Stuart Hall and the project of Marxism without guarantees
[Thesis]
Leitch, Richard
McCulloch, Andrew; Donnelly, John
University of Northumbria
2004
Thesis (Ph.D.)
2004
This is the fIrst full length study of Stuart Hall's relationship to the Marxist tradition. It offers a new understanding of his shifting positions vis-a-vis Marxism and concentrates upon his prolonged efforts to renew its promise as a living body of theory and practice during the 1970s and 1980s. The contours of this renewal and its foundations upon a triple critique of reductionist, deterministic and universalistic tendencies within Marxism are laid bare in a series of expositions of his major works of these decades, linking these discrete interventions to this wider project. Following that, these are then subjected to an extensive critical review of their alternative perspectives upon the nature of social and historical processes and configurations, their potential political agents and the overall ability of this whole theoretical edifIce to serve as a possible source for any future revival of the Marxist tradition. The conclusion is that Hall has not here fulfilled his promise.