Intellectual fields are sustained by conflict and instability rather than consensus

Evidence

It always was a set of unstable formations. It was “centered” only in quotation marks, in a particular kind of way which I want to define in a moment. It had many trajectories; many people had and have different trajectories through it; it was constructed by a number of different methodologies and theoretical positions, all of them in contention. Theoretical work in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was more appropriately called theoretical noise. It was accompanied by a great deal of bad feeling, argument, unstable anxieties, and angry silences. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 236

Categorization

• XREF: Extends Frankfurter echoes of theory born of unstable conditions; resonates with hall’s general treatment of conjunctural thought.