Canonization achieved
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Gurevitch, M. & Scannell, P. (2002) Canonization achieved? Stuart hall's 'Encoding/decoding'. In Katz, E., J. D. Peters, T. Liebes, and A. Orloff (Eds.), Canonic texts in media research: are there any? Should there be? How about these? Cambridge: Polity.
Contents |
Canonization
- Defining the boundaries of a field
- Relative to the disciplinary scope
- e.g. "Communication", "Social science", "Audience studies", etc.
- Achieved v. bestowed canon status
- Is it seminal?
- Depends on death
- Sanctification, mortification
"Biography" of an essay
Encoding/decoding, an "ur-text of media studies" (232)
- Encoding/decoding specifically argues for such biographical reading of an essay (235)
- "Work in progress [...] without aspirations to an afterlife" (233)
- Historical context, circumstances of its writing: invoke the "working life of" the CCCS (233)
- "Eager", "exciting", "where the action was" (233)
- Title references Barthes' S/z, 1975
- Hall's "high point", "major intellectual achievement" (234)
- CCCS frenetic place with "the noise of theory" (235)
E/D in opposition
- "Slightly polemical thrust" in the context of a mass comm conference at Centre for Mass Communication Research at University of Leister (235)
- Not a "grand model", but targeted specifically at the CMCR at Leister
- A place lacking in "clear theoretical/political agenda" (236)
- Such a lack is "unconsciously, a political choice" (236)
A text in transition
"Hermeneutics of suspicion"
- Phrase borrowed from Habermas (1970)
- Texts treated (in a Freudian sense) like dreams
- Subject to "depth analysis", they can reveal "latent [cultural] meanings" (237)
- Similar jump as Butler made in 1990, starting from Freud but exceeding the individual
E/D is a contact point
- Between earlier Marxism and comm studies
- To a more "complex" Marxism with the availability of Althusser's "ideological state apparatuses" and Gramsci's "hegemony" (238)
The 1980 text
- Earlier paper has been "topped and tailed" (238)
- Modified to address a broader audience
- Emphasis switches from encoding/production to decoding/audiences (240)
Origin of Encoding/decoding idea
- Shannon, Claude. (1949) "The mathematical theory of communication"
"source - encoder - message - decoder - destination" (238)
- Schramm, Wilbur. (1964) introduced notions of "feedback" into this model
- Contextualized within framework of social relations, socio-cultural environment
- Hall criticizes the "linearity" of this model and its focus on exchange (239)
- Decoding process is independent of encoding
- If the intended message is not transmitted successfully, it's not a matter of failure or noise
The beginnings of canonization
Morley and Brunsdon's The nationwide audience first application of E/D (243)
- Context: rise of Thatcher and "imported mixture" of
- "Continental Marxism": Althusser, Benjamin, Gramsci
- "Semiology": Barthes, Eco, Gauthier
Canonization depends on "appearance [...] at the right, and ripe, time" (244)
- Also, E/D didn't strike (non-Marxist) comm scholars as particular revolutionary so they were more likely to accept it
- Even though it "subverted the older conceptual frameworks" (245)
"Some texts are born canonic, some achieve canonization, and some (at their peril?) have canonization thrust upon them." (246)
