The Struggle to Defend Subjectivity: The Turn in the Subject Paradigm within Popular Culture Theory in the Post-Hall Era

Abstract

 In the theoretical context of the post-Hall era, the core challenge facing popular culture studies lies in understanding the modes of existence of the subject within increasingly fragmented and technologically mediated cultural practices, following the suspension of the ontological connection between the symbolic and the real. While Hall’s “Gramscian turn” successfully established the image of an actively decoding public, it also rendered the philosophical grounding and political efficacy of subjectivity uncertain by transforming the ontological question into a terrain of struggle. After Hall, theorists such as Lauren Berlant, Henry Jenkins, and Rosi Braidotti, through concepts like affective attachment, participatory culture, and nomadic becoming, collectively advanced the shift in the subject paradigm from a stable, bounded entity toward an immanent, relational, and dynamic process of becoming. The philosophical foundation of this series of theoretical transformations can be summarized as a “generative movement”, wherein the identity of the subject no longer stems from a priori essence but resides within the dynamic trajectories formed by cultural practices and affective attunements. This paradigm renews the approach to defending subjectivity by redefining reflection and critique as differential practices internal to the generative process, thereby offering new theoretical pathways for conceptualizing resistance and openness under conditions of flux.