Cafe Discussion-7

Harrison, Monica, and I were especially intrigued by the readings this week. Since we are all Global Studies majors and have encountered the notion of exploitation multiple times. However, we all thought that Halls reading, “Culture, Resistance, and Struggle”, undermined a lot of Marx’s theory of resistance. All three of us discussed how we learned that resistance only comes in the form of revolution especially in the eyes of Marxist theory. As you discussed in class, the revolutions were created through the creation of class struggle. For example, the stratification between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. However, we all were surprised at the striking contradiction that Hall proposed. The three of us talked about how Hall states that reform does not solely come through a revolution, but also by cultural resistance. This concept was a little hard to grasp so we used your example in-class to help dissect his theory. You stated that an example of resistance could be seen in the creation of labor unions for the workers who were subjected to harsh factory life. We agreed that the creation of labor unions highlights how the workers are fighting against the capitalistic regime in-place. Moreover, we tried to link modern day examples of reform to Hall’s theory. What we concluded was that there are more acts that illuminate how acts of cultural resistance have come are slim. For example, in China, the workers are still being exploited because of the global capitalism that is now created because of capitalist trying to avoid any acts of resistance. Capitalist firms specifically choose countries that have a history of compliance. It may seem that we are resisting in certain countries, but in reality, the exploitation is simply changing location.