Essential Essays, Volume 1

Stuart Hall (1932–2014) was one of the most prominent and influential scholars and public intellectuals of his generation. Hall appeared widely on British media, taught at the University of Birmingham and the Open University, was the founding editor of New Left Review, and served as the director of Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. He is the author of Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History; Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands; and other books also published by Duke University Press.David Morley is Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London, and coeditor of Stuart Hall: Conversations, Projects, and Legacies.

• A Note on the Text  viiAcknowledgments  ixGeneral Introduction: A Life in Essays  1Part I. Cultural Studies: Culture, Class, and TheoryIntroduction  271. Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, and the Cultural Turn [2007]  352. Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms [1980]  473. Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies [1992]  71Part II. Theoretical and Methodological Principles: Class, Race and Articulation4. The Hinterland of Science: Ideology and the Sociology of Knowledge [1977]  1115. Rethinking the "Base and Superstructure" Metaphor [1977]  1436. Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance [1980]  1727. On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall by Larry Grossberg and Others [1986]  222Part III. Media, Communications, Ideology, and Representation8. Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse [originally 1973; republished 2007]  2579. External Influences on Broadcasting: The External/Internal Dialectic in Broadcasting-Television's Double-Blind [1972]  27710. Culture, the Media, and the "Ideological Effect" [1977]  298Part IV. Political Formations: Power as Process11. Notes on Deconstructing "the Popular" [1981]  34712. Policing the Crisis: Preface to the 35th Anniversary Edition [2013] (with Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts)  36213. The Great Moving Right Show [1979]  374Index  393Place of First Publication  411

"Anyone whose work is informed, 'in the last instance,' by Cultural Studies will find much that is helpfully familiar in it as well as new connections, new applications, new ways of '[penetrating] the disorderly surface of things to another level of understanding,' as Hall says, invoking Marx, in the epilogue. This seems especially urgent as the ascendancy of the far Right coincides with the wholesale neoliberalization of the humanities, as Hall predicted in his 'Theoretical Legacies' lecture. It is obviously not a question of 'going back' to Hall for a truer or more 'authentic' form of Cultural Studies than that in practice today. But there is much in his legacy that illuminates the dynamics of the present, and much to put into dialogue with contemporary scholarship and practice. Morley's collection reminds us how important it is for genuine intellectual work to articulate competing and contradictory paradigms together, to work, as Hall did, from the points of contestation and conflict rather than seek solace in abstractions. This, finally, is the 'essential' in the essays assembled here."  - Liane Tanguay (American Book Review) “Along with the other volumes that Duke University Press has published, these two books of collected essays are to be welcomed. They allow us to see a fertile mind in action, engaged in and with the real world. It is a model well worth emulating.” - Michael W. Apple (Educational Policy) “As one of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, [Hall] has made an enormous contribution to cultural and political thought, and his work has had a lasting impact in both social sciences and the humanities…. This collection is a treasure trove of Hall’s intellectual and political offerings; I recommend it highly.” - Avtar Brah (New West Indian Guide) "I have also narrated the effort it took for me to access his work to illustrate the importance of the Selected Writings now being released by Duke University Press. It is an event of profound historical significance that a new generation will be able to begin its political and theoretical education with systematic access to Hall’s writing. . . . The two-volume Essential Essays shows the broad scope of his work."- Asad Haider (The Point) "It was one of Hall’s unique gifts to offer analysis of the moment as it unfolded before our eyes. I am sure I am not alone in having found his talks exhilarating in ways I could never quite understand, given that the news he relayed with such energy was almost unremittingly dire. Hall offered his readings as interpretation and self-commentary, tracing his own intellectual path." - Jacqueline Hall (New York Review of Books)