ABSTRACT
Stuart Hall was born in Jamaica in 1932. He was, for a decade, the director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and is currently Professor of Sociology at the Open University. In "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms", Hall described the two major camps within marxist cultural studies as "culturalism" and "structuralism". The present essay theorizes this position around the concept of "ideology". Describing Hall's indebtedness to Louis Althusser, it demonstrates the importance of the "Althusserian moment" which moves cultural studies onto a structuralist terrain. The post-structural abandonment of any appeal to a real (or to experience) outside of discourse, and the absolute commitment to difference and rupture undercuts any attempt to theorize the "complexity of a unity", according to Hall. Hall accepts the "displacing effects" of ideology on subjectivity and experience, as well as the fractured nature of the subject. The ideological level has its own "relative autonomy" within the complex unity of practices which makes up a social formation.
