Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

86 reframing latin america
Notes
1. This episode is cited on the Vocabulary of Culture Web site, devoted
to CCCS (1963–2002), consulted on 4 March 2005 .
2. Stuart Hall, “Ethnicity: Identity and Difference,” ed. Geof Eley and
R. Suny, Becoming National: A Reader (New York: Oxford UP, 1996) 344.
3. Hall 347.
4. Excerpt from Hall 339–341, 344–349.
5. Hall’s reference to his mother’s “hailing” him draws upon a classic
argument put forth by the Algerian/French political philosopher, Louis Althusser
(1918–1990), in his essay, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses:
Some Notes Toward an Investigation.” Althusser drew upon Jacques
Lacan’s notion of the unconscious and the construction of the self to argue
that identity can be constructed by processes of external identifi cation. For
instance, when we stop because a police officer hails us, our internal self
becomes shaped by external ideologies.
6. Hall is referring to Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), a French psychoanalyst
generally associated with approaching psychoanalysis from a cultural
theory or poststructuralist perspective. Hall’s reference to the Lacanian
“symbolic” refers to Lacan’s idea that we are born into and raised in social
systems (i.e., discursively constituted social norms) that then construct our
identities for us.