"Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular'" (1981)
By Stuart Hall
Synopsis: Popular culture is the battleground on which the struggle for power and cultural meaning is fought. Presents his theory of popular culture as an alternative to the two existing views, which claim that 1) "the people" are passive and are being duped constantly by dominant forces, or 2) there is some real or pure working-class culture that exists entirely beyond the bounds of dominant culture. He argues instead that while of course the dominant culture will have some effect, we should not look at things as being of one extreme pole or the other - i.e. of pure autonomy or of total encapsulation. Popular culture should be defined through its continuing tension with the dominant culture. It is not, after all, the content that makes it popular, but rather the "class struggle in and over culture" that makes it so. Thus, popular culture as a category is always contingent upon historical and social circumstances. Symbols and signs are never fixed in meaning throughout time, and there is no "universal popular aesthetic" - different groups can appropriate for different purposes and with different meanings. It all comes down to the popular causes versus the power-bloc, and context is everything. While always changes, the contentpower struggle is always there.
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