Textual authority was believed to degenerate over time like political power

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 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sacralized politics occurs in democracies too, giving constitutions and founders scripture-like status — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 82; Preserving textual authority was seen as essential to political power; Over-theorizing power as textuality can empty it of real political meaning — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 258 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Over-theorizing power as textuality can empty it of real political meaning #complicates (0.78) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 258