The Rediscovery of the Conjuncture

Abstract

This chapter responds to the crisis in conjunctural analysis through a philological approach to Gramsci’s original texts. It has located both relatively recently translated and untranslated passages that disrupt and alter the path of the discussion or the debate around conjunctural analysis but, more importantly, it provides a basis for the reinterpretation of the cultural studies project and its relationship to its most popular foundation in the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in general, and Stuart Hall’s work, in specific. This chapter has two goals: It explores the methodological and conceptual foundations of conjunctural analysis in cultural studies research and it suffuses the premises of such analysis with crucial, new, and transformative text from Gramsci’s work. It then turns to and intervenes in current and ongoing debates about the specification of conjunctural analysis by offering a new approach that directly addresses the crisis in conjunctural analysis, that there is no theorized method for conjunctural analysis as it pertains to the recognition of a conjunctural shift or the emergence of an organic crisis.