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

chapter 5
Be Here (or There) Now
Before launching into our fi ve identity categories of race, class, gender, nation,
and Latin America, we shall turn our attention to a brief excerpt from
Stuart Hall, one of the worlds’ foremost theorists on identity.
Destabilizing identity structures, a primary objective of cultural theory,
can be an alienating experience. What once seemed unwavering and
true suddenly becomes tenuous and shifting. Hermeneuticians and modernists,
who reject postmodernism, are quick to accuse cultural theorists
of eradicating identities so much that we are left adrift on a sea of constructs.
In short, they accuse postmodernism of being entirely impractical. One of
Stuart Hall’s main contributions to cultural theory has been to provide a
practical way to conceptualize identity from a cultural theory perspective.
Hall’s professional career is closely tied to the Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies (CCCS), the Birmingham school we mentioned in our
introduction. He became its director in 1968, and under his tutelage the
center emerged as the focal point of the emergent fi eld of cultural studies,
a place where theories of postmodernism were applied to the study of contemporary
issues. Not surprisingly, the center and its teachings also became
a focal point for debate. Defenders of modernist methodologies and teaching
styles considered it a haven for fringe scholars trying to pass off intellectual
shenanigans as legitimate academic inquiry. If the center’s ideological foundation
was not enough to inspire detractors, its occasional application of its
theoretical approaches to the classroom fanned the fl ames of opposition.
For example, a former student recalls one of the more memorable lectures
on queer theory being “given by a well-stacked, tattooed, skinhead Ph.D.
student wearing a clear plastic suit.” 1 But such legendary stories should not