ABSTRACT
If we had to characterize Stuart Hall’s contribution to the development of cultural studies in one word, that word would be ‘open’. His work typically opens up what had seemed to be closed off; his project is always open-ended, always in progress and thus always open to the contributions of others; he constantly opens doors through which people may pass and meet, sometimes surprisingly as when he brings Lévi-Strauss through one, Gramsci through another and shows that the conversation between them is richer than the monologues in their own rooms. And his political energies never deviate from his aim of opening up the strategies of the power bloc to critical inspection, and opening up the democratic processes to those who would use them to advance democracy.
