A series of symposia, seminars and lectures, exploring the ‘present conjuncture’ throughout June.
They are destined to be perpetually defending a position which is being already overrun, responding to last year’s ‘golden opportunities’. In the ‘war of position’, though the defensive-offensive tactics in relation to each position has an overall effect, it is overwhelmingly the question of strategic position and disposition – that is, the struggle for hegemony – which counts, ‘in the last instance’.
Stuart Hall, ‘Questions of Theory’, The Hard Road to Renewal, 1988, p. 133.
But with respect and service I also promise this: a politics that treads a little lighter on all of our lives. Because that’s the thing about populism, or nationalism, any politics fuelled by division. It needs your full attention. It needs you constantly focusing on this week’s common enemy. And that’s exhausting, isn’t it?
Keir Starmer, New Year Speech, 4 January 2024.
Except for Day One.
Donald Trump, Fox News ‘Virtual Town Hall’ with Sean Hannity, 10 January 2024.
In the 1970s, Stuart Hall and his colleagues at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) developed a distinct approach to the analysis of the complex structures and forces operative within a given historical moment of change (or continuity). Derived from a creative, but rigorous engagement with the works of Antonio Gramsci, ‘conjunctural analysis’ enabled Hall and the CCCS to discern the political, ideological, cultural and economic forces that shaped Britain in the 1970s and 1980s, providing insight into the emergent ‘right-authoritarian populism’ of the Thatcher government and the failures of the ‘old left’ of the Labour Party. Throughout his life, Hall frequently suggested that the concepts, theories, and practice of conjunctural analysis would itself have to be continually refashioned, reconstructed, to achieve the ‘concrete in thought’ adequate to political intervention in the world. What might such a conjunctural analysis offer today?
Throughout June, the Stuart Hall Archive Project and the College of Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham, with its partners Soundings, Identities, and the University of Glasgow School of Social and Political Sciences, will host speakers exploring contemporary theories and concepts of the ‘conjuncture’ and offering analyses of the present at local, national, and international scales, engaging diverse publics and emergent formations. This series asks whether such analyses can identify:
- Concepts and categories necessary for conjunctural analysis in the present
- Relations of force and determinacies in the present conjuncture
- Organic, as well as conjunctural, tendencies
- Emergent social and political formations
- The terrain of struggle and the conditions of a hegemonic programme
Register online or in person:
Friday 31 May: Conjunctural Analysis Today (one day symposium)
https://buytickets.at/stuarthallarchiveprojectattheuniversityofbirmingham/1257944
Friday 7 June: Jordan T. Camp, ‘Theorizing the Conjuncture: Stuart Hall, translatability, and the challenge of neo-fascism’ (lecture)
https://buytickets.at/stuarthallarchiveprojectattheuniversityofbirmingham/1258406
Friday 21 June: Progressive Possibilities and Authoritarian Populism (one day symposium)
https://buytickets.at/stuarthallarchiveprojectattheuniversityofbirmingham/1258330
Saturday 22 June: Election Fever: Cultural politics in Birmingham in 2024 (half-day symposium at The Exchange) [to register and to find out more details contact sharchiveproject@contacts.bham.ac.uk]
Friday 28 June: Conjunctural Analysis in an International Frame (one day symposium)
https://buytickets.at/stuarthallarchiveprojectattheuniversityofbirmingham/1261242