Over-theorizing power as textuality can empty it of real political meaning

Evidence

Some time ago, looking at what one can only call the deconstructive deluge (as opposed to deconstructive turn) which had overtaken American literary studies, in its formalist mode, I tried to distinguish the extremely important theoretical and intellectual work which it had made possible in Cultural Studies from a mere repetition, a sort of mimicry or deconstructive ventriloquism which sometimes passes as a serious intellectual exercise. My fear at that moment was that if Cultural Studies gained an equivalent institutionalization in the American context, it would, in rather the same way, formalize out of existence the critical questions of power, history, and politics. Paradoxically, what I mean by theoretical fluency is exactly the reverse. There is no moment now, in American Cultural Studies, where we are not able, extensively and without end, to theorize power—politics, race, class, and gender, subjugation, domination, exclusion, marginality, Otherness, etc. There is hardly anything in Cultural Studies which isn’t so theorized. And yet, there is the nagging doubt that this overwhelming textualization of Cultural Studies’ own discourses somehow constitutes power and politics as exclusively matters of language and textuality itself. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 258

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to Hall’s broader critique of poststructuralist formalism and connects to Frankfurt School’s similar suspicion of discourse displacing material critique. — connects to: No adequate metaphor yet describes digital platform power — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 549; Contextualist political theory denies any culture-free standpoint for judgment — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 291
• QUESTION: What does Hall count as the line between productive ‘deconstructive turn’ and empty ‘deconstructive ventriloquism’? He gestures at it but never pinpoints criteria.