Adopting a theoretical framework imports its unsolved problems too

Evidence

Let me put it in a concrete way. As I tried to say, I entered Marxism as a problem; I wrestled with Althusser and finally was able to do some work within the framework of a Marxian problematic radically revised by Gramsci. Now, is that a gain? Well, it’s a gain in the sense that I could get something said that I couldn’t get said before. And I could say some different things. But if you think by that that we are now in the Gramscian problematic, we’re also in the problems of the Gramscian problematic. There are problems that Gramsci’s gains present to one, and then you have to look elsewhere, which forces you to wrestle on a different terrain. So I’m trying to describe what I talked about as interruptions in Cultural Studies, the periods in which work was done, though it was never done in a guaranteed theoretical space, and the movements, a set of theoretical movements, that drove it on. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 269

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete instance of the movement-of-theory account from the previous paragraph; connects to Gramsci’s ‘problematic’ and Althusser’s revision of Marx.
• SEED: An essay angle: what it means to inherit a framework’s problems, not just its gains, applied to today’s intellectual fashions (e.g., decolonial theory, degrowth).