. He disagrees with views that depict working class people as passive consumers manipulated by commercial popular culture imposed by the dominant class. Instead, Hall sees popular culture as an ongoing process and site of struggle between the dominant and subordinate classes over cultural domination and meanings. Popular culture involves both acceptance and resistance to the dominant culture, and cultural forms may change over time as new meanings are inscribed through this cultural struggle.

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Pramod
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«NOTES ON DECONSTRUCTING

THE POPULAR»
Stuart Hall
1981
What does deconstructing mean?

What does the title suggest?


Deconstruct means to dismantle, to dissect

The title implies that the notion popular will be critically examined and
the commonplace ideas regarding the meaning of the word popular
will be challenged.
Hall gives a historical account of the development of British popular
culture with reference to the social tensions in the late 19th and early
20th centuries in order to show how these tensions shaped popular
culture.
Key concepts in Hall’s essay are:

acceptance, resistance, containment, dominant, subordinate, power,


transformation, cultural domination, cultural implantation, struggle,
hegemony, masses
In his essay, he refers to the changing attitude of the working class,
which was once rebellious and confrontational.

During the 1930s (the economic depression), a «militant, radical,


mature culture of the working class» was non-existent.
Hall examines different meanings of the concept popular, some of which he
disagrees with:
1. Manipulative aspect of commercial popular culture
Based on this meaning of popular, working class people are depicted as
«passive consumers» («cultural dopes») who take everything that is offered.
This view suggests that there is no original working class culture.
Popular culture is shaped by the dominant class (e.g. impositions of new
cultural definitions and representations through TV shows – Coronation
Street – in the process of reconstructing the «realities of working class life»)
Mass manipulation
Cultural implantation
To Hall culture is a battlefield, a way of struggle between the
dominant and the subordinate.

Popular culture keeps shifting between pure autonomy and


capitulation.
2. Hall refers to the anthropological definition of popular – that is,
«the mores, customs and folkways of the people.»

He finds this definition limiting because individuals do not have the


same hobbies and/or interests.
3. He defines popular culture in a continuing tension to the dominant
culture.
According to him, cultures are not conceived as separate ways of life
but as ways of struggle.

Popular culture is an ongoing process.

Cultural forms, signs and practices may change in time as a result of the
new meanings inscribed on them (e.g. swastika).
Cultural signs indicate different ways of life. (e.g. While it was the
cucumber sandwich popular for the upper class in Victorian England, it
was the jellied eel, or steak and kidney pie for the working class.)
The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1959) theorised that humans
make a separation between a word and what that word means.
All words in a language, body language, signs and symbols are
signifiers.

Signifier: the expression, the material embodiment SIGN


Signified: the meaning, the concept conveyed by the signifier
In line with Gramsci, Hall agrees with Marx that the class which seizes
material power also seizes ideological power or the power of ideas. To
overcome this hegemony, it would be necessary to develop a counter-
hegemony formed by working class to promote the creation of
development of a new culture.
According to Hall, popular culture is a struggle for a culture of the
powerful – each social class desires to have power to determine the
contents of popular culture
and
it is against the culture of the powerful – the subordinate culture’s
resistance against cultural implantation.

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