Every moment of cultural politics has a conjunctural specificity shaping its theory and strategies

Evidence

I begin with a question: What sort of moment is this in which to pose the question of black popular culture? These moments are always conjunctural. They have their historical specificity, and although they always exhibit similarities and continuities with the other moments in which we pose a question like this, they are never the same moment. And the combination of what is similar and what is different defines not only the specificity of the moment, but the specificity of the question, and therefore the strategies of cultural politics with which we attempt to intervene in popular culture, and the form and style of cultural theory and criticizing that has to go along with such an intermatch. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 269

Categorization

• DEFINE: Conjunctural thinking defined: moments are never the same twice; similarity plus difference defines the specificity of the question and the strategies that follow.
• XREF: Conjunctural analysis is central to Gramscian hegemony theory and will recur in Hall’s later essays on race and Islamophobia as contingent articulations.