Religion’s political meaning depends on its historical attachments yet remains transformable

Evidence

For example: religion has no necessary political connotation. Anyone interested in the politics of contemporary culture has to recognize the continuing force in modern life of cultural forms which have a prehistory long predating that of our rational systems, and which sometimes constitute the only cultural resources which human beings have to make sense of their world. … It exists historically in a particular formation, anchored very directly in relation to a number of different forces. Nevertheless, it has no necessary, intrinsic, transhistorical belongingness. Its meaning—political and ideological—comes precisely from its position within a formation. It comes with what else it is articulated to. … To use a geographical metaphor, to struggle around religion in a particular locale, you need to know the ideological terrain, the lay of the land. But that’s not to say, “that’s how it is, always will be so.” Of course, if you are going to try to break, contest, interrupt some of these tendential historical connections, you have to know when you are moving against the grain of historical formations. If you want to move religion, to re-articulate it in another way, you are going to come across all the grooves that have articulated it already. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 738

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘non-necessary’ does not mean free-floating: articulation means historically anchored but transformable.
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘geographical metaphor/ideological terrain’ passage shows how Hall holds contingency and historical determination together — a dialectical view that defies summarizing in a sentence.