Contradictory Subjects: Stuart Hall and the Politics of Mutual Vulnerability
Résumé
Seeking a through-way between critique and the affective theories that look to counteract it, I attempt to sketch in brief what a critical affect or affective critique might look like, observing that the most valuable theories in both domains, critique and affect, prize their medial position, and make a virtue of contradiction. I look at the writings of a core Cultural Studies tradition represented by Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy, especially in areas of their work which relate to the "structure of feeling" (Williams & Orrom, 1954). This work offers productive avenues and metaphors for thinking affective critique anew. Evaluating and disagreeing with Hall's critique of the refusal of systematization holed away in Williams' well-worn concept, I argue that attendance to the unsystematised is its chief virtue. Finally, I draw this abstracted discussion into the terms of 'mutual vulnerability' and debates over 'safe spaces' to argue that our time of multiplying crises and routine commodification asks us to remember our interdependency and foster mutually vulnerable modes of relation.
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