Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist who was born in Jamaica and grew up in Great Britain. In his essay Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular’, he challenges the idea that popular culture is about resistance, underground movements, or counterculture — the old belief that it’s the counterculture and the resistance that make something “cool” or popular. Stuart Hall argues that popular culture is not just resistance, but rather a space of transformation, a place where transformation is possible between the oppressor and the oppressed; it includes both.
For example, popular culture would be a dance like merengue, which is embraced by both the upper class and the lower class — but it never belongs entirely to one or the other. It’s a mixture of both, always in flux. And what’s interesting is that this friction between the oppressed and the oppressors is precisely the space where popular culture most powerfully emerges.
Stuart Hall wants to empower people by giving them an agency beyond mere resistance. But this raises the question: if what’s required for something to become popular is a space of transformation, then what are the conditions for transformation? What do you need in that space for something to be truly transformational? Clearly, you need friction — opposing energies — but also a constant state of flux. Even if the oppressed were to successfully overthrow the ruling power, that would end transformation entirely. You’d need the seed of oppression within the oppressors who resist in order for the cycle of transformation to continue; and the same applies to the oppressed.
It’s a kind of paradox of non-change, where the oppressors always carry within them the seed of being oppressors — of holding power — and the oppressed carry the seed of resistance. And that’s what keeps the space of transformation alive.
From this, we can see that what’s most powerful isn’t total victory, but rather entering the dance of movement, stepping consciously into the friction, without expecting complete triumph over the opposition. It’s not necessary to abolish the other side entirely or seize all the power, because that cycle would simply repeat itself again. What matters is entering into resistance, to live in consciousness of resistance.
That means the most significant difference is not between a housewife and a female president, but between a housewife and a feminist activist. That distance — the awakening of consciousness — is what truly matters.
Whats interesting however, is that what ‘steps into the dance’ is not only the rising up of the oppressed, but the ‘stepping down’ of the ruling class, to surrender, to participate and render their identity or authority relational, rather than a closed, self-sufficient system. A tourist learns how to dance, she steps into the space of endless transformation, the potential of relations and meanings open up before her. She enters into life itself.
What we are able to achieve by extending Hall’s framework is to empower people by showing that the most powerful act you can take is to live consciously. Even if that consciousness means you will always remain in a state of resistance, that is the highest form of power or empowerment possible, because that is what culture ultimately is. Perhaps not power in the form of oppression or absolute rule, but power in the form of what moves, captures, inspires the collective, including those with and without power. Power in the form of, who is the most loved, and who survives morality, who is remembered, who influences and moves the people. Power as the recognition of one’s own intent and integrity.
Consciousness is the triumph.
SUBLIME COURAGE 
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