“The people” is itself a contested construct, not a fixed subject

Evidence

We begin to perceive that the nation is not a unit of analysis for the social history of Europe. The state is a bureaucratic structure, and the nation for which it administers is more a convenient construct than the historical, racial, cultural, and linguistic entity that the term “nation” signifies. The truer character of European history resides beneath the phenomenology of nation and state. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 195 (#expands, via linked claim)

Traditions are not fixed forever: certainly not in any universal position in relation to a single class. Cultures, conceived not as separate “ways of life” but as “ways of struggle,” constantly intersect: the pertinent cultural struggles arise at the points of intersection. Think of the ways in the eighteenth century, in which a certain language of legality, of constitutionalism, and of “rights” becomes a battleground, at the point of intersection between two divergent traditions: between the “tradition” of gentry “majesty and terror” and the traditions of popular justice. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1017 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

Related

• Cultures impose dominant, institutionalized preferred readings that are contested but not determined. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The discursive turn requires reintroducing the subject as non-unitary and internally contradictory #corroborates (0.75)
• The nation is a construct, not a unit for social analysis #expands (0.70) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 195
• Traditions are mutable and contested rather than fixed and class-bound #expands (0.60) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1017
• Communitarian personhood defines identity through community rather than the Cartesian I #complicates (0.55) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 434
• The popular is defined relationally by opposition to elite culture, not by its contents #expands (0.55) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1010
• Popular culture is a contested site of consent and resistance, not pure authenticity #complicates (0.50) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 963
• Ideologies connect to subjects through contingent, breakable articulations rather than necessity #expands (0.50)
• Communal philosophy need not imply unanimous belief among members #complicates (0.50) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 405