Stuart Hall and the “Detour Through Theory” Revisited

Following Stuart Hall's provocation to understand theory as the “process of theorizing, of the development and refinement of new concepts and explanations which, alone, is the sign of a living body of thought, capable still of engaging and grasping something of the truth about new historical realities,” this essay looks at Hall's understanding of theory as a “detour” in the 1980s and 1990s and wonders whether new historical realities might force us to rethink theory's relation to everyday life—perhaps less as a detour than as a main road forward for cultural studies.